Latest / Voices of the Albemarle / Ep. 10: Elizabeth City Grooves—Douglas Jackson’s History of Music

Transcript

Ep. 10: Elizabeth City Grooves—Douglas Jackson’s History of Music · Voices of the Albemarle

0:12
SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome back to Voices of the Album Moral.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Izzy Kelly Coss, and we have our co-host, David Prizer.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: And today we are joined by Douglas Jackson, a local musician and professor of music at Elizabeth City State University.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: Douglas recently released his new single, Elizabeth City Grooves, on March 2nd.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining us today.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm so happy to be here with you, David Grooves.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for asking me.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: Yes, we are thrilled.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: Just to start off, I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about your passion for music and how it led you to where you are today.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's see.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Do we have four hours to talk about how it led me here?
0:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: There was no direct path to music.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: Maybe overview.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: I do want to get into a couple of things more specifically, but an overview.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: How did you start playing music?
1:07
SPEAKER_01: Were you a child?
1:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: So my household was full of intellectual activities and athletic activities, largely because my parents figured out this is how you keep kids out of trouble.
1:23
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: That's that's largely what it was.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: I figured out when I got about 30, I went, oh, that's why they did all that stuff.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: So we wouldn't get in trouble.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: So I played sports, but we also played music.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: Um my introduction to music itself was when I was eight years old in the third grade, and they gave us a note that said there would be this traveling orchestra teacher coming to our school like next week or something.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: And I took the note home, and my mom signed it, and my dad did the rental form for the instruments, and they were like, fine.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: My mother was the elementary school teacher, but she also played the piano, sang, wrote books and wrote music.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh my dad wasn't musically inclined, but I just tell everybody dad drove the station wagon, mom got the other stuff done, it would they tag team dust, so we were always doing stuff.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: And so I went to the orchestra class, and they they immediately took us all to the string section.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: And I made a very inappropriate um comment at the time as an eight-year-old that I would probably would probably be litigated against now if I said it.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: I said, I don't want to play the violin.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: Girls play the violin.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh.
2:36
SPEAKER_04: Oh.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: Whoa.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: So the teacher didn't have, she said, Well, go to the other side of the room, and there are the some other instruments.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: And there was this shiny little trumpet in a case, and I said, I want to play that instrument.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: And that was my that was my decision-making process.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: There was no order to it, like there's no order to how I do anything.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: A lot of thought put by that.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: No thought, just I just went in there.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: That's it, it looks cool, you know.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: And that's it.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, and we played, I did, you know, elementary school orchestra and all that kind of stuff.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: I would not call myself a a child that took to the instrument immediately.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: It was more of a hobby, hobby thing, because I actually wanted to be a quarterback in the NFL.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're not doing that now.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Right.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: So um one day during the summer, my sister came out and said, came and got me and said, You gotta go inside, go take a shower.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: Mommy's taking you to music lessons for the summer.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: I went, oh, oh.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
3:42
SPEAKER_02: How old were you then?
3:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh maybe, you know, 10.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: And I went, oh, oh, what?
3:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm we're playing football.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: So I you go inside.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: Your sister tells you go inside, take a shower.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: I took a shower.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: My mother took me down to the music center and uh signed me up for private music lessons with a trumpet teacher.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: Now, just for a little context, where is this?
4:07
SPEAKER_01: Where did you grow up?
4:08
SPEAKER_00: In Los Angeles, California.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: What I found out is later on is that the music center that it was called Grant's Music Center in Los Angeles.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: It was a hub of activity in the community.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: And most of the teachers there were guys that were coming in and off of the road.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: And my trumpet teacher, I didn't know at the time, but my trumpet teacher was on and off the road with Ray Charles.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
4:40
SPEAKER_04: Oh, wow.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but when you're 10 years old, you don't really, none of that registers.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: No.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: Right.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: I started looking back at that and the people that we met, I met as a teenager going in and out of that music center.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: And those are some very, very, very interesting.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: They have guys that were in Count Basie's orchestra, Duke Ellington's orchestra.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: My brother, David's drum teacher, the late Billy Moore, was Ray Charles's drummer for 15 years.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: But we we didn't know.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, my parents just kind of saw that as an avenue to, again, uh acculturation, keeping our minds and bodies uh active and out of trouble.
5:18
SPEAKER_02: When when you were that age, did you did you like music?
5:22
SPEAKER_02: Did you listen to music at the same time?
5:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I did.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I always listened to music, and I started listening to jazz recordings of uh our high school band director, the late Edward Jackson, no re uh No Relationship, but he introduced us to Clifford Brown, the Trump great trumpet player, and I got those recordings, and my mom would let me buy jazz records because they, you know, that time they only cost four dollars for albums.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: And I started listening, I was a fan of so I would copy the trumpet players and listen to play it over.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it wasn't it was fascinating to me how these guys could play their instrument, and I was still figuring out how to play you like two notes at the same time.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: Um so yes, yeah, and I am and I'm still a listener of that music.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I it's not just lat jazz, I listen to everything.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: I have a very, very eclectic taste of that.
6:15
SPEAKER_02: That's interesting.
6:15
SPEAKER_02: I was I was going to eventually ask you about that because I read a little bit about you know your background and the kind of music that that that you're characterizes playing, what the genre would be, and I'm interested if people like you who are in in jazz, what do are there other kinds of music that you listen to?
6:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh of course, but we're gonna segue to that question.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I am in I've growing up on the West Coast during the late 60s, 70s, and 80s, you get this immersion of everything that's going on because the recording industry is there.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: So it was not unusual for my week to musical week to include anthems on Sunday because my mother was a church organist.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes after church, we go home, change our clothes, and they would take us to jazz concerts in the park with a picnic basket.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: Um there was marching band in high school.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: And then when I was in 11th grade, I started my own little funk band.
7:28
SPEAKER_04: Oh, that's a good one.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: Oh, here we go.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Cool in the Gang, Earth, Wind and Fire.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: All right.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the Motown stuff.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, we couldn't play it, but we tried.
7:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: And started playing the dances, and that's kind of where that's kind of my DNA, you know, the the the James Brown stuff.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: My cousins took me to see James Brown when I was 13.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: It's never the same after that.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, the the flames, the two drummers, the non-stop show.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: You know, the show stopped, the music never stopped, it just goes on and on.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: You're like two hours later, everybody's exhausted.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: And you're going home, going, wow, you know, that was incredible.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: Because if you go to shows now, the music stops, and they have these set changes and all of the you don't that that James Brown, no stopping.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: Just go.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: So all of that was something that I wanted to be part of, but yeah, not yet old enough to do it.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: So all of that music is is in me.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: Later on, when I went to uh graduate school, um, I was introduced to Latin jazz music or Afro-Cuban music uh by the late doll.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: But no, not um, he's not late.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, by Dr.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Paul DeCastro, who ran the Latin jazz program at Cal State LA.
8:49
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he started in Latin jazz ensemble, and I was walking down the hallway one e one evening in graduate studies, and I heard this.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh wow, that sounds, you know, I hear drums and clave, that sounds cool.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: And I asked Dr.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: DeCal, well, what is it?
9:06
SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, we're starting a Latin jazz ensemble.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, can I play in that?
9:10
SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, not this semester.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: I already have a trumpet player.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh wow.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: Kind of rejected.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: But then the following semester he allowed me to enroll, and he arranged a trip for us to do an exchange in Cuba.
9:26
SPEAKER_04: Oh.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: So we prepared for almost an entire year of performance to go over to to perform and do masterclasses in Havana.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: And that's why that's when I started listening to the other side of rhythmic interpretations and heavily immersed in that.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: And then at the same time, a buddy of mine, uh Daryl Street, who plays trombone, we hooked up with these Jamaican guys, and we were their horn section.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: So we were doing, we were doing horn sections for reggae music.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: I was doing Latin music, and it was just all you know, all of all of the stuff that's coming in, the spices coming into the food.
10:08
SPEAKER_02: I love that when when I I'm gonna use the wrong word, but different genres, they they start to come together.
10:16
SPEAKER_02: And you mentioned like James Brown and back in the classics, the Ray Charles, you can actually hear jazz in that.
10:25
SPEAKER_02: And I'm now as a grown-up starting to hear that, and I'm appreciating it so much more.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: American popular music is heavily influenced by Caribbean music.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: You can if and even no even now, so much more because you have this reggaetone stuff that has has its Caribbean reach, but roots.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: But some of the early transitions from the marching in Dixieland style music into the traditional New Orleans trad music that you that where jazz comes from, you hear the polyrhythms.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: And that's that's where it's just based, polyrhythms.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: When we look at the culture of New Orleans, you've got all these different people.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that's why I call it's just the I call it the gumbo.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: Jazz is the gumbo.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: Everybody just put some stuff in there and it tastes good.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: All right.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: All right.
11:22
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: And then after grad school, you were talking about after grad school, or I'm talking about after grad school.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: You were talking about being in grad school.
11:31
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
11:32
SPEAKER_01: You worked with a bunch of different companies.
11:35
SPEAKER_01: You worked with Motown Records, with MGM and and film and like television.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: What was your role in that?
11:43
SPEAKER_01: What was that like?
11:44
SPEAKER_00: Did you I had a backwards career, Izzy?
11:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: Backwards.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: None of nothing I've ever done in my life was planned.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: It's just backwards.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: So when I got a I worked at those companies before and after graduate school.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: I've had literally had two different careers.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: When I graduated from college with my undergraduate degree in music and my trumpet on their arm, you know, I wasn't really clear where where to go with that.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: I needed a job.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: My dad said, okay, what are we going to do here?
12:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay, college is over.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: Time to go to work.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what are we going to do here?
12:19
SPEAKER_00: And he says, What do you want to do?
12:22
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, I want to own a record company.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, how do you do that?
12:27
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, I want to be like Barry Gordy, who founded Motown.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: So my dad's like, well, okay, that's fine, except I really don't know anybody in that business, so I can't really make a phone call and get you a job.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: How are you going to do that?
12:40
SPEAKER_00: Well, Izzy, when I was in college, I used to read about famous musicians and famous music executives and film executives and Lou Wasserman and Jerry Reinthrob.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: I read about Quincy Jones and Charlie Parkerman, how these people got to where they were.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: And there was a tradition in the film business to have an internship in the mailroom.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: Many, many of your film executives started in those internships.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: And they went, they probably.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: So my dad said, well, why don't you see if you can get a job working in the mail room?
13:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, gee you know, gee, that I mean, you It's every musician's dream card to work in a mail room, right?
13:32
SPEAKER_00: It is, yeah.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: So I started looking for jobs in the mail room.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: I've I found a job in the mailroom at KHJ Radio and TV in Los Angeles, right there on Melrose Avenue, steps from Paramount Pictures arc, where you walk into the Paramount Studio.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: So I get my little job in the Melroom, they put you on a put you on a smock, they say, put wrap this mail and take it around.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: And I did that.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: And there was a gentleman that used to come up in the morning, chain smoking, did the you know where the Dutch story is, where half of it's closed.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, and he was standing there and he's like watching me sort this mail.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: And then I'd do the mail and watching me, he says, I want the mail from the accounting department.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, like, can you let me alone till I finish?
14:25
SPEAKER_00: And uh I got so irritated that I decided that I would get up and go to work almost an hour earlier, sort the mail and have it ready for him when he came up.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: I did, really.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: It was the first mature decision I've ever made.
14:46
SPEAKER_02: The guy in the mail room has an initiative with the watching.
14:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: So I sold it on the mail, I wrapped up the all the accounting mail, I put it on the Dutch door, and when it's there, he walked up and he would just take it.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: So that went on for about three months.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: One day he came up at three o'clock in the afternoon.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: After you'd already been there an hour early.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, three o'clock in the afternoon, just random.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: And um he said, Douglass, come out, I want to talk to you.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: That's the first time he ever said my name.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: I went, ooh.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: And of course you're young, you think, oh, I'm in trouble.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: I did something.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: Right.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: Um and he said, he pointed, he said, Go tell Mary you want this job.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: It was a job and accounts payable.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, I I have a degree in music.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: Don't just just go over there and she's waiting for you.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: Mary was the HR person to the radio station.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: And I he says, Go now.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, okay.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: So I took my smoke off, I go across and she's sitting there with some papers.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: She says, Oh yes, Mr.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: Berman wants you to work for him in the accounting department.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what?
16:02
SPEAKER_00: You serious?
16:03
SPEAKER_00: She says, Yes, you you start next week.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, okay.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: What a great guy.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: So that mature decision that I made, I guess made an impression on him.
16:18
SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: And my dad said, that man was watching you from the very first day.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: So that's how I got into accounting.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: Next mature decision I made was that, oh, if I can do accounting at a radio station, maybe I can do accounting at a record company.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: Cold call.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm kidding you not.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: I made a cold call to Motown Records.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: And I asked them, did they have any jobs in accounting?
16:41
SPEAKER_00: The lady said, Yes, we have one opening in the royalty department.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you come over tomorrow and see us?
16:48
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: That's how I got started.
16:50
SPEAKER_02: My gosh.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: Could that happen today, you think?
16:56
SPEAKER_00: I it's not impossible.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: So from there I worked in Motown, um, Joe Bat Music, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robles in Holidays, all those publishing greats.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it was fast, it was a introduction to seeing exactly what happens behind the scenes financially, which every artist should have the opportunity to do that.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: Because so many, the business now is very invisible.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: You can't see all of the transactions.
17:30
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, you're streaming, you're you're streaming, and whoever the you're dealing with online, it's you know, it could be a bot, you don't know.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: Right.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: So you don't see the transactions.
17:42
SPEAKER_02: But you're talking about the business of music.
17:44
SPEAKER_02: And and when when when I think of me, I think of music, I think of listening to it.
17:48
SPEAKER_02: But there's a whole business behind it.
17:50
SPEAKER_02: Infrastructure.
17:51
SPEAKER_02: And you went into it with intent.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: So that's fascinating.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: That I learned um that helped me understand that.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: So one job led to another.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, I saw an announcement, uh, a job announcement one night that said royalty clerk called this number.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: And I called the number, it was AM Records, Herb, Alpert, and Jerry Mops' company.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: Right.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: And I went to interview, and it was a lovely lady by the name of W Lillian started, and she hired me, and that was a next big step because AM Records was a powerhouse at the time.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: And so I dealt with, and she really taught me personally about the publishing business.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: I thank her very much for for doing that.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: Um, and there was never a penny out of place.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: Never.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: Everything had to be perfect.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: And those guys were in an excellent company to treat everybody well.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: But I got to see the music by the Beach Boys.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: Right.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: Um Brian Knoffler, the Dire Straits People, Sticks, uh you name it, they they purchased East Memphis Music, which is all of that stuff from Stax Stax Records.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: Theme from Shaft.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: And um published and they administered Rod Songs, which was Rod Temperton's catalog.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: And of course, Rod Temperton is the one that wrote all the music for Michael Jackson.
19:22
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: So I just tell people those those numbers that were generated by that thriller project were nauseating.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I bet.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: I would just sit there and go, oh gosh, if I could just go home and you're just like, oh, how do you do that?
19:41
SPEAKER_01: Close your eyes and see numbers swirling around.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: Nauseating.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: Um second transition was the business affairs person at AM at the time, uh, Ira Salespeople who's now retired, he left to go to MGM Studios to start their their relaunch their record division.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: He was gone for about two or three years, and one day the phone rang, and it was his secretary and and Marcella.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: And she said, Douglass, um Ira wants to talk to you.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Ira wants to talk to me.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: What's he want to?
20:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Ira, I'm like, oh, okay.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: So he gets on the phone, Doug, this is Ira Selski.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: Remember me?
20:22
SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, Ira, how you doing?
20:23
SPEAKER_00: He says, What do you want to do when you grow up?
20:28
SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, I don't.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: He says, Okay, let's get to the chase.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: MGM UA has relaunched their record label.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: They need something over here who understands the money side.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: And I'm recommending you to the director of participations who's going to be doing the soundtrack accounting for the job.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Here's the lady, call the number, do it today.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: I called.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: Good gosh.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: Went and interviewed for the job, and they hired me.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: And I worked with uh really great um staff there, uh, Kevin Gunn, who is now retired, happily retired, probably summoning Everest right now, uh, and the late Karen Burnett, uh, who we lost very young to breast cancer, but for we worked together for about 10 years.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: And film participation.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: So now you're dealing with film deals and music and merchandising and everything in between.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about the Rocky films, we're talking about the Pink Panther cartoon, the James Brown, the James Bond franchise, and everything that goes along with it.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and merchandising deals with that where they dealt with Hello Kitty and all that kind of stuff from Japan.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm a huge Hello Kitty fan.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: So I did I did the county statements for Hello Kitty.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: So that's how I happened.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: I was happily at MGM.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: MGM was sold to a group of investors.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: The investors decided they wanted.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: By that time, I was directly.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Of the department.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: And they came in and decided that they wanted all of their own people in senior level positions.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: So they they eliminated the positions and sent sent a 48-year-old Douglas Jackson home.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: So I sat home for a couple of days and I thought, okay, um what are we going to do here?
22:27
SPEAKER_00: So I said, well, maybe if you go back to school and get a master's degree in one of these music industry programs that you can get a job teaching at the university level.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: So that's what I did.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: And is that it's around 2006 when you moved to So I went to school between 1998 and 2001.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: I finished the degree and master's degree in commercial music in 2001.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh Deborah Holland, who is a very well-known guitarist and producer, was my advisor.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: And a shout out to Deborah, because she's lives in Canada now, is producing records and stuff like that.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: Um then it was time to find a job.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: That was the hard part because the jobs don't just pop up so easily in higher ed.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: So I went back into the music publishing business much as a lower level, because I didn't have a job.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: I needed money.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: So I worked at uh BMG Production Music, um, which was a whole nother kettle of fish, but we did that.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: And then I saw the advertisement on higher ed at Elizabeth City State University.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: They wanted somebody to teach trumpet and music business.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: So it's right up your alley.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: Right.
23:47
SPEAKER_02: You have the damn picture right next to it.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: No, okay, but but Izzy, let's think about this for a second.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: Let's think about this for a second.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: So now, okay, Los Angeles, Elizabeth City said.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was wondering how to do it.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: What do we whoa?
24:04
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: I came to interview um the morning of the interview.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: I walked, I was at the Hampton Inn, and I walked across the street and I looked at the food line, and I went, is that it?
24:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: So um we I interviewed, flew back home.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh I didn't hear from anybody.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: And it was getting a little tight because I had to make a decision.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: There was some other things going on, and I was either gonna stay at BMG or it's gonna because BMG was getting ready to be sold to the Universal Music Group.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: And there was a lot of transitory stuff.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: We were being asked to do a lot of uh what they call present value evaluations of the catalog and who was gonna go with Universal, who was gonna stay, and I was caught up in the middle of that.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I got this job here pending.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: So they finally got back to me, I don't know, like April 30th or something like so I said, okay, do you really want to move to a small town in the rural south?
25:22
SPEAKER_00: Sit down and talk to my my my mom, uh Ellen, we talked about, she says, here's what we'll do, Douglas.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: I will I will pay to reclose, I'm gonna send you there.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna pay for you to relocate.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: If they act crazy, I'm gonna bring you back home.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: So let's do it.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: So I packed up, drove cross-country, summer of 2006, and landed here.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: Here we are.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: Now you've been here almost 20 years.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: I've been here almost 20 years.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: And just becoming an educator, I mean, that's that's a big change.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: What what is that like for you now?
26:03
SPEAKER_01: What is so you've been here for 20 years, obviously you enjoy it.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: What is so fulfilling about that to you?
26:09
SPEAKER_00: Helping people uh helping people um someone has to be willing to work with young people to to create the next generation.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's unforgiving.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: We certainly don't get paid enough.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: Um and you're dealing with other people's children all day.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: So you can't really discipline them, but you are disciplining them a lot.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: Some of the young people that are coming to us are unprepared to be in the music department, but we take them anyway because they have a dream.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: And I have a friend that's a uh AME design minister, Mac Brandon.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: He says, never take a child's dream dream away from them.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: So we take them and we do what we can with them.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: But what I discovered when I found came here is one, we really didn't have the instruments that I needed because I'm not, I'm, you know, I'm a whole trumpet player.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: I play classical and everything.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: We needed piccolo trumpets and D, and so the chairperson of the time, Dr.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: Gloria and I agreed to get the instruments so I could start helping these young guys, you know, play the other kind of music.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: Um then I thought them Lori Meads, who just left the museum, called me one summer and said, Could I come work at a summer camp with the kids?
27:35
SPEAKER_00: So I went to the meeting and there was a poster of Max Roach in my peripheral vision.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Oh, that's Max Roach.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: And Lori said, Well, you know about him?
27:46
SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, yeah.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: And she says, Well, that's the Smithsonian's Roots music series is coming here.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: And would you mind speaking?
27:57
SPEAKER_00: And I spoke.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: And when I oh, wait, wait a minute.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: He was born right up the street here.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: Why, why are there no pictures?
28:09
SPEAKER_00: Right.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: Why is there nothing on this ESU's campus?
28:13
SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: I went back and said to chairperson, I said, It's a problem.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: This is man's icon.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: And she said, Douglass, take it and run with it.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: So I started the jazz festival.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
28:27
unknown: Mm-hmm.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's how the jazz festival started.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: And now here we are.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, the jazz fest, the first jazz festival was in 2011.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: Real one.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: I had some fake ones on campus where we didn't know what we were doing, and I didn't know what I was doing any either.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: And um so I started the uh did the Max Rose Memorial Jazz Festival first.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: And because I didn't want to go through the naming rights issue with his estate or anything like that, I didn't name the festival after him.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: So but I continued producing the festival.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: The festival has multiple purposes, community engagement.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: I also always have a K-12 component to the festival.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: I invite kids from the high school to play in our student jazz ensemble.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: I have a morning matinee for the little ones and come and hear the jazz.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: And I tell everybody, if you want a hoot, come to that concert at 10 o'clock in the morning and just watch the second graders.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: It's just amazing.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: And the festival then it brings attention to the community.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: And the evidence is what happens at the hotels and the restaurants.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: Because occasionally we we we s we're able to really, really book the uh the hotels out.
29:56
SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
29:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: So it's all has a has a has an economic.
29:59
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's great.
30:00
SPEAKER_02: That's great.
30:01
SPEAKER_02: That's great.
30:01
SPEAKER_02: You know what what I heard from you what I appreciate is that you've done the work before.
30:08
SPEAKER_02: So you're an educator, but you've done the work.
30:12
SPEAKER_02: So you can actually talk about it in real terms with the students that you're that you're talking to, as opposed to just teaching them.
30:19
SPEAKER_02: And I'm saying that because I've had in marketing, let's say, I had professors that came from the advertising spectrum, and they were more fulfilling to me than somebody just teaching.
30:31
SPEAKER_02: You're a performer.
30:33
SPEAKER_02: Do you find that that there are performers that are lacking in in the business kind of skills?
30:38
SPEAKER_02: Does that hurt them?
30:39
SPEAKER_02: I mean, yes, it does.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: That's always been the case.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: The music business has two sides, the artistic side and the business side.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: Every artist isn't going to be a good businessman.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: Right.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: Person.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: Right.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: Businesswoman, businessman.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: They're not.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: They're not built for.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's why you have lawyers, accountants, talent agents, and all of that.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: The a talent agency business itself was has its origins in the circus.
31:10
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I can see, I can see.
31:12
SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah, yeah.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: Because the circus performers, you know, it had to figure out the guy, the the smart guy says, Well, wait a minute, I can book these artists at the circus on the circuit and make money, charge them a fee to get them the jobs at the circus.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: And that's the origins of talent agencies in the in the United States.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: That's fair.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: And they and they still exist.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: That's so interesting.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: And the business still works that way.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: That's what talent agents do.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh, independent artists who are not part of that talent, we're we're on our own.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: And it's very competitive at certain levels.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: At certain, you know, at the at the levels above me, people aren't booking themselves.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: They're getting agencies and managers to book themselves.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: I am not an active performer and artist.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: I have a real job.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: I can't really travel and play that much.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I see what goes on in the business.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: Right.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: And it's okay that I'm not doing that part of it because I'm happy doing what I'm doing.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: I also know that there's a part of it that I'm part I'm kind of aging out of.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: And I know that there's always a point where you have to start thinking about making room for the next generation.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: But the but the important thing for me that I'm doing right now is role modeling.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: That's why I keep producing the records.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: And the Elizabeth City Grooves records is one of those examples.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: The young people that are watching and observing me have to understand and know that I actually know how to do it.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
32:50
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: With that single, are you, because you're an independent artist, are you doing the majority of like the recording and the producing and even like like in terms of recording um the instruments?
33:04
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
33:04
SPEAKER_01: How many instruments do you play?
33:06
SPEAKER_00: I only play the trumpet.
33:07
SPEAKER_01: You only play the trumpet?
33:08
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's fine.
33:09
SPEAKER_01: That's one more than I can play.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: But in terms of that, how much are you putting into that process?
33:15
SPEAKER_01: Are you doing all of it?
33:17
SPEAKER_01: Most of it?
33:18
SPEAKER_01: Some of it?
33:18
SPEAKER_00: The Elizabeth City Groove's selection of music itself started out as an electronic dance music product.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, I have I produced all these elect EDM tracks already.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, the Low Riders theme, the party in Mumbai, those are all EDM.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just, I was trying to teach myself how to use all of this computerized software because my students were walking around the hall with their laptops out, doing stuff.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: So what are you guys doing?
33:51
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're making beats.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: I said, making beats.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: Show me what you're doing.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: And they say the, you know, you got I'm like, okay, I need to learn how to do that because I can't walk around here and not know that that's what you're doing.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: So I got a computer, downloaded this software, and started fooling around with it.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: So the underlying music that you're hearing on Elizabeth Grooves is computerized music.
34:17
SPEAKER_04: Okay, that's so hard.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: That I that I sound design.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: These software packages, FL Studios Logic, already have pre-programmed sounds in them.
34:28
SPEAKER_00: The idea is how to weave them together to make them sound like music.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: That's the key.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: Because anybody can buy a computer and fool around with that stuff.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: Right.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: So I weaved it together and I said, okay, hmm.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: It's not quite energetic enough for ETM, but it sounds kind of cool.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: What can I do with it?
34:50
SPEAKER_00: I sent it to a couple of artists as demos.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: They said, well, you know, it's not for us, it's not for me, it's not, it's not anything I want to use.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: And one very experienced smooth jazz artist said, You need to put some real instruments on that.
35:05
SPEAKER_04: Mm-hmm.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: He said, Go back and listen to my music.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: I said, I have real drums, real bass, real guitar, real piano.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: So I thought, okay, more money.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: What are we gonna do?
35:20
SPEAKER_00: So I called Robert Alsh at Master Sound Studios in Virginia Beach, who has an enormous reputation.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, send it to me.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: Let me see first, let me hear what you've already done.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: And we may or may not be able to do anything.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: But I sent it to him and he called me back, and I went up and he says, Well, yeah, you can do a real session over this.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: I just want to make sure that your tracks were organized enough.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: So I called the guys, uh local musician here, Dennis Figgs, uh, from Connected, Elliott Forrester from Connected, and then Jerry McWard on bass, and then Ellen Eldon Sully from the Virginia Beach area, and we went into the studio, and they essentially performed over on on top of the electronic music.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: And you can hear the differences.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: It fills it out.
36:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: So we had to do some editing and all that, and I went in and did the trumpet track and did some more editing and fixed all of my bad notes.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: And there were a lot of them.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: And there are bad notes in on the original on the recording that I'm like, oh God, no.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, you would hear them, and I Right.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: I I've listened to this, I've listened to Elizabeth City Grooves quite a few times in preparation.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: Are you my one of my 36 dreams?
36:43
SPEAKER_01: I might be one of your 30 through 36.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm happy to do it.
36:49
SPEAKER_01: It is it's a very nice song.
36:51
SPEAKER_01: It's very the rhythm, the it has a very bouncy beat in the background with um your trumpet dances really smoothly over kind of a it's like kind of a playful piano um that's kind of accompanying.
37:07
SPEAKER_00: We can thank Dennis Figgs for that.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: He he is he made the recording what it is.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: I have to give him credit for it.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: His piano playing made the without his chops, it wouldn't have worked.
37:21
SPEAKER_01: It is, it it's very beautiful.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: It is.
37:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, and your trumpet really just uh elevates it, it really does.
37:27
SPEAKER_01: Um it it makes the track what it is, in my opinion.
37:30
SPEAKER_01: And uh I just with the name Elizabeth City Grooves, I want to know is it the music itself?
37:38
SPEAKER_01: Is it the musicians from the area?
37:40
SPEAKER_01: How did you get the name Elizabeth City Grooves for this song?
37:46
SPEAKER_00: I I can't r recall the moment that I came up with the name, but the name represents the atmosphere as I see it and feel it.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: But it does represent the local musicians because like like I said, Dennis, Dennis's piano playing is the feature.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: It's you could you could have that piece of music without trumpet with just him.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what prompted it.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: And I thought, well, why not make it a about the community, a community-based effort, but also it's a marketing trick.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: Right.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: So I was thinking about that.
38:27
SPEAKER_00: I said, commun, you know, maybe if I call them commun in the Elizabeth City Grooves, then to communicate will put pick up on it, and it might be something that we can all celebrate together.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: But then the next step was for me to figure out how to make that happen.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: Because I can tell you a significant amount about music, but I am not a marketing person.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: So here we are now with Nicole J and her team.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: And I sent her an email and I asked her, would she be interested in working on the project?
39:02
SPEAKER_00: And she said yes.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: And so far, we're doing a great, they're doing a fantastic job.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
39:09
SPEAKER_01: Now, um, David, do you have any more questions?
39:14
SPEAKER_02: Because I many, many, many questions, but I don't want to occupy all this time.
39:19
SPEAKER_02: I'm good.
39:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm good.
39:21
SPEAKER_02: I the the the I'll feed it back to you, but I have to tell you that the appreciation I have um is a you do the work and yet you're teaching.
39:31
SPEAKER_02: I find an affinity with you.
39:33
SPEAKER_02: When I was young, we had Dr.
39:35
SPEAKER_02: Zipper bring the orchestra to our school every single year in third grade.
39:40
SPEAKER_02: You mentioned in third grade.
39:41
SPEAKER_02: Third grade when I is when I was introduced to the band, I I decided I wanted to play saxophone.
39:48
SPEAKER_02: So I was playing learn how to play saxophone.
39:50
SPEAKER_02: My brother and I got piano lessons.
39:52
SPEAKER_02: My brother has a master's in music.
39:55
SPEAKER_02: I'm the dumb one.
39:56
SPEAKER_02: I can play by ear, but I don't like to read.
39:59
SPEAKER_02: Can you read music?
40:00
SPEAKER_02: Because I can't, I can barely read music, but I still play.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: I can't read music, but I but but but here's the little secret about me is that I don't really understand music theory.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: Now, and I said that to my students, says, Well, how'd you get a music degree?
40:16
SPEAKER_00: I said it's a long story.
40:17
SPEAKER_00: But I that that heavy theoretical stuff and analyzing like most Mozart stuff and and looking at the scores and all that is just confusion to me.
40:27
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't, it doesn't, and so I've learned to improvise by listening, not by reading the books.
40:36
SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
40:37
SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
40:38
SPEAKER_01: So I said earlier I didn't play any instruments, but I just have to say, um, in terms of I'm actually a classically trained opera singer.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
40:48
SPEAKER_01: That's that's a which I know is really a big leap from uh from a newspaper reporter, but I agree with you wholeheartedly.
40:57
SPEAKER_01: I can read music probably much better than David can, no offense.
41:00
SPEAKER_01: Um but but in terms of music theory, it's such a different, different level.
41:06
SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's it's it's but I don't think it makes anybody any less of a musician.
41:10
SPEAKER_00: Oh no, the people who understand that stuff at the higher level and can sit and look at Stravinsky's musical scores and do all this on the analytical stuff, you know, I I I I admire them.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: If I sit and look at Stravinsky's stuff and I go, I see all those accidentals, I'm like, dude, well, did you actually want someone to play this?
41:33
SPEAKER_04: That's exactly what I think, yeah.
41:35
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
41:36
SPEAKER_00: But the people who are good at, there are some people who have that talent.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:42
SPEAKER_00: And they can, they're brilliant composers and they can do all that kind of stuff.
41:48
SPEAKER_00: Quincy Jones says the people said that the people who have those tools that go into the AR part of the music business can be very successful, and he was one of them because he had all of those tools.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: And that's what I tried to talk to my students about.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: But now we're living in, we're existing in another world that is now on top of the traditional music academy, because now we got all this music technology.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're trying to work into our curriculum now.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: It's here to stay.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: We have to figure out how to make it work in coincide, coexist with traditional music.
42:32
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, Bach, Beethoven, all that stuff are great.
42:36
SPEAKER_00: Duke Ellington, Camp Bacy, and all those guys were great.
42:40
SPEAKER_00: But now we had somebody like Dr.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: Dre, who with three notes made a gazillion dollars on a synthesizer.
42:48
SPEAKER_00: Right.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: And this is what they see.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: Are the combination I tell them that uh we know the name, we know Rihanna, right?
42:57
SPEAKER_00: Who's from Caribbean, who's Caribbean, and DJ Khaled, who's actually Palestinian.
43:05
SPEAKER_00: So when you put those two people together with those mute their musical roots, that's why her music sounds like it sounds.
43:12
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: So you have the multiculturalism or the global, right?
43:17
SPEAKER_00: The global approach.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: Right.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: That's my goal is the global approach to teaching, the global approach to music.
43:24
SPEAKER_00: Because there's a ton of it out there.
43:25
SPEAKER_00: My my favorite artist right now is Burner Boy, the Nigerian rapper.
43:31
SPEAKER_00: Oh my God, have you seen that stuff?
43:34
SPEAKER_01: I don't think I have, but I'll have to check that out.
43:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's incredible.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: It's cra it's incredible.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: And he's got these huge international audiences.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, that's just what I think about.
43:46
SPEAKER_00: So everything I do, I I try to have a global approach to it, a multicultural approach to it.
43:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, we live in a society where there are different cultures we deal with interaction every day.
43:58
SPEAKER_00: I tell my Young people who are going into the classroom to be music teachers.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: I said, if you get a job teaching music in California or Texas, you're gonna be dealing with every ethnicity that you can think of in a classroom.
44:21
SPEAKER_00: You cannot just think about American music.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: You can't not just think about what you like.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: These children coming from other countries, they absorb music differently, they dance differently, they appreciate other rhythms.
44:34
SPEAKER_00: Study these things to figure it out so they'll do it.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: If you I played some Punjab music, which is Pakistanian from Pakistan, that is incredibly funky to my world music class, and they're like, Oh my god, who is that?
44:49
SPEAKER_00: I said that's a pass from it's from Pakistan.
44:53
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's actually a great little segue um in terms of playing music.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: I would really like if you could do something special.
45:01
SPEAKER_01: We've never done this before.
45:03
SPEAKER_01: Oh my.
45:03
SPEAKER_01: I was hoping maybe you could play just a little bit of music for us.
45:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
45:08
SPEAKER_00: And okay, so I have my flu on.
45:12
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
45:12
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna take a moment.
45:13
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
45:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
45:15
SPEAKER_01: And uh Douglas, whenever you're ready, you can take us away.
45:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh boy, this could be kind of interesting with no warming warming up.
45:26
unknown: Okay.
46:52
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
46:53
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
46:54
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me.
46:56
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that was so great.
46:57
SPEAKER_02: That wonderful.
46:58
SPEAKER_02: I just uh this made my day.
47:01
SPEAKER_01: Yes, mine as well.
47:02
SPEAKER_00: Well, I thank you in the Daily Advance for uh giving me an opportunity to talk about what we're doing here.
47:09
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: And thank you for joining us.
47:12
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate the support of the newspaper and everything that you do here in town.
47:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much, I breathe.
47:17
SPEAKER_02: As the publisher, thank you very much.
47:19
SPEAKER_02: Appreciate it.
47:20
SPEAKER_02: Appreciate it.
47:21
SPEAKER_02: And you're gonna there's gonna be a feature eventually at the print yes.
47:25
SPEAKER_01: Yes, there will be a print article.
47:26
SPEAKER_02: Yes, right.
47:28
SPEAKER_01: Thank you again to Douglas Jackson, especially for playing us out today.
47:32
SPEAKER_01: And thank you to all of our listeners.
47:34
SPEAKER_01: Be sure to stay tuned for our next episode in April.