Interview w/Maurice Turner

Listen to the first ROOTS e-newsletter podcast: An Interview with Maurice
Turner. For the first part of the interview, click here and the second part here.

Jazz, Hip-Hop, community-based artist; member of Turner World Around, M.U.G.A.B.E.E. (Men Under Guidance Acting Before Early Extinction), and brother to ROOTS Executive Director, Carlton Turner.

How long have you been involved in ROOTS?
Since 2001 – Our first ROOTS Annual Meeting.  We were invited in New Orleans at Artists En Masse by Jolivette Anderson.  

"We” meaning you and your brother, Carlton?
Yes.  

And you’ve played a number or rolls in the organization?
Yes.  I was on the Executive Committee for a time.

What’s your favorite ROOTS memory?
There are so many, it’s so hard to narrow down to one.  I think it was my first Annual Meeting, which was at Bat Cave.  (This was at the end of the era of having the AM’s at Mishemaqua (sp?).  I came up and Carlton and I were one of maybe five black people there.  And I was walking around and Elise Witt was swimming in the pool.  She shouted, “Hey you!  Play me some swimming music!”  She didn’t know me from Adam.  When someone asks me to play, I always play for them.  And she said, "If you ever want to stay in Atlanta, you’ve got a place to stay with me."

What do you think is ROOTS greatest opportunity at the moment?  
To make art relevant again.  We do a good job of pointing out that art is not just for the elite.  I think that’s what’s happening in our society – those who can afford to have the luxury to be surrounded by art.  And those who don’t or can’t afford it usually just go without it.  There’s a lot of pop culture art that fills in that void for those who can’t access fine art – and I don’t mean classical art – I mean the kind of fine art that comes from people’s souls.  It’s hard to get that if you don’t have the money to be immersed in it.  ROOTS has always stressed the importance of art-making in community and community-building through the arts.  We’re in a recession now, and people can’t afford to go out and do things like they used to.  So, now the things that ROOTS promotes are all the more relevant.  It’s more about the gathering than the watching.

You’re working on a C/APP project right now ~ please tell us about that.  What are you doing?  Who are your partners?  What are your goals?  What’s the timeline?
State of the Nation goes all the way back to when we first got started with the organization, involving Jose Torres-Tama, Artists En Masse, ArtSpot Productions, Junebug Productions, Mondo Bizarro, etc.  It’s a lasting relationship between New Orleans and Mississippi.  We started the festival itself back in 2004.  The C/APP project is gonna be helping to get that on the road for this year.  Last year, we did it down in New Orleans. And this year, we’re doing it in Jackson.  Our local partner in Jackson is Daniel Johnson from Jackson Arts Collective.  That group just started about four years ago.  They’re trying to do the same thing – bridge the gap between the finer arts and the people.  It’s been really interesting to go to those meetings because Jackson has a lot of race issues (I mean, Mississippi ~ period.  The South ~ period).  But, Jackson is one of those places where it never really got to be a blend in the society or communities that we have. All these different artists doing dance, visual arts, etc., it’s been interesting to see that that exists in such a number in Jackson.  I wouldn’t see that if I wasn’t invited to that meeting.  I wouldn’t see those people because it’s still a separate community – a separate arts community going on in Jackson. You’ve got one side, which is your visual artists and your people who do art, dance and everything on one side which is academic and mostly geared toward privilege, and then you’ve got the people who do a little bit less privileged art and a little bit more community art but they don’t really get together like that on a regular basis.  I think that’s one of the goals with State of the Nation is to invite a lot of those folks who wouldn’t be there otherwise into that and really broaden the scope of what we do as artists in the community of Jackson.  It’ll happen in the fall.
[More conversation can be heard on the podcast.]

You’re also working on a new worked called “Race Peace” together with many other ROOTS members.  It’s being developed by MUGABEE and MondoBizarro and John O’Neal (JuneBug Productions) and Dudley Cocke (Roadside Theatre) are serving as an advisory group?  Tell us more about that…
Interestingly enough, I’m just coming off the road from being in New Orleans with Mondo Bizarro.  We have a showing next week in Los Angeles, CA.  It’s a partnership between almost like a fringe festival where we’ll be showing Race Peace and doing some workshops.  Race Peace has been a multi-year project of Turner World Around, M.U.G.A.B.E.E., and Mondo Bizarro.  We decided a while back that we needed to do a piece together after doing Uprooted: The Katrina Project.  We were involved in the structuring of that piece together. We had already decided that we needed to be working together, but we decided that what really needed to do was talk about race.  During The Katrina Project, that was the big elephant in the room – no one wanted to talk about race.  I mean, there was so much other stuff going, so much hurt, pain, and sadness. Race only compounded it. We couldn’t really talk about it like we wanted to. We decided that the piece that we would do would be centered around race and centered around making sure that we could have the dialogue between ourselves that we couldn’t have during The Katrina Project. Right now we have a 30-minute cutting. The show doesn’t really open until November, but we’re going to show a work-in-progress in L.A. and do some workshops. It’s built on the theme of The Great American Race – a game show format. I think it’s very interesting.

As a jazz practitioner, what do you think are the similarities or the differences between jazz and community-based art-making?
One thing about jazz is that a lot of time it sort of plays to the individual, so that’s where it’s a little bit different.  Even though you’re working with people, it’s really about your prowess on your instrument, to play and to adapt to whatever’s being played around you. The similarity is that you’re still working in a community of musicians. Anything can happen at anytime.  You just have to be prepared, to deal with whatever goes on and make it the best that you can from whatever members or whatever elements that you have. It’s the same with community.  You don’t go into a community and say, well if we don’t have this, we can’t do it. You go into a community, you have to say, ok, what do we have? And what can we do with what we have? In jazz, when you’re together with a group of musicians, you have to work together to make it sound good together.  Nobody is really supposed to stand out from the other. In great jazz, when the soloist is doing his thing – improvising – the rest of the band is right there with him the whole time.  It’s still community-based music.

What do you think jazz has to teach us today?
To listen.  In our time, we get so much focused on presenting or giving or trying to be the actual person listened to as opposed to listening to what’s all around us all the time.   There’s so many things that are going on that we’re not listening to.  I think jazz is one of those things that you really, really listen to in order to really get it.
[More conversation can be heard on the podcast.]

What’s your favorite quote?
“Power corrupts.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Frederick Douglas

Name one person who has made a major impact on you or influenced your life as an art-maker (or as a human being).
My father.  He encouraged me to always think. It sort of indirectly and directly goes back to the art-making. I try to be very conscious of what I put out there as being a reflection of me.  I try to be conscious that what they see or hear or experience reflects on the whole of humanity, so I always think about that when I make pieces. I always try to challenge people to think through the music that I make. And that all goes back to my father.  He used to tell us, “Use your head for more than a hat rack.” I would bring him homework and ask for his help and he would say, “Go think about it.”  This would happen over and over until I would come back and say, “Ok, Dad, I think this is the way you do it.” And he would say, “Now, was that that hard?”  Because of that, I’ve been blessed to be a thinker as opposed to someone who just does stuff because someone tells me to do it.

More of our conversation with Maurice can be heard in the audio interview.

Maurice is currently working on two albums – a jazz album and an R&B album, both due out in the fall.  Please stay tuned.