Clinton St. Quarterly, Vol. 4 No. 4 | Winter 1984 (Seattle) /// Issue 2 of 24 /// Master# 50 of 73

“W Q'KQ Doing It From The Inside Out.” ing ‘Da-dah, da-dah, da-dah, feminism, hey hup!’ We iust do our thing. From the inside out.” The band began playing initially on the “women’s music circuit,” first in coffee houses, and soon at women’s music festivals. They joined Holly Near, Chris Williamson, Sweet Chariot and others playing concerts produced primarily by and for women. “At a certain point,” says Carolyn Brandy, “we began to realize that we wanted to play to the general public, and that wasn’t happening enough because we were primarily playing before a group of people with political viewpoints who weren’t there for the music but because of the Movement. We decided that we needed to play more types of situations.” Recently, they found a producer for their second album, Ca// /f Jazz. Helen Keane not only fits in well with dynamic group. They complement each other well on stage, playing to the strengths of each individual and communicating so well among themselves that this camaraderie extends to the audience, drawing them into a real community of spirit. So when Orin Keepnews, in his liner notes to Ca// // Jazz, says he doesn’t “know how Alive! came into being, and actually, I don’t care ... [because] . .. they make good music and that’s all that matters,” he is missing something very important about this group. For their music represents something as valid socially as it is effective musically. “We are but the tip of an iceberg,” they write in the notes to Ca// /t Jazz, “hopeful to be — the reflection / of a many-sided rainbow / Aspiring toward a new dream I not built on prisms of idyll fantasy / but on hard and honest work “ ^ ’s everything each of us Has lived and loved and learned, And for lack of a better word Call it Jazz ... That indigenous American art form called Jazz ” Janet Small, “Call It Jazz” (Wild Wimmin Music ASCAP) Cyn October, the five women of Alive! made a tour of the Pacific Northwest that included engagements at Ernestine’s (formerly Parnell’s) in Seattle and at Delevan’s in Portland. They call themselves “a jazz quintet,” and their collective approach to composing and performing produces a unique and tightly disciplined group sound that is important ^X is their astute combination of a dense rhythmic pulse, a magnificent vocal instrument, and a clear-sighted commitment to integrate humane and egalitarian values into a musical context that makes Alive! such a moving and dynamic group. not only for its purely musical values, but also because the way they make their music illustrates so convincingly how the fruits of a feminist perspective can bring hopeful new dimensions to the male-dominated field of jazz. With Carolyn Brandy on percussion, Barbara Borden on traps, Susanne Vincenza on acoustic and electric bass, and Janet Small’s percussive approach to acoustic piano, this group excels on Latin-based and other rhythmic numbers. When lead vocalist Rhiannon’s strong, wonderfully supple and superbly controlled voice is added, they become a complete and highly charged jazz unit capable of delivering a wide variety of music — from Miles Davis’ boppish “Four,” which opens with snare and voice cooking along in precise articulation, through Ida Cox’s famous “Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues,” to “Without A Song” from The Student Prince, which Rhiannon delivers in a Betty Carter style that also draws on gospel roots.... But their musicianship is not all, because the lyrics themselves — originals by all the band members as well as tunes by Gil Alive! at Delevan’s Scott-Heron and June Millington on Call It Jazz — serve notice that their material has substance to spare. A strong, personal substance, as Barbara Borden points out: “We’re all very strong in feeling that we don’t want to compromise what we’re doing for fame and fortune or a larger audience or whatever. We work from the inside out.... We write a song because someone in the band feels a certain thing and has to get it out, because someone has a certain experience and wants to relay it.” “We just play who we are,” adds Janet Small. “And who we are is the product of five really different backgrounds. All of us have classical training, but classical isn’t quite what I want to play. What distinguishes what I’m doing now is the whole rhythmic element, which came from Africa rather than Europe. That rhythmic element, and the improvisational element — composing and not just interpreting — means you can say things about your life and about the world now. Maybe because I went through the ’60s and was involved in politics and was concerned about the world, I want that to come out in my music. That and the rhythm thing are really why I’m playing what I am.” “ th a t’s What Music Is All About, Breaking Down the Barriers.” ( jA c ut make no mistake. This is a musical group, not a political faction, and their real significance is not to be found in the lyrics nor in their individual convictions, but in their unique approach to making excellent jazz. As Carolyn Brandy says, “Sometimes reviewers like to put us in little categories, like ‘Feminist Band’ or something. Well, we are feminists, but we’re not up there say- the group, but has the contacts (she’s managed Bill Evans, Kenny Burrell, Joanne Brackeen and Paquito De Rivera) that will open many doors for Alive! “And Helen has been influencing us to do more material by others as well,” Brandy adds. “The first album was all originals, but Helen feels that it’s very important for us as musicians to do more standards, and important also because the listener likes to hear tunes that are familiar.” Barbara Borden continues: “We feel strongly that we’re a real bridge, and that our music could and should be heard by many people. And that’s what music is about anyway, breaking down the barriers that people feel.” '^ e ’re all very strong in feeling that we don’t want to compromise what we’re doing. We write a song because someone in the band feels a certain thing and has to get it out.” Are But The Tip Of An Iceberg” O ft is their astute combination of a dense rhythmic pulse, a magnificent vocal instrument, and a clear-sighted commitment to integrate humane and egalitarian values into a musical context that makes Alive! such a moving and / the slow and often painful attainment / of harmony and light.” Their “hard and honest work” is reflected even in their approach to the music business. As Carolyn Brandy says, “There’s so much business, it’s endless. We do as much as we can, but it’s always a family kind of group thing. We’re doing it; we don’t have big record companies doing it for us. We take it one step at a time. Betty Carter talks about this same thing.” The women of Alive! are members of a generation that was concerned about the world, that struggled against the war in Vietnam, that burned for social justice, and today they are still the kind of believers and doers who led the way almost twenty years ago. Today they are jazz musicians on the rise, sure of themselves, and capable of offering insights that relate not only to music — the arena in which they excel and have chosen to work — but to all forms of cooperative human endeavor. Carolyn Brandy sums it up: “The way we’re doing it, you don’t make it overnight. It’s much slower. Not that we don’t want to be “out there”; we do. But it takes years, especially as a band. We’re lucky in that we’ve committed ourselves. And that’s very rare, extremely rare. Bands do not last long, but we’ll have been together for six years this January.” “One of the reasons,” Barbara Borden says, “is that we communicate among ourselves on a personal level as well as when we play music. Some people will play together but never clear things up on a personal level that can get in the way of the music.” “When it comes right down to it,” Carolyn Brandy continues, “we have a lot of faith in what we’re doing. We have a lot of faith in the music — that it’s good and that it’s saying something. And it’s important to play this music. It’s important for us to do this at this time. It means a lot in our lives as well as to the people who are our listeners.” ■ Clinton St. Quarterly 7

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