Jeff Coffin: Revolutionary Spirit
Are you a Jazz Musician?
Be a part of our extensive list of professional Musicians.
browse our list and view Musician Details.
If you are not on this list, it's easy to join and get listed.
There’s a place in New York, late night after the gig, an area at 28th and Lexington, that has late night Indian food.
You’ll go there and there will be cab drivers parked two or three across and you go in and it’s all home cooked. You can feast for 6-7 bucks. It’s a fun late night hang. There’s a bunch, Curry in a Hurry, there are five different places.
And in Nashville
There is a place in Nashville that sells homemade Mexican popsicles. They have all sorts of different eclectic flavors, every fruit you can imagine to chocolate with chilies in them. It’s called Los Paletas.
They don’t have a sign but everybody knows about it. You could easily spend 60-70 bucks on popsicles and it’s the best 60 bucks you spent in your life.
Grammy award winning saxophonist Jeff Coffin spoke to us prior to departing on a European tour with his band, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.
Jeff discussed improvisation and stepping off the ledge, and finding your own voice.
We were talking to Jeff Antoniuk about how limiting “genre” can be.
You know for me the category of jazz is a very confusing idea. It seems to represent such a broad range of styles...Is it early Dixie land or is it Ragtime? Or is it pre-Charlie Parker, is it post-Charlie Parker. Is it Weather Report? Is it Flecktones? Is it Medeski, Martin & Wood?
One of my favorite pop groups is the group Radiohead. I think what they do is brilliant, inventive, creative. They are great improvisers. They just do amazing stuff. Is it pop music? Is it alternative? Is it jazz? To me it has the spirit of jazz but it has elements of world music and fusion.
So when you talk about the “spirit of jazz”, what are you talking about?
I’m talking about an emotional component, a revolutionary component. I think the idea of improvisation is revolutionary—you have to be willing to lay it on the line.
When you have a great basketball player, for example, Michael Jordan or Lebron James, guys reinventing how they play. They have a series of fundamentals, a series of basics, very strong roots, and also that almost continual reinvention. Looking at it from all sides, and trying to figure out a new way through, or a different way through.
What is necessary to have that level of reinvention?
It’s a creativity. A willingness to explore, a willingness to do things in a way that you are being told they shouldn’t be done. That’s the revolutionary spirit that I’m talking about.
I think there has to be a fundamental understanding of whatever craft that you are in.
Do you think it’s a confidence too?
I think part of it is a confidence too, but I think you find there are a lot of artists that deal with self doubt.
Is self doubt essential or detrimental to the act of improvisation?
I don’t think it’s essential, but I think it’s part of it. I’m not sure that everybody has it. But I think probably that most musicians do. There are parts that have to do with strict confidence in who you are, and what you do, and what you bring to the table.
So you’ve played with some of the top musicians in the world. How does that effect that moment of creation?
Well it’s really inspiring most of the time.
I spent most of the last ten years of my life on the road with Bela and Vic Wooten and the Futureman. And to have gigs with John Scofield or Chick Corea, Dave Mathews band or Phish, a very wide genre of player, bands like Edgar Myer, Jerry Douglas—incredible, incredible musicians. It’s amazing, there is a lot of ‘pinch me moments’.
Working with those musicians exposes you to a different way of playing. There isn’t a lot of room for self-doubt in those situations.
How do you maintain that confidence?
It is really about the joy of the music. That’s what I’m trying to get across. I’m not trying to vibe somebody out. I’m not trying to say, the stuff I’m playing is way hipper than the stuff you’re playing.
I don’t subscribe to that. I and I find that that occurs a lot in colleges, there’s a lot of competition like that.
Jeff and I were at North Texas together and I think that he’d probably say the same thing. That competitive level, is very detrimental to encouraging the spirit of improvisation and encouraging the spirit of joy in the music.
I do a lot of clinics and that’s one of the things I talk about the importance of really finding your own voice. Finding what it is you have to give as an artist, which is going to be different than what someone else has to give, and not get into that comparison game.
What do you say to people about finding their own voice?
First of all you have to work the fundamentals. The fundamentals, to me, are tone, a basic understanding of keys and chords, a fundamental nature of harmony. You have to be working on all that stuff, but at the same time don’t wait to improvise.
There’s a moment of departure. You’ve been learning the fundamentals, how do you know it’s your turn to add a bit to the conversation?
It’s always your moment. How do you know when you are having conversation when the right moment is?
You kind of intuit it. If you have something to say, you add it. It’s like we don’t ask babies to learn the alphabet before we allow them to speak. They start making sounds. They start interacting. They start interjecting. They start communicating very quickly.
To be there for that moment, for that stepping off the ledge, without judgment, is really a profound moment.
How do you know that what you are adding or creating has value?
Well it’s all in the eye of the beholder or the ear of the be-hearer. I think that it’s not really up to someone else whether to judge whether it’s valuable or not. People are going to do that but really what does it mean to you?
I think that’s one of the things about music that there’s a lot of grey area with what’s quality, what’s not quality, what’s valid, what’s not valid—some of it’s based on the sincerity of what is being played.
An authenticity? In an amount of soul?
Yeah and that’s the spirit that I’m talking about. When I’m talking to kids about finding their own voice, that’s what I’m talking about, that willingness to put yourself out there.
When I’m talking to students there’s a quote that I give “Follow the spirit, not the style.” Let’s say you love Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, and you just love Johnny Coltrane. Well, they’re very different musicians. And, they play different styles of music.
So if you step back from it, it’s not the style of music that enamors me. So what is it? What is it about these players that really knocks me out? And for me it’s the spirit of the music.
When I listen to Bob Dylan, I don’t hear Bob Dylan any differently than I hear John Coltrane. To me that spirit is still there.
What is that spirit?
It’s illusive and enigmatic. But, what I think it is, is a sincerity, a willingness to put your whole soul into it, your emotional being.
Almost like a vulnerability?
It’s a vulnerability. It would be like, if you put your arms out and you tilt your head back, and you open your chest area. Like someone coming along and opening that up—ripping it open. Almost the same as having an orgasm. It’s that kind of openness, that kind of vulnerability, that kind of “in the moment”—that we are all looking to achieve.
And the willingness to go there and to take those steps is a profound journey.
I’ve done clinics where I’ve been able to encourage students to improvise for the very first time and to me that’s one of the most profound things I’ve ever experienced. To be there for that moment, for that stepping off the ledge, without judgment, is really a profound moment.
That’s where I really encourage students to go for it. What’s the worst that could happen? It could really suck. I put my hand up. I’ve been there, and I plan on sucking more. Part of the value is are we O.K. with it? Are we O.K. with our art?
And you know look at someone like van Gogh, who sold one painting in his lifetime. I don’t know about you, but I would’ve given up.
Well, he was pretty depressed.
Yet he still did it. There was something in there that told him – this is worthwhile.
