My Musical Life Lomax II, Mark (2010-03-11) PART 1 >>MARK LOMAX: My name is Mark Lomax, the second actually. And I'm from Columbus, Ohio. Raised, not born. >>INTERVIEWER: Raised? >>MARK LOMAX: Yeah, I was born in the great commonwealth of Virginia. My mom was teaching at Virginia Tech and I'm actually a trailer kid. We had a double wide, and then we moved here. >>INTERVIEWER: Since you're definitely from a literate family, it sounds like, what are some early memories that you have with literacy? Is there anything that sticks out? >>MARK LOMAX: Yeah, my mom used to take me to the library every Saturday. Incidentally, my wife who was raised not two miles away from where I was. I used to trick-or-treat, she's older than me, I used to trick-or-treat at her house. And she was too old to go trick-or-treating so she was the one passing out the candy. Our mom would take us to the same library for story time Saturday mornings. I always had books. I mean my daughters always have books. Books are gifts, I mean you get to little inscription on the inside. You don't get too many toys, you get books. So that was my family. I mean my dad, probably now in his home, in his home office, he has probably about 2500 books. My mom, her collection is not nearly as big, but she reads all the time. She's a reading specialist, so she read to us all the time. I remember growing up having full access to everything in the house. So I read Arabian Nights, I read Brothers Karamazov. I read Delos and James Coleman. I was fifteen. Clan of the Cave Bear, like all those classics. I mean they were just there. A lot of what I know now I think is because it was all there, even though I didn't really understand it, and now it's just kind of coming up and coming out. So books were just, are very important. >>INTERVIEWER: Are very important, yeah. And you're instilling that, the same in your daughters? >>MARK LOMAX: Yes, Layla, my soon to be one-year-old, February 23rd, she likes books more than toys. She has this puzzle that has a lamb, I have to do it as I put them in, a horse, and I don't know what this is like a goat or something like that, so she likes that because she can bang the pieces. Then she has three or four books that she kind of carries around as she crawls around the house. It's cool, it's colors. So she sits, I'll be doing homework or something and she'll bring a book to me, and she likes to turn the pages. She doesn't give me time to read it but she likes the book, so that's the good thing. [Laughter] >>INTERVIEWER: That's wonderful. That's great. Reading around your family and kind of around your life, how did that transfer for school for you? Was that an easy transfer? Was school reading and the school set-up easy for you or was it different from home? >>MARK LOMAX: It was different because even though in my spare time I liked to read mostly not cool, fun stuff, I don't read many novels, I read theology, history, philosophy, all that kinds of stuff. Reading for school, especially in the program I had I did undergrad and master's composition, now doctor's composition. So a lot of the reading for musicology and that kind of thing was either in German or translated from German or it was about Western art music history, which really didn't impress me. I mean it's not interesting because I think the way it was taught here on the undergrad level is so, like we were talking earlier, disconnected from history. It's like okay there's Mozart, there's Bach, there's Beethoven, I'm going out of chronological order, but there's all these guys and they existed, so how did they exist? Which is why I like books like when you actually read a couple of the autobiographies of Mozart and Beethoven, it puts it in great context, like I learned that Beethoven was composing during the American Revolution. I didn't know that. It's like I knew his dates but because it's so isolated the way they teach it, I never made those connections, and for me that's how I learn. I have to make connections with context, so I'll know about Beethoven if I know what's going on somewhere else and I make those kinds of associations. So, reading for school is very, still, hard because it just is. It's a different kind of reading. I don't know if it's because I have to read it or if the content is not something that's really high on my priority list. For the last two quarters I've been reading about the history of music theory. So there's the Strump Tyler edition that has all these great snippets of these treaties from like the 14th, 15th century. Like Eratosthenes, we were talking about Platony, and Plutarch, what's his name? Pluto, Plato's, or no Pythagorean Consonances, and that reading is just hard. It's a lot of math. I mean they're talking about dividing the strings of a lute and that's how you're getting the scale. And it's all ratios. So an octave is 2:1 and then a fifth is something else. And then a second is 9:8, 5:3 I think is a third. So, it's very interesting how they go through their process and their methodology, but it's just hard reading. I mean William DuBois is hard reading, but this is retardedly hard reading. And the one thing I think growing up reading, I can read faster. So I get through it much faster, but its still feels like you're trudging. I think if I didn't have that background in reading growing up, I'd just never make it. >>INTERVIEWER: Absolutely. Was there anything when you were growing up, building up to where you are now, was there anything your teachers did that really made a difference? Or do you think it was just being surrounded by books at home and more what your parents did? >>MARK LOMAX: It was from my books at home. I used to get in trouble in class for reading books. Like 7th grade I went on a binge and I read all the Alexander Dumas books, anything that was 300 pages and more, 7th grade, that was me. So the librarian loved me, but my teachers didn't because school was boring and I would rather read. It was like this fantasy world from back then when I was a younger kid. I was also the kid on the bus who'd sit towards the front and read while everyone else was throwing papers at me, you know what I mean? [Laughter] So I'd be running home with my book, making sure I didn't drop it in a puddle or something like that. So reading made it hard. And I guess because it was maybe evidence that I was a nerd, but it was not encouraged in the way you would think in class because I think it got in the way of a lot of things. I was an AP student. I felt like whoever I was reading at the time had a lot more to say to me than my teacher. >>INTERVIEWER: And hearing you say that, and going back a little bit when you were talking about all the math involved in music and the composition, what would your advice be for teachers who believe everything does need to be separated? I mean to say, oh you're a musician, and you must not need this that we hear so often. >>MARK LOMAX: I think they're out of date and maybe obsolete. I mean we have programs now, interdisciplinary studies because there are...I mean okay, think about the great minds in our history, Thoreau, Dubois, Booker T. Washington, all these guys, they drew from so many places in their writings and in their thinking. Being so focused on a test or being so focused on thinking, okay, this is math class. I mean really what are we, we're not connecting with the world, which is why, and incidentally, I love Montessori. My daughter, a year ago, we sent her to St. Joseph Montessori and it's that integrated style they have of teaching life. She's in second grade; she's got zoology and body. But they don't teach it like zoology and body; they go outside and look at ants. The teacher picks up an ant and goes, "Ewww!". Look at the ant, here's the thorax and the abdomen and all, they're learning. But that's life, that's everyday stuff. And I think we need to be more cognizent of that as we teach or as they teach. I'm not sure that I'm going to teach, but you know. >>INTERVIEWER: Absolutely, yeah, good. Has music always been a part of your life? >>MARK LOMAX: Since I was two, I've been a drummer. >>INTERVIEWER: Since you were two, can you tell me a little about that? >>MARK LOMAX: Yeah, like I said, I was born in Blacksburg, Virginia. My mother was teaching at Virginia Tech. She started the first choir, gospel choir there, the Gospel Experience. And so basically I was raised for the first couple years of my life on a college campus. Well, even more than that because like I said we moved here, and my father went to Trinity Seminary, which is on Capital University's campus. But from the time that I was born, she didn't miss rehearsal just because I was there. And they said when i was about six months old I was sitting in the car, baby seat or whatever, and she was trying to get the sopranos to hit a note, and I hit it. And they were all looking like, what? [Laughter] And so now we run into members of that choir thirty years later and they're like, what are you doing? Let me guess. And I'm like yeah, I'm still doing music. I started; my first drum set was an animal baby's drum set. It had an animal on the front. And I used to have dreads, that's me. >>INTERVIEWER: That's you? Wow. >>MARK LOMAX: So I took the animal thing literally. I got friends on Facebook waiting for me to post a picture of me and my animal drum set. I was two and I had this animal drum set. So from the time I was about six, I've been playing at a church. I started playing professionally at 12, drums. My mother would go around the city doing children's choirs at different churches and I went along and I would get paid to do it at the churches. It was about that time that I started, I met this guy named James Elliott, and everybody called him Smooth. He used to play with Jimmy Smith, the organist out of L.A., and he's from here and he moved back. And he was the main drummer at one of the Methodist churches we were at. And he started taking me out to the jazz brunches, stuff that a 12-year-old could go to without getting in trouble. And I learned jazz and I learned traditional grip where you hold the stick like crossed like this, instead of match grip, French. And I was like, man it makes so much sense, it's so cool to play like this, you just look cool. And that made me want to be a drummer, professionally, because at 12 I was making like 50 bucks a week. One church only paid me like 5 bucks a month, but still you get a check and it's got your name on it and you're 13 or 14, it's like wow, that's awesome. And then I learned about Tony Williams when I was 14. Tony Williams was the drummer from Miles Davis from the '60s. Herby Hancock, Ronald Carter, and Shorter. And Tony was like 18. I was like, he's 18 and he's playing Miles Davis, I can do that. So my mom used to drive me to these little hole-in-the-walls so I could play this funkadelic music. I was into George Clinton at the time, I was like 15. I played in rock bands, I played in folk bands, country bands, and I recorded my first record with my own music with my group when I was 19. I can't do anything else. >>INTERVIEWER: What do you mean? >>MARK LOMAX: Like, I've tried. I love numbers and computers. I don't like math, I like numbers. Like I like seeing how money works and I like seeing, and I know its math, don't get me wrong, I don't like math though. It's not like I can go into a calculus class and it's like boom, okay, this is great. That would suck. But dealing with numbers in a more organic way, and it's weird, but it's true. So I had jobs in banks and stuff like that, and after a year it's like, really? I can't do this. It's too stagnant. I was used to being in a different place every night. From the time that I was 16 till my daughter was born when I was 22, my days and nights were flipped, because gigs didn't start till 10. And my mom said as long as I kept my grades, I could play the late gigs. So I was getting home at three in the morning, getting up and going to school at 7:30, sleeping through English. I would write my papers, I did everything. I just didn't pay attention in class. And then I went to Fort Hayes performing arts half-day. So, in the afternoon we had rehearsals and practice and gigs and all that kind of stuff. I was awake for that. I had my nap, that's right. And so I would leave school, I would practice, and then go play the gigs. And then after high school was over, I didn't know there was a 7 in the morning for like three, four years, it just didn't happen. So that's what I've been doing my whole life. PART 2 >>INTERVIEWER: And composition has that always been a piece of it as well, with the drumming? >>MARK LOMAX: Yeah, in fact I used to get in trouble because I wouldn't practice enough because I would be playing the drums and in my mind would be creating these melodies in my head and we'd get to the point where it would just be incessant, the same melody over and over again, and it might match what I was practicing, it might not. But I would have to get up and write it down. And so once I started writing it down, it's like, oh I could do this, and I could do this. The next thing you know, its two hours later and I have this piece. That was two hours that I was supposed to be practicing my drums. But my mother's a composer, my uncle's a composer. He was trained in Vienna as a classical vocal major and pianist, but he's a gospel musician, and he has his PhD in music education. So I grew up around all these people who were composers doing their own music. In fact, I was an adult before I realized you go to church and it's possible to hear some music that somebody else did, because at our church we did mostly original music. And whatever we did that somebody else wrote, we either knew them or we had rearranged it to the point where it was ours now. I just kind of had that tradition around me. >>INTERVIEWER: Absolutely. Does that have any correlation with you with traditional writing? Like writing essays and things? You've talked about your love of numbers and I'm fascinated with that because it's like that rhythm that's constantly going through you and I'm just wondering with the composition piece, is there any correlation that way with composing other types of writing, maybe not just musical writing, maybe more with text. >>MARK LOMAX: Yeah, I mean text and I don't really get along. I think because I'm such a student now of form and texture and how things go together that I know what makes good lyrics. Like you take Stevie Wonder's lyrics and there's a story, over three verses you have characters that develop. Like the song Too High, he's talking about a girl who's just down on her luck and in order to cope, she turns to drugs. Or Living for the City, that whole thing is just one big story that spins out over a few minutes. And I like to write academically the thoughts in my head about music, lectures and all that kind of stuff, and I love stories but they're harder because I'm very tangential, so I'll start with an idea and I'll go over here and over here and over here and by the time I'm done, I'm like this is not a real story, this is like a stream of conscience, like one thought it doesn't really make sense, and I don't like to edit. So I stop. And when it comes to text, it's very hard for me to focus and kind of in a few lines have this idea that develops and that's whole in and of itself. Although I have had some success. I have a piece that's being performed actually here next Wednesday at 8:00, and it's a story but it's more or less like a psalm. Like I was studying psalms and how other structured. There's a lot that start with some kind of lament, and without warning it changes into a appraise or some kind of exultation. And like what happens in between the two? I kept noticing that kind of structure over and over again. So we were going through a bad spell financially and otherwise in my family, and I wrote a song, in effect. So the first song is a lament. The second song is what I envision happens in between the lament and the moment of praise or just empowerment. Because it always seems like they're saying what's going on? Where are you, God? You've left me. And it says, but I know God can do all things, and I'm going to go ahead and do what I'm supposed to do because God is great. And I'm like well, something had to happen. So I wrote a set of songs, there's three, based on that formula. And that was the easiest it's ever been. But trying to sit there and write, my mom cracks on my lyric writing because I get all my ideas on the page but never in order, so I have to send it to her. And then she kind of says, well you've got some bones here, we can work with it. And then she kind of puts it in order and she adds this and I'm like, that's exactly what I meant! But that's very important, I think, because there is a large part of the population that doesn't understand the language of music. So, without a lyric, it's really hard to make the connection with them. And without a lyric that makes sense. You know, not the Michael Jackson I'm a Vegetable, I'm a Vegetable, like really? But a lyric you would hear like Donny Hathaway or Stevie Wonder or those great song-writers that told stories. Country music is a great example. It starts, and then from beginning to end, some of those songs you feel like you've really connected with the character. And I think there's a huge connection between those kinds of songs and literature. Some movies are based on lyrics in a song. So I wish I was better at it. >>INTERVIEWER: You mentioned language of music, what does that mean to you? In traditional African societies, the drum actually speaks a language and in many cases there is a certain drum, a particular drum that's the representative of the Supreme Being, God, whatever or however they view that. In fact, the drum is so powerful that it was banned here in North America because of the tonal dialect that many African nations speak. The drum could mimic that - boom boom boom boom boom - and so it was actually literally speaking a dialect. Like we were talking earlier about the narrative and the communicative powers of the blues, if you understand that language, if you understand that aesthetic or that vernacular, then you can connect and identify with what's being played, even though there are no words. It's like in classical music when Mozart or any of those guys, Beethoven, they had a middle section and it went into triple meter, oftentimes it would go into E flat major which they equate it with reverence for God. Triple meter represented the Trinity: the father, son and the Holy Ghost. And so, knowing that when I'm listening to a piece by Mozart and I hear that, I automatically know what he meant by that. It's like that inside joke. But if I didn't speak that language, then I wouldn't be able to understand and I wouldn't be able to have those associations. So it comes from listening to the music. A lot of people like, I'm trying to think of like the boss, Bruce Springsteen, I don't know what he's saying. I dig the music but I can never, ever understand what he's saying. So I don't identify with it. If it's on I'm not going to necessarily change the channel, but I won't buy a record. And maybe it's because I haven't spent the time to get through the [imitates singing] to really understand what he's saying. But I think too, a lot of people just identify with the vibration that comes out of the music. And so maybe it's not about the words for him, but that's the music speaking, not necessarily the text. So you need both. I think actually in African American religious music, gospel music, right now there is a big issue between, or dichotomy even, between the text and music. A lot of times they're saying different things. If you have a sample from, let's just say R. Kelly, right, he likes little girls, that's not very good, but if you take one of the R. Kelly tunes and write a gospel lyric over it, what is that really saying? Because the music comes from a completely different place. Your text is supposed to be one that exhorts, extolls, exalts God, but the music is coming from somebody who's talking about something very base, very gutter. It's a totally different thing. So if I'm hearing "Praise God! Praise Jesus" and then the music is like [imitates beat], I'm like wait a second, now I'm conflicted. What do you really mean? Is the music the subconscious aspect, while you're wanting to say something nice, really you're thinking this? So it's one of those things and I think its incumbent upon us as musicians and in general no matter what space you're working with, to make sure those things work together. >>INTERVIEWER: Do you like working with other musicians or do you prefer to... >>MARK LOMAX: Working with how? Because I like to, I mean I'm a drummer. Although I've made the threat that nobody wants to go hear a concerto for a drum set in an orchestra. It might be fun once, but it's not really something that's going to get played all over the place, like a violin concerto. So as a drummer, our traditional role is to accompany. So I mean I have to like working with other people, in a sense. But when it comes to composition, it's really, really hard. Now, I can work with my mom when it comes to text. But when it comes to music, I mean she's not a musician, she's not trained, she doesn't, even beyond training she doesn't play piano or anything. She just kind of sings it and it comes and I do all the rest. So it's really easy to work with her. She'll have an idea of a song, she'll sing the melody and I'll take it and I'll go finish it. I'll have an idea for a song and I'll have my bones and she'll flush them out for me and that's cool. But I tried it out recently, like I said I do the Martin Luther King celebration here and they needed another song. And so the director of the show proposed the James Taylor song, Shed a Little Light. I love James Taylor. >>INTERVIEWER: I do too. >>MARK LOMAX: I hate that song. >>INTERVIEWER: I don't know that song. >>MARK LOMAX: Yeah, you don't want to. And I don't want to bias you. Although I may have already. It was a Martin Luther King thing and the director was like this is great because James Taylor is supposedly this folk guy. And I'm like folk? Alright, okay, we'll define folk later. But the song, it's Martin Luther King Day. The primary audience is African American and songs' terminology "shed a little light" in the context of the audience would not go. Nobody knows. If you're talking about light, which in African American context, especially religious context, is another word for God, you wouldn't shed it; you would shine it, right? And then just with respect to Dr. Martin Luther King, there's no reference to him except in the first line, "Let us turn our thoughts today to Dr. Martin Luther King." And then the rest is like this whole other thing. And then like, that song is a good song for another purpose, just not for this. That's why I hated it because I had to just try to deal with it and make it work, and it didn't. So I sat down with the guy who was supposed to sing it. And he didn't like it either. He was African American. And I said; well let's write a Martin Luther King Day song. There aren't very many. There's like one that I know of. It's like Happy Birthday; you know the Stevie Wonder song. And so the challenge with that as far as content was to write something that reflected who King was without offending anybody because we're in this political correct age. We had to make sure the board would be happy. We had to do all this kind of stuff, so we couldn't over-emphasize the religious aspect. You couldn't over-emphasize even the civil rights aspect because that can be seen as divisive, just like the religious thing. So it's like well, what do you say? Let's say what he said. So, we kind of poured through his speeches. Everybody knows the I Have a Dream speech, so we wrote a song called I Have a Dream. Now I sat with this guy for like 4 or 5 hours just talking about what story do we want to tell? We wanted to incorporate something with the theme which was getting up and doing something for your community. And he's just sitting there, and he's a great song-writer, but he's just sitting there like? And I'm like dude, really? So I got my bones together and he's like, oh I like that. And I'm like you didn't do anything except for give me the first two chords because he's a piano player. So I took his first two chords and I took my little bones that I did and I went home and I finished it. But it wasn't done because I was like; well it's still not popping yet. So I sent the text to my mom with the melody and then she finished it. Wrote my third verse and then I did it and it was a great song. But it wasn't until I got by myself that I could really work. Because sitting there having to consider, okay, I know what I want to do but what do you want to do? I mean can we find some consensus? I don't work like that, it's like it comes and it's done. So it's really hard, it's really hard. PART 3 >>MARK LOMAX: And I'm working on, I'm about to start a piece, concerto, for turn-tableist and orchestra. I'm really excited about that. And so it's going to be like one of those kind of processes where I have to take that time to deal with this other person, because the turn-table is a completely foreign instrument to the orchestra. So I have to make sure that everything is going to be exactly as it should be, allowing for the improvisation that is a part of the aesthetic of the performance practice of that genre, while still allowing it to fit in at some point with the orchestra. Then I send him my plan. And I'm like as long as we can stick to this, we can do this. As soon as he's over here, it's going to be hard for me because I already kind of have this agenda. So I guess I'm strong-willed in that sense. >>INTERVIEWER: That's amazing. You talked a lot, too, before about the different histories and how art and life and everything are reflective. What would you say about music today? Where are we at today? >>MARK LOMAX: Oh that's the thing, that jazz and social commentary thing I was telling you about. I always end it, and I hate to be like that, but on a very kind of not bitter, but kind of, note. Because like I said jazz is being taught in the academy now more than it is in its natural setting. Jazz only has 1.7% of the total market share of music in the United States, so it's not making anybody any money. A good selling jazz selling record sells five to ten thousand units. If Beyonce's next record only sold five to ten thousand, she'd probably jump out of a window, and not one on the first floor. You know what I mean, she'd kill herself? So jazz clubs, as a result, are closing, shutting down at an alarming rate. I mean the famous clubs like Van Garden in New York or The Blue Note; they're not bringing in bands from outside of New York because they just don't have the funds. The audience isn't there. So the case should be made that we have to do something in jazz to re-invigorate an audience, a younger audience at that, and while still appealing to the audience that we have. But at the same time, because the music is so sterile, it's not confronting. And I think you can almost say that across the board, the confrontation between rap and hip hop. Rap is this highly processed, over-marketed genre, whereas hip hop is this more gritty version that's truer to the community. I mean it's still connected to us, those of us who listen to it. Pop R&B versus R&B soul, neo-soul, new soul, I mean all these genres are corporate constructs to sell records. I mean what about the cats that are just making music, no matter what the music is. I think it's gotten bogged down in this corporate thing to the point where music just gets lost. If you have a million dollars to sell poop, people are going to buy the poop because that's what they see. There could be something brilliant right here, but you only have 50 dollars to market it. Nobody's going to here that record. And I think that's where we are and it's unfortunate. There are a lot of great musicians, lot of great musicians out in every genre. Same is true in classical music. There's an issue now with new music not being performed as much. And it's because the orchestras feel like they're bread and butter is bog bate over Mozart. I don't have any problem with them, but they're dead. You've got to think since they've died, there had to be some good music somewhere. >>INTERVIEWER: If not, let's make some. Let's find some. >>MARK LOMAX: The only way we hear it is because they think financially there's more stability in the old classics, the old warhorses. They're the same pieces. I read an article that said in a given decade of the classical records that came out that year, there were so many recordings of the same piece. And they're like where is the other music? Why are we recording this person are that person? And it's the same when you turn on the radio, no matter what the station is you hear the same 10, maybe 15 artists every hour. That's because their record companies have the money to do it. It's like we're flooded with crap, and all the good music you have to really search for it. And you know how Google and everything works, if you don't have 100,000 people come to your web site every day than your stuff doesn't pop up, unless it's so unique that nobody else has a name close to that. I just think that that's where we are. There's freedom, though, because of the Internet. So if you have a good product and you really work at the social networking kind of thing, it's possible. But there will never be like another Michael Jackson or anything like that because the market just isn't set up like that. So, a short answer after all of that, I think there's a lot of opportunity. But at the same time, we just have to change the paradigm. It's got to shift completely, and until that shift happens there will be this free-fall. Art music? I don't know. I'm kind of at that place, almost done hopefully, and I'm like, okay, do I continue to write classical music? Or do I move into other areas. I mean I send my children to private school, is this really going to pay for that? So, I would love to but I think what we're doing now with my production company where we have a product that we know is functional and useful with the music ed. kind of thing, and even producing some smooth jazz kind of things that will sell to finance the art projects that we have. I think that's the model that you have to have. You have to do what you have to do in order to do what you want to do. >>INTERVIEWER: Is there anything that would represent you well? Like any little clip you would want, like an audio, a music audio of anything attached to your spoken word? >>MARK LOMAX: This is Lift Every Voice and Sing, my arrangement. [Music plays] >>MARK LOMAX: I'll send you the MP3. >>INTERVIEWER: That's be great >>MARK LOMAX: One more thing about reading, though. I just thought of this. I would not know most of what I know about music if it weren't for two things. One if oral tradition, oral history. And the other is through written documents that I've been able to find, even about jazz. I mean even though unfortunately most of what's written about jazz has been written by white Americans and Germans a lot, some French. You still kind of glean a lot of things, it's still on the outside looking in, so a lot of the information is wrong on. But a lot of the historical information is accurate, in terms of date, time, and empirical kind of things. And I've read and read and read a lot of these things; autobiographies like Music is my Mistress about Duke Ellington or Miles Davis' autobiography, stuff about Samuel Curt, I mean there's loads of stuff out there to read, and I feel like as a jazz musician who works in all these other mediums, still considers himself to have that role of the grio with African tradition. It's important to inform myself about the history and take what's there, read it, and do with it in the way that I see fit. Because a lot of what I've heard in the oral history contradicts what I've read. And so as a scholar, I'm like okay, how do I weigh these, how do we, is this just they're railing against that because they can control that or is that a way of controlling this? Or how do you deal with it in terms of power? How do you deal with it in terms of culture and terms of art, economics, all that kind of stuff? And so literacy has been very, very, very important to my growth as an artist. So I just wanted to add that.