Thara
Memory's Super Band
Jimmy Mak's 300 NW 10th Ave., 295-6542
9 pm Saturdays
$5
Thara Memory fidgets like a man in a hurry. The local musician
could be James Baldwin's good-looking brother, and he doesn't
seem anywhere near his real age of 50. He's got Baldwin's
fiery pride, as well. "I don't want this sounding like typical
Negro shit," he says as we begin our interview.
Memory is right to start our talk off with flares; it sets
an effective distance for him to tell his story. He is a
student, teacher, trumpeter, composer and band director.
In each jazz community, and Portland has a sizable one,
there are stars. In this town, Memory is one that shines
brightest. Sometimes that can lead a person into a corner.
"I don't mind being called a jazz musician," he says. "But
I'm much more than that."
What most people know about Memory is how he takes over
the stage at Jimmy Mak's with his rapid-fire trumpeting
and band leading. Memory sometimes performs at the club
three or four times a week, with his own Thara Memory Super
Band and also with Mel Brown's Sextet and Quintet (Brown
on drums, saxophonists Warren Rand and Renato Caranto, pianist
Gordon Lee and bassist Andre St. James). Front and center
is Memory. As music director, he conducts Brown's 250-song
repertoire of hard bop and Blue Note compositions, setting
a feverish pace for the players and prodding them to their
best. "Mel supplies the fuel, and I direct the traffic,"
Memory says. "There is no greater drummer."
At a recent Tuesday night gig, I sat next to a guy who'd
cabbed over from the Governor Hotel looking for jazz. He
was in from New York on a business trip, and he didn't know
quite what to make of the mix of young and old, black and
white that makes up the audience at the group's weekly shows.
But he knew what to make of the music. "Man, they're good,"
he said turning to whoever would listen. After a heavy dose
of Memory on Horace Silver's "Song for My Father," he turned
again and said to no one, "Outstanding!"
Memory's Super Band is altogether different from his long-term
work with Brown's groups. With pianist Jannice Scroggins,
saxophonist Renato Caranto, bassist Skip Elliot, and, according
to Memory, "a lineage of drummers," the trumpeter presents
a little bit of everything. In addition to originals by
Memory and Scroggins, the group explores tunes by Eddie
Harris, Sly Stone and one of Memory's favorite composers,
Stevie Wonder. "It's a different kind of discourse," he
says. "It's freedom I've been working for since I started
playing at 11. It's not atonal or wacky stuff. It's based
on a great deal of intelligence and soul. But it's freedom."
The Memory you see on the stage of Jimmy Mak's is only
half the story. Beyond his studies in composition and conducting
with Lajos Balogh at Marylhurst University (Memory says
his long-term ambition is to conduct symphony orchestras),
he also follows another calling.
That calling is Memory's work as a passionate advocate
for the arts. Growing up in an all African-American community
in Eatonville, Fla., he says he was blessed to attend Hongerford
High School, a school that allowed him a creative freedom
rarely given young blacks at the time. Still, the lesson
he learned during a lifetime of musicianship is that you
must constantly work hard for your piece of the pie. "The
system hasn't changed in the last 150 years," he says. "It
won't. You just have to do it yourself."
It's the issue of artists as viable members of society
that informs Memory's point of view. "How to become art-sustainable,
as a professional, as an educator" is how he puts it. It's
a topic he speaks passionately about--especially regarding
music-arts education for the young.
His early experiences inspired in him the vision of giving
back. Five years ago, Memory founded AMP (the Accelerated
Music Program), a nonprofit educational project that addresses
what he sees as the dire need for music education in the
increasingly arts-unfriendly environment of public education.
The organization is housed in the Jefferson High School
Performing Arts Center and provides a creative outlet for
young people, allowing them to discover musical expression.
"I don't care about the war in Kosovo," Memory says, leaning
forward with his cigarette bouncing before him as he emphasizes
his point. "I care about the war along the Columbia. If
we would stop building prisons and start investing that
money in the arts..." He shakes his head and turns away
to find the end of the sentence. And as any good improviser
will do when he has frustrated a line of melody, he takes
off on a different tangent. "I'd like to be able to educate
parents that it's worthwhile to support music-arts education,
that music is not a frill or extracurricular activity,"
he says. "Introduce a young person to beauty--whether a
flower, a tree or by putting music in his hands instead
of a 9 millimeter--and you're talking about the way we were
intended to live."
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Willamette Week | originally
published April 21,
1999
|
