I came here to play in a town I knew little about. A Conversation with Devin Phillips

I’ve often written about the displacement of artists from post-colonial outposts around the world, feelings of displacement, something lost, something gained, the cultural baggage they bring with them as they migrate and relocate to places where they have no history, a place that is on a personal and cultural level unknown to them but to places where they venture out of their own comfort zones to find opportunities to practice their art. Devin Phillips is one such artist--a tenor saxophonist now living in Portland, OR from Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans.

February 27, 2009

LLC: Devin Phillips how did you come to be in Portland, OR? Because that’s what all my friends ask me, how did I get here?

DP: Well, it was by chance of course, before I tell you how, I’ll tell you that the only thing that I knew about Portland for certain was a basketball player by the name of Clyde Drexler (Portland Trailblazers, 1983-98). And that was about the extent of everything that I knew about Portland.

LLC: Oh, okay, well I didn’t even know that.

DP: I lived in New Orleans (NO) for my entire life up until Hurricane Katrina, which was almost about three and a half years ago now. And a day or so before the hurricane, I evacuated to Shreveport, La.

LLC: Yes, that’s where my mother is from.

DP: That’s where my father lives and I stayed there and watched the hurricane for about a week or so and then after about a week I started searching looking into where other musicians were and there was a local radio station in NO at that time named WWOZ, a public radio station very similar to the one here in Portland and like in a lot of other cities. I was on their website and they were showing where a lot of musicians were for the time being and their whereabouts and on their website I saw a link to the Portland Jazz Festival. It had been put there probably just hours before and on their link they said that they were searching for musicians that had been displaced and they were looking to aid them in anyway that they could, with a temporary home--housing while NO got situated. I’m not sure why but at that time there were several people around the country and around the world [who were outreaching to] musicians specifically, I guess because it’s such a strong part of the culture in NO.

LLC: Yes, it’s because they knew about the music there.

DP: Yeah, so lots of people were reaching out to musicians with concern and support, so I talked to a few friends of mine that were musicians from New Orleans, some were going to Houston, some people were going to Atlanta, and other places like that and to Dallas and Florida and I thought about going to places like that but for some reason I checked out this link to Portland and called there and I still remember this lady, Sarah, her name was Sarah Smith. She answered the phone and I always tell people that I was somewhat skeptical and just somewhat interested but she had a really, really warm voice, she sounded very nice, very compassionate and so we talked for a while and I asked what they were doing and for more information about Portland and their program. She said that this program was just coming together just now and it’s somewhat improvised and in fact they had just put the link up on their website a couple of hours before I called. We talked and she said that we’d love to get you here. If you’re interested in coming we have some temporary housing for you and we don’t know what’s going to happen in New Orleans but you’re welcome to stay here for a while and we’re going to put together some opportunities for musicians. Then she said well, do you think you want to come and I said, well I think so and I thought I’d think on it for a week or so and she said well when do you want to come and I said well I don’t know, I’ll have to think about it for a little while. So she said how about tomorrow and I said tomorrow are you serious? I said I don’t know if I can do it tomorrow. And she said take your time and think about it and so I thought about it for a day or so and I called her back and said that I wanted to come and so she set everything up. When I got here I was actually the first musician from New Orleans to get here, no I was the second, there was a musician, a guitar player, his name was Jessie, he had driven here.

LLC: Whoa.

DP: Yeah, he drove from New Orleans to Seattle and then to Portland, so once we got here the Jazz Festival and Mercy Corp and a guy that had run for Mayor here last year his name is Sho Dozono (owner and chief executive officer of Azumano Travel) put together one of the strongest improvised efforts other than jazz that I’ve ever seen and within weeks there were about thirty to forty musicians who came through here for some time over the next couple of months, some shorter some longer I think maybe seven are still here.

LLC: I didn’t realize that so many of you were still here so you had colleagues from New Orleans here with you.

DP: That first year we keep in contact with each other but now not as much.

LLC: Yes, everyone kind of finds their own place. That’s how it is everywhere. And how old were you when you came here?

DP: Twenty-four.

LLC: Wow, you were really young and how old are you now?

DP: Twenty-seven.

LLC: And so this included free travel, housing and access to the jazz scene here. So did they find you gigs and so forth here or did that happen?

DP: It’s hard to explain because a jazz festival is not usually a tool that’s used to support somebody in a social service form.

LLC: No, they were making it up as they were going along-it was by the seat of their pants.

DP: Exactly, the jazz festival became the central point for putting together community support for these people from New Orleans. It was a jazz festival but not everyone they helped was a jazz musician. Everybody they helped was a musician. But the jazz festival saw the need and they jumped in.

LLC: Oh, I see they were the catalyst.

DP: And what they did is they united bunches of people like Mercy Corp, Azumano Travel, and they helped us utilize the Red Cross and the FEMA services, and they helped us be more efficient about getting the help we needed.

LLC: Yes, so they were the go-to organization for you to interface with all these others.

DP: And Mercy Corp helped to put on some gigs when we initially first got here. But I think most importantly, besides the jazz festival itself, they helped to expose us to the community and expose the community to us and I think that’s great for what they were—a great tool. They didn’t come and say that we were going to get you enough some gigs just like when you were in NO, but they said if this [place is] what you were looking for we will give you this opportunity for you to capitalize on these audiences or these people that are hungry for culture--so if that’s what you’re looking for, then you can use us as a tool and we will help you.

LLC: I got ya, I got ya. Okay, okay, well enough about how you got here, I want to talk a little bit about you and how you got into music, how you got into playing the sax. You want to tell me a little about that? I read that when you were a youngster, your mom encouraged you to play and that’s so critical that parents or a parent gives a child that encouragement, but tell me how you got into your instrument and stayed grounded with it.

DP: Well encouragement is a strange word. Because sometimes when people ask me why do you play the saxophone, I say that my mom made me play the saxophone.

LLC: Okay, she made you…her foot was on your neck! (Laugh)

DP: I expressed some interest in playing music, I thought I wanted to play the trumpet or the trombone but she said that no, I think you’re gonna play the saxophone.

LLC: So, she specifically wanted you to play the saxophone because you started out with something else didn’t you?

DP: Well no, when you first start playing the saxophone, you have to start out with the clarinet.

LLC: Oh, so that was her instrument, or the one that she preferred for you.

DP: She thought that it would be good for me because somewhere between kindergarten and the second grade, I’d do well in school but in other ways I wouldn’t. She took me to the Learning Center and I was diagnose with Dyslexia and Attention Deficit Disorder so they gave her methods to use in dealing with me and they also advised her that it would be good to have things to hold my attention and to put my focus into and so she thought that when I expressed some interest in music, she decided to jump on that.

LLC: Right, right.

DP: And so the saxophone was picked and she enrolled me in the school band. My mom was a single parent and we didn’t have a lot of money—she hadn’t continued school at this time and [my school band] asked us what instrument we wanted to play and I told them the saxophone because that’s what I was instructed to do, (laugh) and they passed out the instruments and didn’t have enough saxophones for the students. The students with better grades got to pick the instruments so by the time they got to me; they had run out of saxophones. The teacher said we had to rent one or buy one and when I told my mom she tried to figure out how we could get one. We didn’t have a lot of money but my mom could figure out how to get things. Sometimes I don’t know how she would do it but for this she went to my aunt who was married and her family was a little more financially stable than ours and her son had started playing the sax and got one, so my mom told here that she needed a $900-1000 for a sax and my aunt used her credit card and they bought me a saxophone. And I remember because when my aunt would pick me up from school mom would pay her something, I remember when my mom would give me the check to give my aunt so that was like her payment to my aunt on the saxophone—it probably took her about a year or two because the payments weren’t that high. I remember in about the fifth grade, I wanted to stop playing the sax and play the trumpet, my cousin had stopped playing the sax, and I wanted to play baseball or some other sport, but I couldn’t because I’d feel guilty because my mom was giving my aunt these checks for this horn. I said, man we don’t have any money and she’s giving my aunt these checks, I said “I can’t do this,” so I just kept playing the saxophone. But once I got to the seventh or eighth grade, I considered it a part of who I was and what I do. The band would play at the PTA meetings and my mom would come out, even if she was working, she came out to see me and any kid who sees [an interested parent and the thing that gets them attention] any kid will feed off of it and it become a part of their identity. So, I said to myself, I’m a saxophone player, even if I wasn’t much of one.

LLC: But you defined yourself as one.

DP: And of course living in NO, even though no one in my immediate family was a musician, I was just immersed in this music that had just been passed on and that was a part of weddings, funerals, and graduations. I grew up with a lot of musicians and I like to ask a lot of jazz musicians when did they remember learning who Louis Armstrong was and I tell them that I don’t even remember--I’ve always known who Louis Armstrong was, like that’s just like I knew what jazz music was before I knew it was called jazz music, just stuff that you heard and that’s great for any musician, especially a jazz musician to grow up around that type of environment.

LLC: Now when you were in New Orleans, did you hear much music in your neighborhood—I know you were probably too young to go to clubs, but where did you hear the music

DP: In New Orleans, you could be standing on your porch and a parade would pass by with a brass band. It would come right down your street. Like I said, I can’t say enough, its just part of the culture. I remember some of my first professional gigs when I was about fifteen or sixteen, and it’s sad in a way, but I’m sure on some level you and some of the readers are familiar with the funeral processions that they have in NO called second line. You know it’s a dirge that you play on the way to the grave yard and a spiritual coming back, and it’s happier on the way to the family’s house and I guess it says a lot about the city and the times but from the time that I was fifteen to eighteen when I was playing in clubs more, every Saturday we played in a brass band like the kind you hear like Dirty Dozen or Rebirth, and there were probably nine brass bands throughout the city of young cats and about five of older ones. Every Saturday we’d do a funeral, sometimes we’d three or four of them and for four years it was dudes between the ages of seventeen to twenty-eight or thirty years old, all drug related deaths, all killings, man it was just like a party [at the funeral]. They all had their T-shirts with their pictures on them [with birth/death dates] and I remember one day…. We’re getting a little off the point….

LLC: No, no, no, this is good.

DP: But, I remember looking at [the situation], because we’d do three or four of them a day and after I’d done it for a year, I was doing one of the funerals and I said, we’re making money off of this, the person making the T-shirts is making money off of this, these pallbearers, these funeral parlors are making money and we are stacking this morgue with bodies every week, and putting on a [party]…. it was a realization, an epiphany you know. The food is great, the culture is great, the way we bury our people is great, the way we celebrate life is great but at the same time, we realize the state that the city, and not only the city but the country, the world is in where these dudes were just getting knocked off and we celebrate them. Now thinking about it, it almost reminds me of these guys that becomes martyrs and blow themselves up and they have their videotapes of themselves and people celebrate their lives, you know it’s very similar. And although I never talked to any of them before they were dead, it seemed like they were almost looking forward to “my face is gonna be on a T-shirt and I’m gonna have a parade and I’m gonna have a second line and all this and I know and that’s something that they could count on happening…I was going to say in their lives but they were dead. And they were heroes.

LLC: Boy, so you were listening to a lot of musicians at that time and playing regularly in bands.

DP: Well the brass band thing is a [rite of] passage that musicians [go through] and in New Orleans, there was this guy his name was Danny Barker, I didn’t meet him and I didn’t play with him, but he was a guitar player and he started a brass band at this church and that’s somewhat how the Dirty Dozen brass band started. So that’s how all the musicians, horn players especially and drummers in NO start, they all are associated with the brass band its like a phase that you go through and some of the musicians are real street musicians and some of them are real studied musicians that happen to be in school.

LLC: So, that’s one phase of their musical maturity.

DP: Yes, so that’s one phase of my maturity and the other side of that is for me and a lot of other people there is a school there, an arts conservatory at the NO Center for Creative Arts and that’s where a lot of jazz musicians get things like theory and composition, slightly more refined things that you may not find in the brass bands. And that’s where I was affected by people like Alvin Batiste, Kidd Jordan, Ellis Marsalis and Claude Kerr and people like that who came from the background like people like Danny Barker but who also exposed us to a very soulful and yet more cerebral approach to playing jazz music and being aware of the discipline and being technically proficient. A lot of times you don’t get those things out of brass band music—it’s a different kind of thing, but it’s valuable.

LLC: And improvisation in jazz music, so many people talk about that but they forget about all of these other layers that you’re just mentioning.

DP: And it goes back a long way because when people see you playing jazz music, when you see these old black and white [movies] where people are doing the jitterbug, they see people dancing and people having a good time and they say well “look at those boys go, their playing and shaking it” you know.

LLC: Yeah.

DP: But when you go and see somebody Stravinsky, they say “his very refine, his technique is very polished” but all of those things are going on when you’re playing jazz music, at least on the high level. It’s like sometimes when you watch Michael Jordan play basketball he does his crossover, he spins around and jumps away, he does it in such a way where it looks so easy that you’d loose appreciation for a fade away jump shot [watching] him do something like that. But if you actually had to see how he does it, his form the way he jumps up into the air, it’s hard, and the better he makes it look, the easier it appears.

LLC: And it’s supposed to look effortless, I mean I used to take ballet and it was very difficult to move through those steps and to take those positions, but we were always told that we were supposed to make it look effortless, when we were killing our bodies and that’s the same thing with basketball, although it’s not given that credit.

DP: Yes, it’s the perception because when somebody looks at Yo Yo Ma play, they say oh, it is so amazing, but there are certain people that prove that wrong. To me, whenever I see Winton Marsalis play, I mean his execution and his technique, it’s undeniable, and you know that you are looking at something great.

LLC: Yeah, so what did you take away from these people that you listened to in order to develop your own musical voice. I know that you have this New Orleans Straight Ahead Group—you talked about Winton, Baptist, Armstrong, etc.

DP: Those people that you named, I’ve gotten very specific things from but considering all of them, the regard that they hold for their music, how serious it is to them, how much they love of it. A lot of my peers from a lot of my schools and neighborhood for good reason hate to pigeon hole themselves, they play with rappers, which I do, I play with R & B singers, which I do, you know, I’m not just one thing.

LLC: Good.

DP: One thing that I get from Winton and I think it maybe a dying feeling among a lot of people my age is that I am a jazz musician and I consider myself a spokesman for jazz. I’m proud to say that when a lot of musicians like to say well I’m a musician and I do all kinds of stuff, which is a given, I am a musician and I look at music from all different types of ways, but I’m a jazz musician and I like jazz music and I like to promote jazz music that’s my priority to promote jazz music and to expose people to it. I love Duke Ellington and I hope that’s evident in my playing, I hope that people can hear that I have an appreciation for the history and I think it’s supposed to be a particular way and I think I got that from Winton. I think that there is a very specific way we should carry ourselves while we’re playing this music and I see that in him and I got that by being influenced by him.

LLC: Well yeah, he’s had to fight real hard for jazz being something that is very intellectual, not just emotional; that there is a real skill to playing it and in its development there’s a real thought process to it.

DP: Yeah, it’s not just happy times “go boy go.”

LLC: Yeah and he’s come under a lot of criticism for taking that position, but you have to take positions that you believe in and that’s just what he’s done. So you’ve been performing with the Portland Jazz Festival since you’ve arrived and I’d like to hear about some of the other things you’ve done I think I read that you worked with the schools here, is that something you do or you still doing it?

DP: I’m not working with students at this present moment but I used to work in a program here in Portland called Music Impact and musicians would go into the schools and we’d work with music students and music teachers who may not be covering jazz music and we expose students to different kinds of music.

LLC: Well yeah, music and art, their always the first things to go. The programs are reduced so much and now this next round of things on the chopping blocks are programs at colleges and universities, humanities departments that house music, art, and literature programs. They are really suffering already and will experience more layoffs. But when I read about you working with these young students, I read a line where you said that you wanted them to know more than just rap music or basketball, you want to talk about that. And I know what you’re talking about because our kids are kind of directed to those windows, like that’s the only way you can make it.

DP: Yeah, that’s sad in a way. I feel that I’m very fortunate, very lucky because of what my mother did for me, because of the city I grew up in and the teachers that I had, but I’ve been a lot of places and now that I think of it, I’ve been to more places than my mother or my immediate family have ever been. I’ve been to Japan, all over Europe several times, I’ve been to Africa, I’ve been all over the place and when you’re where I’m from, the only time that you’re gonna see those places is if you play basketball or join the military. So, I feel fortunate that I’ve been exposed to those kinds of things. I’ve gotten a chance to go on what I feel are adventures and to see all kinds of stuff, so I don’t always think the world is as big is what is in front of my face. I don’t just turn on the radio and say this is what I’m going to listen to because this is what’s the radio. I always encourage people to look for something that interest them. I tell you a funny story, I was in this bar once, talking to this very pretty girl and she asked me what I did and I told her I was a musician and she said oh, I like music a lot. And she said, well what kind of music do you play, and I said that I’m a jazz musician. And she said okay, okay, that’s cool. And I asked her what kind of music she liked and she said oh I like all kinds of music. And I asked her who was her favorite band and she said J-Lo was her favorite band. I think she was talking about Jennifer Lopez, who first of all is just one person, not a band and secondly, it had deep implications. Even though it was a silly moment and didn’t mean much to me, I really thought about it—this young lady just told me that her favorite music ensemble is Jennifer Lopez and it was kind of sad, even though she was a pretty girl.

LLC: No, I hear it all the time from my sons—they say the same thing about the shallowness of some people.

DP: It all depends on what you’re exposed to because a couple of months ago I played a gig at McCoy Park, an affordable housing area here in Portland to a lot of Black people. But believe it or not, playing jazz you don’t play to a lot of Black people, here or anywhere in the world, you don’t play to a lot of Black people.

LLC: I know, it’s like it’s a very few.

DP: So we played this gig to a lot of black kids from kindergarten to second grade and you could tell that it was foreign to them but they’re checking it out and in five minutes they start moving to it, digging it so they just had to be exposed to it. But if you just turn on what’s on Clear Channel radio, you’re going to have your kid wanting to hang down their pants and wear a wife beater [undershirt].

LLC: Well, yeah, in terms of most Black folks, it can be a lonely existence being a jazz musician.

DP: I’ll tell you about another epiphany. I learned this when I was sixteen years old, and we were on a school fiend trip on a bus, I think I was coming from a jazz camp. So there was this group of kids in the back listening to rap music and I said this is ridiculous, the things they were saying “bitches and whores” and all kinds of stuff like that. I decided to say something so I went to the back of the bus and said “Ya’ll trippin'” and I got them to pause [the music] and I’m talking to six or seven people and I say, “do ya’ll hear what their sayin' and you’re dancin’ to that” and I said that “their callin’ women this and that and encouraging all kinds of BS” and I said that “we’re all musicians do you think that’s…” and they were kind of looking at me and I thought, “ahh, well maybe I’m touching them, you know,” and one girl said “ I just like the beat” and I said that the beat was fine but listen to the message “is that how you’d like to be looked at?” So I sat there for a few minutes and I’ll never forget this, someone said “Nigga, shut up,” and yelled out, turn the music back on.” (Laughs) I thought I had them.

LLC: No, they just said okay, we’ll listen to him; we’ll humor him.

DP: But when the music came back on I just shook my head and returned to my seat.

LLC: No, But I’ve heard that before because when people have tried to pull folks coattails and said you know “are you listening to these words”? They are singing the words but they’ll say that I just like the beat, I like to dance to it and I’m like, it’s not connecting with anything else, not at all.

DP: Not at all, but it’s funny now, but when he told me that, when it happened I thought some of them heard me and maybe they did but I’ll never forget that [encounter].

LLC: Yes, you know they heard you, thought about it and said, forget that! (Laugh). That’s just very real; I’ve seen it happen.

DP: But those are your people and my people and I love ‘em anyway.

LLC: Yes, we love them anyway. Well look, I know that you participated in the US State Department Rhythm Road Program and what did you do, where did you go and what are your overall impressions of that program?

DP: It was weird just because the first part of the process was being accepted to audition and going to Lincoln Center and to audition in front of people you idolize and competing with some of the best quartets around the country—just to be a part of something like that can be breathtaking, very nerve racking but we did the audition.

LLC: When you say you did this audition this was your group the New Orleans Straight Ahead jazz group.

DP: Yes, and we did the audition and out of hundreds [of musicians]. At the audition we saw well-known people who we were competing against and to actually make the audition and get chosen was very humbling and I was honored. It’s the equivalent of like representing your country in the Olympics. That was one part of it that was amazing. The second part of it was the actual trip; we went to Senegal, Sierra Leone, Guinea, the Congo and the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo). And in these places we did a lot of cultural exchanges like master classes in universities, high schools and middle schools, we did a lot of performances there. We worked with other diplomats from other countries, [had] meetings and [went to] social events. It was just awesome to go to Africa because I have a strong belief that jazz is American music but its origin are from Black Americans and I think Africa’s where jazz’s roots are. Now jazz has a lot of influences European and Latin but there’s nothing more recognizable than its African elements. So getting a chance to go to Africa and to interact with these African musicians on a musical level and on a social level was really a strong thing and with jazz completely aside; getting a chance to be in Africa and to see where I come from, that’s a powerful thing in itself. To work with the federal government on something that you can be completely proud of is a feat in of itself. A lot of people think to serve your country, you have to be in the military or perhaps be a politician to change things but it’s good to see that you can do that with jazz. There’s this book, Satchmo Blows Up the World and it’s about this program and in it there is this cartoon that says a lot about jazz music. The book was written in the Cold War when this program was started and there are these men around a table in the White House talking about who they are going to send [as an international ambassador] and there is this person who is the equivalent of Dick Chaney and they say who are we going to send? They ask, the Dick Chaney look alike or Louis Armstrong? They say, we’ll go with Louis Armstrong. It’s such a no brainer, I’m a jazz musician, I appreciate the blues but the blues has a universal appeal—something that everybody can feel, but you get out there and start playing New Orleans jazz to these people and they recognize it.

LLC: There’s something faintly familiar there.

DP: Yeah, there’s this song that me and my band play that’s a New Orleans song called Iko, Iko (Devin sings the first two lines). And my band would play that song [in Africa]. It’s almost like a clave (begins to clap and sing).

LLC: Yeah, my uncle Booker from Shreveport, Louisiana used to sing it.

DP: Sometimes we forget where our own influences come from and there is something so African about the beat you hear under that and when we play it people went nuts; they start getting on tables and dancing and stuff and it just kind of freaked us out a little bit and kind of reminded us that this is some African stuff we’re playing in the first place. And that really hit home and it was like seeing a circle of music—it was awesome to be able to go to Africa to realize how this music was created in America, but had come from Africa. I don’t think they [Africans] appreciated it that way, but that’s how I appreciated it.

LLC: Yes, coming from New Orleans and knowing that it has always been specific to New Orleans but taking it over there and seeing how they respond to it and realizing at that point, that it came from Africa.

DP: Like I said, I could write a book on Africa, there are so many different dynamics and there are so many things to be said. I had such a great time there. We met so many people that were happy there under extreme conditions but at the same time to be honest and truthful, [one side of] Africa can be a very, very dark place, very poor and very sad and you have to harden yourself when you’re there.

LLC: This last question, I wanted to ask you about New Orleans is do you miss it, do believe that the New Orleans that you knew is still there, is your mom still there?

DP: No, but lots of my family is still there, my mom lives in Dallas, actually.

LLC: So, do you think you’ll go back to NO? I know you visit.

DP: I don’t think I’ll go back now, but it’s not unreasonable to believe that at some point in my life I won’t go back. I think there are probably some other places that I might live in my life before I live in New Orleans but I always keep tabs on what’s going on there I have a constant relationship with New Orleans. First part of your question, I think some things about New Orleans will never change, some things are always going to be the same, but some things are different, like myself, I’m not there, some people are dead and that has changed things forever, just like anybody who looses somebody, you’re changed forever, we lost lots of people, but no has always been a funny place, Louisiana politics and things like that.

LLC: My mother’s from Louisiana, I have family from Louisiana, my father’s from Texas but just 20 miles away from the Louisiana border; I have this love, hate relationship in many ways with Louisiana.

DP: The infrastructure isn’t good, it isn’t safe there, not to say that it’s ever been really, really safe there. I think one of the most fruitful things said about New Orleans was by [former governor] Hughie Long and he was crooked on many levels. He was asked about some of his crooked dealings and he said “yeah, I work with crooks, I hire crooks…if you’re gonna deal with crooks, there’s no way to deal with crooks unless you have other crooks to deal with them.” So even if you want to get good things done here you have to get a crook to get them done, that needs to change. I miss [New Orleans] when I’m there but when I'm not I don’t miss it.

LLC: Well Devin, thank you for agreeing to have a conversation with me because it is a more personal one than others that I've read.

DP: And I didn’t even swear!

END