Live & Local: Monty Alexander Returns to Colorado

This portion of the interview above has been edited for length and clarity:

Carlos: First of all, are you back home chilling out for a little bit?

Monty: I guess the word chilling out… a new kind of word in the English language. Yes. I'm in New York. We just came from some wonderful, extensive world traveling just three, four days ago. Came back from Tokyo in Japan and just before that, playing gigs and concerts, beautiful concerts, in France, and just before that at Ronnie Scott's in London, where I've been going, believe it or not, for 50 years. I've been playing in that place almost every summer, 50 years. And people seem to like me, and I keep going back, and it was a wonderful run. So I'm still a road rat man, a road warrior. That's what I do.

Carlos: Well, I got a feeling you're going to always be a road warrior until there's no more road.

Monty: Well, you kind of say, "may the road continue unreeling itself"... because I love to bring good vibrations to the people and to myself. And it doesn't get old. It never gets old. It just, every time I see the piano notes, man, I get rejuvenated, and I love to play music. All kinds of music.

Carlos: Well, you've proven that, you always have multiple projects going on at the same time. We appreciate your trio first and foremost, but I love the whole concept of the Harlem Kingston Express, which you brought to us. It's got to be over 20 years ago as something you had been experimenting with for quite a while in terms of your roots with Jamaica and the music of Bob Marley and that whole thing. So yeah, I don't see how it can get old, man. It's always something.

Monty: Yeah. Well, I was a kid [the] first time I touched the piano notes in my home, and I was immediately like a kid in the candy store. I said, "Wow, what's this?" And I had my ear, a lot of musicians go to school to learn music, but I didn't really go to school. I just love being around the other musicians, the older guys. And little by little, I'm picking up stuff, and I'm going to the piano, and I'm having fun. Just having fun, really. I love all different kinds of music. That's why sometimes when I hear the word jazz, and folks have their idea of jazz, me, it is just music. I like all kinds of music, as long as I can get a feeling. But the thing about holding onto the heritage, being from this island nation called Jamaica, I started very, very involved with the local musicians, whether they were in the calypso bands or in the recording studio. In my teens, I would sneak out of school just to go play music with the other guys at the very dawn of the beginning of Jamaica and popular music that's called Ska. And then that rock steady, I was right there, and that was the beginning. So that's kind of my roots. But guess what, in 1956/57, my greatest heroes came to Jamaica to perform, and it was Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole. And that turned my head into this wonderful thing I call “America's Classical Music.” It's a classic music that came from Ellington and Armstrong. Anyhow, so as the years go by, I said, "Man, I can't let go of my Jamaican thing." And by the way, I come up in the era of Jamaica when the British were still kind of in Jamaica and the colonial vibrations, the very British influence, and that's just before the independence when Rastafarian and Reggae roots came. So I'm a product of that earlier period. So then I went back there, and I made these recordings, two albums in tribute to the great Bob Marley and other things. But meanwhile, I'm a guy that like to put the swinging on the people, that's what jazz is. If it ain't swinging, somebody once said it didn't mean a thing. And that's Mr. Duke Ellington. So I'm living one foot in the yard, one foot in the uptown. And somehow, when I came up with this idea, one morning I woke up, I said, yeah, that's what I'm going to do! My friend played drums that owned the Reggae rhythm, the beat, that mental "bring a beat," and the swinging guys with the swinging jazz drum. And I put it together and the two bass players and the two, blah, blah, blah. I said, Wait a minute, this is wonderful. And sure enough, those guys would get together and become friends, guys from two different worlds. And all these guys over these few years I've been doing it, they became the best of friends, man. So that's what this music did. And I kind of took history. I started blabbing away, but it's such a sensitive subject. The subject about how we as people from another land, another country, you Carlos, you Arturo. We come from Jamaica, we come from foreign - Where'd you come from? Foreign. And how you come, and you bring your stuff to bear in America, and how do you blend? And America is ideally supposed to be all these different folks coming here, and the Jamaica thing, the Mexican thing, the Puerto Rican, the Cuban, the people from wherever in the world. And that's what America is at its best. People, people, people!

Carlos: Yeah. So many musicians that I've met over all the years that I've been involved in presenting this music on the radio, and the simplest things always stand out to me in terms of what's most important in this music that we call jazz. Steve Turre once told me, when he was out here to do a concert for KUVO, he was here for a couple of days, and he came in, he said, “Carlos, I want to do a workshop for kids. I want to do a workshop. Can you get a hold of a school program? I know it's short notice, but can you get a hold of a school program and maybe have the kids here tomorrow?” And I said, Well, we'll work on it." So we brought the kids into the studio, and Steve, I didn't know what he was going to do, and all he did was teach them the rudiments of the blues. All he did was focus on the blues! And at the end of the whole thing, he said, “Listen, you get the blues down, and then you can do anything you want because if the music doesn't swing, then it doesn't matter.” That was the whole bottom line. So it is very simple. It either grabs you, it swings, and it doesn't all have to swing in the same way, but it's got to swing. You got to be able to feel it, man. The syncopation, the rhythm is all there. So all these years I've always gravitated towards a gentleman like yourself who, when you sit down behind that piano man, you don't exactly know what you're going to get, but you know that you're going to come out of there happy and feeling good. And for that, I have to tip my cap to you, man. You've been doing it a long time.

Monty: Thank you. Thank you, Carlos. Well, it's a healing thing because people that come to hear a musician, whether it's Steve Turre or Hugh Masekela, or Monty Alexander, some of them might come in there having had a difficult day, a bad day, they had a quarrel with their loved one or something, and they come there, yeah, "I got to see this guy play the piano, I don't feel good." And you start making that music, and there's a sincerity and honesty, and you communicate to the people. And next thing you know, man, the guy that came that was a little blue, he walked out of there feeling sunshine, feeling happy. And we musicians, it's a kind of responsibility for this glorious opportunity to just sit there and play a musical instrument. Hey, man, we didn't earn it. It was a gift! And you want to make people like what Steve did with those kids. Who knows, some of those young guys and girls may come out there with a sense of hope because a lot of people want to play an instrument, play music. And if there wasn't a piano in my home that my mother wanted to play a little song, where would I be? I'd be climbing a coconut tree in Jamaica, something like that. But it's about this wonderful gift that we have been given. And if you keep that in mind and stay out of trouble and don't get into the substance abuse and all that, you could very well have a glorious life. And hey, man, I'm a young guy. Just turned 81, what can I say? I feel good. I love it.