Hello, Babar

Free Musician: A Q&A with the Saxophonist Gary Bartz Part II

Posted 03/31/2009 at 10:33 AM  |  1 comment/s  |  Category: Interviews

For Part I of the interview, click here.

I wanted to ask you about I've Known Rivers and Other Bodies because that was the first time that I had heard your music. I'm wondering if you could talk about that album and how it came to be?
Well, that was recorded live at Montreux in 1973 and I had a group called the NTU Troop. The African word. It's actually a suffix. So NTU is the root suffix for a lot of words in Swahili. Basically, to me NTU means the philosophies of the arts. All arts. And we were actually addressing the Black community. I had one guy in Germany somewhere. He came up to me and said, "You know, I didn't really like those records." The German guy: "I didn't even really understand those records." I'd say, "Well, I can understand that because I wasn't talking to you," which I wasn't. I mean, I appreciate it if they like it but I was really addressing the Black community. So that was what that group was about.

And so I listened to a lot of poems. I grew up with [the poems of] Paul Laurence Dunbar and people like that and Langston Hughes and always heard that poem. That was a very strong poem growing up. And one day I heard it to melody that I was writing. And I actually wrote that on the guitar, one of the few songs I've written on the guitar. That's how that came about.

The band itself, we did about a month long tour in Europe. Did a lot of festivals.

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