The Third Story with Leo Sidran

When ALA.NI was growing up in West London, she wanted to be a ballerina. Eventually she realized that there were almost no black ballerinas and the message that was sent to her quietly but consistently was that there would be no easy place for her in the world of ballet.

She started to sing. She loved musicals, especially The Sound Of Music, & Grease. Again and again, she was told that she didn't sound "black enough" because she was so influenced by Julie Andrews and Judy Garland.

Too black to dance, not black enough to sing, she started to feel like there was no way forward for her in London.

Her father was a bass player, her great uncle had been a famous musician and singer from Grenada, Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson – one of the first musical success stories to emerge from the West Indies in post war England. She remembers spending her childhood tagging along with her father to pot-smoke filled rehearsal rooms and hearing the bands play.

Despite her family's creative background, she says, "I love my family but I'm very much the black sheep." So ALA.NI decided to leave London and follow the well worn path of black artists who have felt more at home with self imposed creative expatriation in Paris than in their home countries. "I feel free here as an artist here," she explains. "I feel seen."

Her haunting, elegant and somewhat otherworldly singing style has established her firmly as one of the most intriguing new musical artists in Paris today, and she has also started to work in America, (she has performed at Lincoln Center & on NPR's Tiny Desk). While she remains a bit of a mystery, she is in many ways an open book. "The things that I can't get away with socially, I can do on stage," she says, adding, "If people want the truth, they know where to come to get it."

ALA.NI's upcoming sophomore album ACCA will be released on January 24th. So far the album has been celebrated by NPR Music, The FADER, and Vibe, who praised the first single, "Van P" for its "sparse, spacious soundbed that leaves space for ALA.NI's breathy vocals to shine." She initially envisioned this album as a completely a capella project, and indeed ACCA is made up almost entirely of human voices (beatboxing serves as percussion, and she lowered her own vocals with an octavizer on several tracks to create the illusion of bass). Along with Lakeith Stanfield, Iggy Pop makes an appearance on the album, but ACCA is primarily solo ALA.NI. She wrote, produced, and arranged each song herself, layering up hundreds of vocal tracks in order to create an immersive, hypnotic world that blurs the lines between vibrating vocal cords, bowed strings, and blown reeds.

We got together recently in Paris to talk about the job of the artist ("to see the world through a different lens and then share that experience"), the nature of Grenadians ("uppity"), improvised circle singing ("When we enter back into the child and the imagination, there's no rules!") and the genetic memory of violence in the black experience. In other words, all of it.

This is one of those fly-on-the-wall conversations in which the microphone disappears into the furniture almost immediately and two people who have never met before slowly reveal themselves to one another.

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Singer-songwriter-guitarist Camila Meza on growing up in Chile, the nature of translation, improvisation, self observation, bootleg videotapes, identity, cruise ship living, synesthesia and distortion.

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The world is full of talented people you've never heard of, and it's quite possible that Ryan Scott is one of them. Around New York, if you know about Ryan Scott, then you know. "Ryan Scott?" Enough said. Funky? Oh yes. Soulful? Unquestionably. Prepared to surrender himself totally to the music and the moment at all times? Affirmative.

But if you don't know, it can be difficult to catch up. Ryan Scott doesn't make it too easy to find him. He claims it's not intentional. "You just have to know the right people," he tells me. Indeed.

Ryan spent years waiting for someone to throw him a bone before ultimately deciding that "there was no bone." He worked as a sideman, session cat, songwriter for hire, wedding singer, "jazzy jazz jazz" player, and probably plenty more things that he still won't mention. Eventually he decided to start saying no to the rent work and start saying yes to the muse. The good news is that he made a killer solo record, the bad news is that the rent might be late this month.

He released his latest project, A Freak Grows In Brooklyn earlier this year. He wrote, performed and recorded the project alone, almost entirely on an 8 track multitrack cassette recorder. He wanted to make an art project, a calling card, and a personal statement. He did all that, but he also made something very, very good. But, really, extremely good.

He says he spent years becoming a jazz musician so he could be free. Then he spent more years freeing himself from being a jazz musician.

I like Ryan Scott and I think you should too.

Here he talks about growing up the only child of a stock broker in northern California ("one of the least bluesy things"), crossing the "jazzy line", "keeping things open", moving to New York right out of high school and falling in with a crowd of itinerant musicians who taught him how to "roll cigarettes and drink beer", and what it's like inside his head.

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When Adam Sandler first sang his "Hannukah Song" on SNL in 1994, even he was surprised by the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response it received. He was singing something we all understood even if we didn't know the details: The Jewish contribution to American comedy and entertainment is significant, undeniable, indelible. And the American contribution to global popular culture in the last century is equally palpable.

So… what? One question to ask is, is the Jewish comedy of today related in any way to the Jewish comedy of yesterday? And if so, how? Are there themes in Jewish comedy that go all the way back to the beginning of Jewish thought, and if so, what are they, how were they represented historically, and how do they show up in contemporary examples?

Wanna know? Jeremy Dauber wrote the book on the subject, Jewish Comedy: A Serious History.

We spoke recently in his office at Columbia University about how comedy evolves through context, the "complicated relationship of ownership and loss" among contemporary Jewish comedians in America, what's so funny about fart jokes, and whether or not it's possible to hide inside an apple pie. You'll see.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

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Peter Himmelman had momentum. Before he had a decades long career, videos on MTV (back when there were videos on MTV), Grammy and Emmy nominations, Parents Choice Awards, critical acclaim, a family, TV and movie scores… before any of that, he had momentum. Peter came out swinging, with something prove and something to offer. He was motivated in part by what he describes here as a "reigning sense of isolation".

He grew up in a Minneapolis suburb and came of age in the 70's at a time when funk and punk were both beginning to flourish and "children were still allowed to be feral". By the time he graduated from high school, there was no question to him or his family that he was going to be some kind of a musician. He started hanging out in the predominantly black North Side area of Minneapolis, tagging along with soul singer Alexander O'Neal, and doing his best imitation of blues musician Luther Allison. He tells me "maybe learning is not really possible without modeling - through that modeling you gain some mastery, and if you have courage to continue you might find something original."

Peter started playing music with a group of friends in high school, some of whom he still plays with today. He convinced them not to go to college and instead to focus on their band Sussman Lawrence, a new wave band with an absurdist lyrical bent. He developed an outrageous stage persona that, as one former band mate described, "made Mick Jagger look like Pat Boone." He was drawn to the stage, compelled to create, and naturally comfortable in the spotlight.

When his father died, Peter was only in his early 20s. That loss reoriented his life and his work. He became more observant in his Judaism, he got married (he and his wife, Maria Dylan - daughter of Bob Dylan - have been married for over 30 years), he started writing more emotionally honest songs. Today, some 40 years later, Peter Tells me his is "letting go of the need for the love of strangers."

In our conversation, Peter tells me about finding "beauty in tragedy", confronting "the harsh architecture of now", and unpacks questions of ergonomics, economics, loss, discovery, desire, faith, fearlessness, impermanence, songwriting, real estate, college tuition, doing meaningful work, and performing naked… from the sacred to the profane, it's all here.

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Richard J. Davidson had an intuition early on that the mind was fundamental to human experience. As a child of the 60s he believed early on that "if we wanted to promote a different way of seeing the world, we needed to change our minds."

At the same time that he began to dabble in meditation and mind training, he also became a serious student and began a path that ultimately became his life's work. He is the founder and chair of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. As Davidson explains it, the mission of the Center is to "cultivate well being and relieve suffering through a scientific understanding of the mind."

Davidson has been a longtime friend of the Dalai Lama, and in fact it was the Dalai Lama himself who encouraged and even challenged him to find a way to bring together his two interests (meditation and science) and communicate his findings. Time Magazine named Davidson one of "The 100 Most Influential People in the World" in 2006.

We met up recently at the Center for Healthy Minds in Madison to talk about his personal journey and how it intersects with his work, why he sees this as a crucial moment for humanity and what mind training can do to help, why "reality is a movie", his relationship with the Dalai Lama and how that has informed his choices, what it means to meditate with compassion, and what jazz bassist Charles Mingus has to do with any of this.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

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Chris Potter is an incredibly influential saxophone player. Downbeat Magazine has called him "one of the most studied (and copied) saxophonists on the planet". In this introspective and philosophical conversation he talks about art, the search for something new, what motivates him today, what he sees as his role, responsibility and contribution to the history of jazz.

www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast https://www.chrispottermusic.com/

David Maraniss has a motto: go there. What he means is that when he's researching one of his books, whether it's a biography of a person or the history of a place and time, he believes that in order to fully understand the story, he has to go to the physical location. Not, like, just for a weekend. He really goes there. He moves in.

But there's another meaning behind the phrase "go there". He moves in, not only to the space, but also to the nuance, subtlety, complexity of a life, of a time, of the history, sociology, feeling of his subject. He gets totally obsessed. He says he can't write a book about something if he's not obsessed with it.

Fortunately, throughout his career, he has managed to get obsessed with plenty. He's written many celebrated biographies including books about Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Vince Lombardi, and Roberto Clemente, and books about social, political and cultural importance (like Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed The World and They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America 1967 among others). Often his books appear on best seller lists.

David has been affiliated with the Washington Post for more than forty years as an editor and writer, and twice won Pulitzer Prizes at the newspaper.

His new book A Good American Family is both a continuation and a departure for him. It tells the story of his own family and is framed around an event that happened in 1952 when David's father was called before HUAC (The House Un-American Activities Committee) and outed as a Communist during the Red Scare.

Those who were called to testify and didn't cooperate by naming other Communists were blacklisted, and that's exactly what happened to his father.

But the book also examines much larger issues around that event, including the ongoing question of what it means to be and who is American, the influence of extreme ideologies in the 20th century, and the ways in which mental health and personal tragedy are handled in families.

We talked about his general process & approach, the techniques he uses, and the values that inform his work. For example, he says at one point that he believes that "all creative arts are in some sense dependent on magic". We also considered the role of the press in America, traditionally and how it's being tested in today's political climate.

Like much of David's work, this episode is both timely and timeless. Who informed his values as a journalist? What does it mean to be a nonfiction story teller? Where does he feel most at home? When is it time to go swimming? Why is the lost art of letter writing so important to historians? Can we really ever really know what someone else is thinking? It's all here.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

Musician, singer, writer, producer, philosopher... Ben Sidran is a hard person to define. He belongs in multiple categories, or none at all. He says that his main focus throughout a career that began 50 years ago has been to document what he saw, felt, and heard, by way of various "idioms" (including performances, interviews, essays, recordings, etc.). That's why he sees himself primarily as a journalist. Or at least, he sees what he does as a form of journalism.

I've been engaged in a series of conversations - one long conversation really - with Ben Sidran since before I could really talk. We often pick up where we left off days, weeks or even years earlier, on any number of topics. So to conduct a formal interview with him is almost impossible for me. There's simply too much history between us, because I know him so well, because we've been over it a hundred times before, because he's my dad.

We're more comfortable co-hosting, discussing, debating, having more open ended conversations. In fact, he has even co-hosted some episodes of this podcast with me (Welcome To Copenhagen, Newport Jazz, The Election, What It Felt Like In Paris, and Remembering Tommy LiPuma). And we've worked together on musical projects since I was a boy. I'm proud to have produced his most recent records, toured and performed with him for over 20 years. We always just called it jamming. "Let's jam," we'd say.

On the occasion of his 76th birthday I decided to try for a more classic kind of long form interview. I wanted to know, how does it feel to be 76? Does it live up to his expectations? How has the world changed for him? How has he changed in the world? Of course, the conversation takes plenty of turns and twists, but we somehow managed to stay on task and the episode is a lot of fun.

Here he talks about falling in love with bebop as a young boy, counter culture in the 1960s, jazz as a form of journalism, how to get paid like a musician, his proudest moments, writing a misunderstood rock and roll anthem, getting to Carnegie hall, facing fears, and what he learned from his heroes (including Phil Woods, Art Blakey, and Mose Allison).

As a special birthday gift gift to him, I wrote this song and published the video this week as well. It's a song about continuity, about memory, about desire, about family. I think it's the most personal song I have ever written.

https://youtu.be/FMwZ8zUgFy4

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

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No matter what Richard Julian is doing, he "just wants it to be awesome". As a songwriter, he says he was arrogant before he probably deserved to be, and in fact that it "took years to get beaten into the submission of humility." That may be so, but along the way he wrote some pretty fantastic songs. His album Slow New York (2006) helped to put him on the map and place him squarely in the center of the musical scene from which Norah Jones had emerged a few years earlier. In fact he and Jones still have a country band together, The Little Willies.

But, as he tells it, he was already 15 years into a music career by then, a veritable veteran of the New York songwriter scene, a practiced in the art of "making something out of nothing, taking blood from a stone", which is how he describes songwriting.

So maybe it was just a matter of time before Julian decided he needed to step away from the city he sang about so often, and disappear into the Bywater in New Orleans. Pretty soon he was writing songs like "Die in Nola" about his newly adopted town, and how he had no plans to leave. But leave he did, heading back to New York. He landed in the Bed Stuy neighborhood in Brooklyn, bought a building (he says, "I'm the only guy who ever bought a building with no money") with his friend Arthur Kell, and opened Bar Lunatico, a music venue, bar and restaurant.

In this textured, rollicking, mezcal fueled conversation recorded on a hot summer night in Brooklyn, Richard tells the story of how "a blue collar boy from Delaware" came to be one of the most celebrated songwriters of his generation in New York, watched some of his friends get famous and others get lost, and end up negotiating the ever shifting Brooklyn demographics as a club owner in Bed Stuy.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on iTunes and consider supporting the podcast on Patreon! And now you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify!

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https://www.barlunatico.com/