Rabble Without A Cause
Wednesday June 6th, 2012 with Bernard Stepien
Extraordinary New York bassist William Parker

After reviewing the Ottawa International Jazz Festival for a couple weeks, a good idea might be to warm up with the Montreal Suoni del Popolo off festival right before. One artist that is repeatedly featured at Suoni del Popolo is the extraordinary bassist William Parker that has now a four decades track record of developing a distinctive sound and technique on avant-garde bass. Parker has catapulted the bass into a different orbit as the traditional rhythm section role. He fully extended his forefathers innovations, Jimmy Garrison, Mingus and many others in sculpting a unique soloing style loaded with rich textures using the arco and elaborate melodies that you would expect normally from horns or pianos. He has also used this soloing style even in band contexts, especially with the great Cecil Taylor, David S. Ware, Charles Gayle, Matthew Shipp and Jameel Moondoc. Most of us here in Ottawa discovered him sometimes in the late ‘70s at the Saw Gallery. We still haven’t recovered from that explosion of energy. Besides playing the bass, William Parker is also a very articulate activist and organizer always with the focus of Music along with social issues. A couple of weeks ago, I landed at Montreal’s Cheap Thrills where I found this triple CD box of pure solo William Parker. His liner notes in a way sum up his art: “Fräulein Miller owned about 200 slaves in South Carolina. Legend has it she was a benevolent master who would save pieces of stale cake for the slaves from time to time. This was something she was proud of. Then one day several slaves made their way into the kitchen stealing large knives. They had made the decision to cut the throats of the overseers and escape. At the crucial moment just before bloodshed was to occur they heard the sound of a low string instrument. It was a bass being bowed and the music was like a dance but you couldn’t dance to it without listening and you couldn’t listen without feeling it. These displaced and tortured Africans held out their arms, they intertwined them like branches from a tree. Becoming unified as one voice they looked in the slave master’s eyes turning and walked off the plantation into the horizon never to be seen again.”