Olu Dara

Olu Dara

MR. DARA'S NEIGHBORHOOD
Olu Dara Brings It All Back Home on Neighborhoods
Trumpeter, songwriter, and guitarist Olu Dara comes from Natchez, Mississippi, but after a stint in the Navy he settled in New York City, where he played wide-open jazz, wrote and performed in plays, and led his own dance band. All of this comes into play on Neighborhoods, a CD that can't simply be classified as blues because it has an ancient, global feel. A Renaissance man of music, Dara may be best known from his days on the loft jazz scene in the 70's, which made him quite comfortable with loose, improvised music. He explains how it all fits together in the following interview with bn.com's Roberta Penn.

Barnes & Noble.com: What New York City neighborhood do you live in now?

Olu Dara: Harlem.

B&N.com: Were any of the songs on Neighborhoods inspired by your life in Harlem?

od: The whole album is because I was living in Harlem when I got the album together, and if I'd been living somewhere else it wouldn't have happened like this. The environment helps me round out my creative ideas.

B&N.com: There's been a lot of talk about the revitalization, some call it gentrification, of Harlem, but you don't have a problem with that?

od: What's on the album is not something that is happening now. It was in the past, when I first moved here 15 years ago. Like Queens Ridge in Harlem, they fixin' it up, taking away the culture and replacing it with Old Navy and Disney stores.

B&N.com: You've said that your music is "totally authentic." What do you mean by that? It is actually a hybrid of blues, R&B, jazz, and African?

od: Yes, it is both a hybrid and authentic. And what I mean by that is were not playing at the music. When we play highlife in a room full of West Africans, they respond as they would to West Africans playing it. It's the same with blues, everything works in the culture it comes from.

B&N.com: You have a long history with the loft jazz scene and the avant-garde -- what prompted you to move in the more rootsy direction of In the World:From Natchez to New York and Neighborhoods?

od: Though I made my first record in '98, I've been playing this music for more than 20 years. Most people think I'm avant-gardist, but people called me to play and I played. It was something I could do and something that was economically feasible, but my real thing is what you hear on the CD.

B&N.com: Are you into herbal remedies? Is that what inspired "Herbman"?

od: Most definitely, that inspired me and my producer. Every time he would get ill I'd prescribe something for him and he said, 'Why don't you write a song about it? I never went to a doctor when I was growing up in rural Mississippi in the 40s. My grandmother used herbs; most people in her age group used herbs that grew in the yard.

B&N.com: I really like the way a backup singer echoes some of your song phrases. Is that you or another band member?

od: That's me, I overdubbed that. That came from my early days when I would go to my grandmother's church and they'd sing that way. It was a sanctified church.

B&N.com: "Movie Show" is a funny tune, and also a tribute to old movie stars.

od:

B&N.com: Do you go to the movies a lot?

od: I used to when I was a kid. The song has to do with my life when I was very young. I haven't been to movies much since I was 17, but back then we'd go to the movies on Saturday and stay all day.

B&N.com: Cassandra Wilson duets with you on "Used to Be."

od: We've worked together for many years, I've recorded on her CDs, and culturally we are cohorts because she's also from Mississippi. This was an opportunity to work together again. We can both freestyle, and that's what we did with the arrangement. The lyrics were written by a young lady who lives upstairs from me, Akisha McCants.

B&N.com: Your son, the rapper Nas, was on your first release, but he's not here.

od: He was busy when I was making this one. He's producing a movie and he writes screenplays, wrote Belly and starred in it.

B&N.com: You have a long association with the theater as a playwright, composer, and performer. Does that impact your music?

od: The theatre is very important when comes to my music. Three-fourths of the music you hear on my CDs is derivative, comes from theatre work. My songs are like vignettes.

B&N.com: Do you have any theater projects you're working on now?

od: I don't have time now, plus the Black Theatre Organization gave me a lifetime achievement award last summer, and I haven’t gotten a call since then.