Wayne Shorter

Wayne Shorter reflects on music, Buddhism, and the unknowability of life with equal parts sincerity and surreal humor. He describes the way in which great jazz cannot be rehearsed, asking “How do you rehearse the unexpected?” after explaining humanity’s possible need for an entirely new alphabet, and the discovery of life’s meaning during teeth brushing. Saxophonist, composer and band leader, the cosmic and inimitable Shorter has collaborated with all the greats: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Freddie Hubbard, Chick Corea and so many others. Winner of 12 Grammy awards, many of his compositions have become standards.

TRANSCRIPT:

Tania Ketenjian:
Hello, welcome to Sight Unseen. My name is Tania Ketenjian, and I'm your host. Sight Unseen is a half-hour weekly program presenting candid conversations with the artists of our time. This week on the show, legendary jazz musician, composer, and Buddhist Wayne Shorter who is here in the Bay Area to play to a rapturous crowd at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley. Widely regarded as jazz's greatest living composer, Wayne Shorter has played with all the other great jazz musicians of his time: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Chick Corea, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner, and countless others. From 1964 to 1970, he joined the Miles Davis Quintet composing extensively for the band, including songs on E.S.P., Nefertiti, and many others. After leaving the Quintet in 1970, Shorter created the fusion group Weather Report. He's recorded over 20 albums in his career, has won several Grammy Awards, last one being in 2004 for Best Instrumental Jazz Album titled Alegría. We're listening to a track from that album right now. Beyond that, Shorter is a devout Buddhist, and in this interview, while we did speak about music, Shorter took the conversation to a different level, speaking in metaphors about life, about trust and understanding. Here, someone has just handed him his horn, and he's holding it in his hand, saying he wants his instrument to get to know him. Sitting in his dressing room with musicians corralling outside, I asked him what he meant by that. This is what he had to say.


Wayne Shorter:
Some musicians, like for instance Sonny Rollins, I kind of know that he never really lets his horn out of his sight or in the hands of someone else, you know, like to take for overhauling or, you know, mechanical engine, you know, somebody fixing it. And they'll take it and say, "I'll bring it back tomorrow." Even though he knows the person very well, you know, because I've heard— one time I heard he took a limousine from where he lives, you know, he lives in a very incognito area somewhere, and he took it into town of Boston, and it's almost like a limo for the horn. But anyway, everything has life, no matter what the shape— what do you call it— the composition. It's all these molecules and everything. Everything has a life cycles or spirals, you know. I think every time somebody invents something, that's always saying to us there's no such thing as the end, you know, or there's no such thing as beginning, you know. I think we get in trouble when we set parameters like rules about how something began and where it's going to go. And then you start living your life accordingly to, you know, and thinking that that's reality, you know, and like the fantasy is not reality. But if you look into fantasy, you might see that in many aspects of fantasy, fantasy, that fantasy can be reality, and this reality can be the fantasy. And it can hurt you too, because people will actually give their lives for false things, which is like a true fantasy, you know. And they'll give their lives for ideas that they actually believe are their own. So then you get a gray area about what is a human being and what is a fairy.


Tania Ketenjian:
It's very true, and I mean, I know you practice Buddhism, and there's so much about what we believe is actually real in Buddhism, what we rely upon as real or permanent, and the notion of a beginning and an end and a lack of that. When I was thinking about the kinds of things I wanted to ask you, I was thinking about how much your Buddhist practice comes into your music, and beyond that, comes into your life. And obviously it's just pouring out of you, I imagine, you know, just by what you're saying.


Wayne Shorter:
Yeah, well, you know, the music to me is really— it's a mystical endeavor, one of the essences of life. And it's among the little essences together with the big essence. We have music and film, acting and writing novels. And besides what kind of— the kind of financial gratuity you can get from making films and writing music and playing music, There is something very mystical about film, music, dance. Some people think that music can heal things and all that. Well, people start wars. They make a charge to music, you know. Bagpipes and all kinds of, you know, themes of their country, you know, anthems. Making a charge. And some people will believe that, will stick to the fact that something is real when you can feel the actual, say, something piercing you, metal. That's it, now this is reality. Something hitting you, slapping you, or being blown up. So now we gotta get into the perception that tragedy can be thought of as, not just all of it, but when you look at the scope of life, that tragedy, you can say that tragedy is temporary. You can hold on to tragedy, We call that attachment.

Attachments can cause suffering, continuous suffering. But our perception of life has to lead us to evolve to a point where we see that the temporary and eternal— this is what people who want to, they say, contemplating committing suicide, that suicide is only a process. The road is still there. And some people think that if you want to stop something, you get rid of this person or that person, kill them. That's only a process. And I think, I know that the eternal process is gonna go on whether people believe it or not. A person who's limited to violent action without any evolution of philosophical investigation, ongoing investigation, they're going to be in the way of this eternal process until they can— you know, you got to get out of the way until you get ready. A moving train, get out of the way until you're ready to jump on. Even these people who do these violent things, they will not end the essence of their life. Because I think, I'm pretty sure that there's a part of everyone's life, it's gonna be probably devastating to some people who have hardcore, deep-seated ideas about what life should be or what we are. But there's a— I think there's a part of— not I think, I know— there's a part of every life, human life, that has never been touched by evil or good. And it's like a little baby that— that little baby won't wake up until the coast is clear. You know what I mean? And all that stuff they talk about karma and all that, you know. So what I'm talking about is the challenge to play this anywhere, stage, play it. A lot of people play things about love or they write a piece of music about how a certain girl, you know, like guy-girl stuff, guy-boy-girl stuff. She done left me and all that, and I'm sad, and my baby don't love me no more. Every day I get the blues.


Tania Ketenjian:
It's a common theme.


Wayne Shorter:
Or you put it in one word and it's, "Every day I don't get the blues." People would have a really hard time relating to that.


Tania Ketenjian:
They need to hear that someone's getting the blues because they feel that way.


Wayne Shorter:
Yeah. And some people said, "The blues makes me happy." You know, when bebop came along, some of the— one of the guys, his name was Harry Edison. He was playing Count Basie Orchestra. He used to play the trumpet behind some of Frank Sinatra's things, along with Buddy Hackett and those. But in the Jackie Gleason Orchestra stuff, those things like "Three Small Hours in the Morning," that kind of music. But some of these guys, when bebop came along, and Billie Holiday, and Charlie Parker and all that, and Lester Young, they started to say things like, they wouldn't say the blues. They would say, instead of saying, you want to play the blues today? They'd say, let's play some blouse. You want to play some blouse? This is more like Lester Young. And Lester Young would say, what time is it? It was 1 o'clock. He said, what time is it, Prez? He called them Prez. 'cause he was the president of everything, of hipness and everything. And it was 1 o'clock, he says, "Prez, what time is it?" He would say, "Ace of bells a ding dong, and ace is one." Or like, if the hotel bill or something that was too high, very high, or the big bar bill, or maybe a hotel, and he's standing in the lobby and someone asking him, "Hey, Prez, you look like you, You have a heavy hotel bill to pay," and he look up at the ceiling and say, "Chandelier," because it's high as a chandelier.

And then he played like that. And he was not just being slick and everything. He was, you know, even though he passed away, He was discouraged about his sound being exploited. The sound he had on the tenor sax was being exploited. And that's how he felt. You could feel the— see the admiration, hear the admiration of his sound through other people who were gathering nuts in May. I mean, you know, going to the bank more than he did. So, and that can, see, if someone tries to get Miles Davis's attitude and sound, it's more than the sound, it's attitude and life. You can't live the life of that person, of the other person. So, just like movies, making movies, writing novels, we need more people who critique music and critique novels to come on this side of the fence and start artifying. Do this, this. We need more novelists in America of various forms of ideas. We need more imagination. Now, I say now's the time for the hardcore business-minded person to start thinking of taking a chance in the creative world and try to create something that money can't buy.


Tania Ketenjian:
And you know, I think in some ways that's happening because people are, you know, people are not being able to make money in the means that they were able to before, and they're tapping into something else inside of them, some dream that they had, and they're willing to give it a try and possibly push boundaries that they weren't able to before. And just on the point of critics having to be on the side of the creative. I was recently interviewing a filmmaker and he was saying that, you know, I never understand why if I get a bad review, do you really understand what it takes to do this? I mean, do you get what it takes to make this movie or make this music or write this book? I mean, once you really get that, maybe you'll critique it a bit differently.


Wayne Shorter:
Yeah.


Tania Ketenjian:
You know, it's— and I do think that if you're really going to criticize or you know, be critical, you've got to know what it took to do it in the first place.


Wayne Shorter:
You know, everyone should write a novel. They say, like, they have schools now in Europe and they name them, you know, like say a department, certain university of department of my old partner in music, Joe Zawinul, Joseph Zawinul. He said that, he was telling me before he passed away that they have a school there and there's an apartment called the Zawinul It's dedicated to him, but he said, "Before you put my name on any art portal going to a classroom, I would want each student, say a vocal student, a vocalist major, a voice major, or whatever, to study the drums." Not just the piano, study the drums.


Tania Ketenjian:
Get that rhythm down.


Wayne Shorter:
Yeah. Get involved with reading rhythms and drum. And the same way, they used to say when I went to New York University years ago, they would say people, maybe some kids should think when they had these electives to take, why don't you just think about philosophy as an elective? But me, I was thinking about more people should, kids, study all kinds of philosophy, just philosophy, period. I know a lot of the kids singing hip-hop and everything, that's my philosophy. I'm talking it already. Even though you might have the current day language code and all that stuff, it has its repetitive, like, been there, done that. You know, for who?


Tania Ketenjian:
Well, you know, we have these fundamental emotions and experiences regardless of generation or language or culture. You know, these things that we want to express, that we need to express, these things that we're all really searching for. Same thing, pretty much.


Wayne Shorter:
Actually, I don't think too many people think about as an exercise. Is there, like a mathematician, is there such a thing as a new number? Give me another letter in all alphabets. I want a new— not just a new language. It might lead to, but the new language might have to encompass ideas that have never been thought about unless the hard-headed people will open up and just admit these new ideas into current languages. And new languages will evolve. Maybe it will not even involve speaking.


Tania Ketenjian:
Well, I think that's what's really stimulating about jazz, you know, different musicians coming together. They don't necessarily— they've never, maybe never played together, and they're creating new sounds, like a new letter, like a new number that maybe they hadn't imagined would have happened before. It really tests your boundaries, I think, jazz, as a musician and as a listener. And I remember you were saying— I read a really great interview, lots of great interviews, but I read one of them. You were talking about jazz being democratic, and I thought that was just such a great way of saying it, really offering every single person a voice, a chance. And, you know, a possibility for change.


Wayne Shorter:
Yeah, yeah. And the quality or the attribute or the— I don't really call it a quality, attribute— the trust. There are many neighborhoods where people don't speak to each other, and they don't even see each other. They always say, well, everyone's out working, trying to maintain these homes in Beverly Hills, trying to stay out of foreclosure. It's working. That's a general cop-out. There's been a lot of neglect and trampling on the pearls of wisdom. There's been a lot of trampling on the pearls of wisdom by something called human beings. They blame it on the swine. That's in some scriptures, and I know that. But it's time for the human being to evolve, to become— see, I want to play music that expresses becoming more, the effort to become more human, which I have to do at home too.

I have to do both ways. I have to kick myself in the face and say, "Uh-uh, don't just be like that, do that thing when you're talking about it." Or becoming more human and becoming more than what your name is. My name is Charles. You look in the mirror and say, "That's me, I'm Charles. Charles is a human being." But then you reach under there and say, what's your real name? Not Homo sapiens. What's your name? Who are you? So becoming more human is like your identity, your real identity, the real identity, the more human you become, the more you remember the promise you have made. They say the foolish will always forget the profound promises they have made. It's almost like we were all ultimate state of wisdom and we all decided to give ourselves assignment to reinforce this ultimate state. Have you ever tried to think like, what is life? You know, like when you're by yourself, you say, what is life? What is it? What is it? What is, you know, the mystery of what is it? And then you stop asking and then you keep doing what you're doing. You might be brushing your teeth. And then that, the residue of what is it is in you. Then all of a sudden there's like a little break a little break, and this answer almost comes, and you almost like, your heart stops, and then it closes up again. You ever get that?


Tania Ketenjian:
Well, my meditation teacher says that after the last breath has ended and the first breath has begun, there's this, you know, there's this moment that you just, you feel it. I mean, it's there, but, and you want to capture it, but then you can't, and well, yeah, and I know exactly what you're talking about, yeah.


Wayne Shorter:
Some people be saying, I say, actually, the human being knows everything. Like, we know everything. We're not permitting ourselves to do that because we are covered with, we have covered ourselves historically and everything with an armor of delusions and illusions. You have to start peeling these coats of mayo and thorns and everything off. Again, the challenge of doing what we do without rehearsing has a lot to do with this trust and becoming more and more evolving as human beings. When they ask us, do we rehearse? Do you rehearse? No. How do you rehearse the unexpected? And when you rehearse something, you rehearse, you're going to be okay. It'll be solid, perfected, and all that stuff. But to me, something that's rehearsed and solid and perfected, it's almost like a frozen statue. All you do is walk around and admire it. Wow, that's great. That's great. But do you ever— Do people ever say that like, this is, something is great before they think it deserves to be addressed in that way? I'm thinking about Obama for a minute.


Tania Ketenjian:
Yeah, absolutely. No, that's a big, he's a great example, but there are lots of examples like that.


Wayne Shorter:
And people don't get it, like the choice of getting married or not. The trust thing, if somebody, you meet, a man meets a woman, and then he's feeling that she's great, but he's still afraid to, you know, no need to make a commitment because you're not gonna be committing yourself, but you might commit yourself to something that seems not to be human. Some endeavor, baseball, surgery, and they say, "I'm doing something for humanity, and I'm not just, I'm a surrogate." You know, that's, yeah. But the job of becoming more and more gathering, letting your wisdom and everything come out, that's the long way. And I would say the long way is the shortest way.


Tania Ketenjian:
Well, there are two things that I'm just gonna address. One thing you said, you know, music is healing. A couple of months ago, I did a story on perfect pitch. What Miles Davis has perfect pitch. I learned that people with Alzheimer's, that, you know, they can't remember their partners or they can't remember their kids, but they can remember music. And the fact that— I love that, that idea that it is so inside you. I mean, it's not a cognitive thing. It's something so deep that you just feel it. And just along the trust issue, you know, as a listener, you really have to let go and trust when you're listening too. And it really allows you to peel layers as you're listening. So I really hope tonight— I imagine a lot of people in the audience are just going to they're gonna get to a different place than they normally do, 'cause some things are gonna fall away.


Wayne Shorter:
Oh yeah. It's breaking apart. It's all falling apart. What they're doing is falling. They're having train wrecks and everything. Wow. And then to depict struggle and victory and struggle and victory and struggle and victory is almost like A human being born, birth, something, birth, growth, suffering, living, and decay. And then it's like the waves on the ocean, like each person's like a wave. And that wave, you can say it's like 90 years, it's 90 years, then it goes back in the ocean. Now the ocean, that's the place.


Tania Ketenjian:
It's deep.


Wayne Shorter:
The ocean or the essence of life. And the music that I'm working on now, I'm thinking of it as a metaphor for the many wishes that you have for how you want life to be, what you would wish life to be. It's supposed to be an eternal adventure. Never get bored. An adventure, and every time you break through your limitations, it's surprise, surprise, surprise. And right now, we getting shaken up because people have to learn how to deal with the unknown for the first time on a mass level. Since it's like next door paper, person living next to each other, they're unknown to each other. So, "Well, you don't want to deal with that? How about deal with this?" Then you have to, people start to hold hands together, "Okay, we can work this out together."


Tania Ketenjian:
If music can take you to making you face how to deal with the unknown, if music can— that which is essentially the basic element of life, you know, to really trust that the unknown is okay, and that's, that's a magical thing.



Wayne Shorter:
The scriptwriters have to do this too. Movies, you know, all kinds of things. Every now and then you see something on stage or hear about something on stage like But there's not enough of that stuff. It's a comfort zone thing. Well, I think the money can't take care of the comfort zone now, so. How come things can't be like they used to be? We want to recover. They didn't even recover like it used to be. There's all kinds of tsunamis.


Tania Ketenjian:
Are you looking forward to them?


Wayne Shorter:
No, I'm talking— there's actually a tsunami happening. It's invisible. And the non-believers won't know that it was a tsunami until it's over. Okay? A tsunami from inside. Inside the human. Depression going on, depression. That's tsunami.


Tania Ketenjian:
My husband said the other day that life is like, you know, you're walking through a rainforest, and you've got a machete, and you're making a path, and you're like, "I'm not getting anywhere. I can't see in front of me. I don't know really what's behind me." And then you get some ways down, some ways down, and you realize, "Wow, that whole time I was making a path, and I didn't even know it."


Wayne Shorter:
Yeah, trust. Trust oneself. You have to trust.


Tania Ketenjian:
What is that? What is it in your hand?


Wayne Shorter:
This is called an Omamori Gohonzon. It was made, first made for a young girl in the 13th century when she was sick. And this is a lotus flower. A lotus flower. Cause and effect. Simultaneous cause and effect because this is the only flower in the world that thrives in the swamp. It's in this muddy area and where it thrives, where the actual stems go down and everything, that area clears. It's clear, it's been very clear. And we're like lotus flowers in this ruddy, what we call violent world, and if we unlock the wisdom, the secret of wisdom that's in us that's locked up, that the area that we in, the area starts to clear and it starts to communicate to all the other babies that are asleep inside. And they say, "Is the coast clear to come out now? Can I wake up?" This is it. On the inside, these are— this is like a mirror of your inside, of your life, your ultimate highest degree of your life. He said, "Don't try to convert the devil." Make demons and devils your allies. Oh, somebody, "Oh, that's like tai chi." You know what people like to say, "That's just like." It ain't just like.


Tania Ketenjian:
Those were the words of jazz musician and composer Wayne Shorter. I spoke to him in his dressing room at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley. To learn more about Shorter and where he will be playing next, please visit vervemusicgroup.com/wayneshorter. Next week on the show, artist Candice Bright speaking about her video piece at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art titled Mother. My name is Tania Ketenjian and this is Sight Unseen, a half-hour weekly program featuring candid conversations with the artists of our time. You're listening to Resonance 104.4 FM, the UK's first radio art station.