THC: What is your impression of that word, the history of it?

MR: Jazz means fornication. There were several young men who were accused of raping a young lady, the Scottsboro Boys.

THC: A white woman?

MR: A white girl. They were all young people. The girl wrote a letter to a friend of hers that said, “those boys didn’t jazz me.” Their lawyer, Leibowitz, used that to break the case. In those days, if you touched or looked sideways at a white woman, they could accuse you of anything. That’s one example. Aside from that, when the great minds have that label put on them, it’s a form of segregation that denies those people from being able to fully participate in the world of music. I read an interview of Charlie Parker in Vanity Fair. The interviewer asked him why he didn’t like the word “Bop.” Bird [Parker] probably winced at the word. He asked him what would he like people to call it? Bird said, simply music. So now, you’re not just relegated to these little joints where the acoustics are bad, pianos are bad, just a lot of negative stuff goes on in these places. This again gets back to the Scottsboro Boys. Check all this out.

THC: Lincoln Center recently commissioned a piece called Big Train, with a drum feature in a section called “Engine.” Is it fitting to consider the drums as the engine of the ensemble?