A Quote by Hans-Ulrich Obrist
My great inspiration has always been Studs Terkel, who is a wonderful American oral historian. He was a radio DJ at first, interviewed a lot of jazz musicians, and at some point started to interview Americans about work.
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To say that the Afro American created jazz doesn't mean anything bad about Anglo Americans, and I always teach my younger jazz musicians that at this point the entirety of the American tradition is your heritage, and you need to know it.
She became politically conscious thanks to Studs Terkel and the radio. She started reading all the books we brought home from college and was a great fan of Noam Chomsky. She was a real lefty and yet was not able to meet her dream of becoming an artist. She got drafted into motherhood big time - seven kids - and that wasn't the life that she had planned. So she opened the path so that I could be the artist that she wanted to be.
I remember reading [ Studs Terkel's] "Working" when it first came out and just finding that very powerful. I was going into community organizing. What stuck was to reveal the sacredness of ordinary people's lives. That everybody has a story. And I think Studs is terrific at drawing out that shimmering quality of people's everyday struggles.
I visited New York in '63, intending to move there, but I noticed that what I valued about jazz was being discarded. I ran into `out-to-lunch' free jazz, and the notion that groove was old-fashioned. All around the United States, I could see jazz becoming linear, a horn-player's world. It made me realize that we were not jazz musicians; we were territory musicians in love with all forms of African-American music. All of the musicians I loved were territory musicians, deeply into blues and gospel as well as jazz.
Oral history is a research method. It is a way of conducting long, highly detailed interviews with people about their life experiences, often in multiple interview sessions. Oral history allows the person being interviewed to use their own language to talk about events in their life and the method is used by researchers in different fields like history, anthropology and sociology.
I'm friends with Studs Terkel.
My biggest inspiration is black America and what they've done in the arts. I have always felt like an outsider in America, and what black Americans have done to add their chapter to this book called the American dream, and to be so unapologetic and true, and have added so much to art and culture in the world. Some of the greatest inspirations in my life have been black Americans. And I just wanted to say thank you. They've been a huge inspiration, to myself and this country.
Usually, you get to interview that one girl who plays the sister on some Disney show - you interview that girl a lot - but sometimes, every once in a while, you get to interview a legend. I have interviewed some amazingly iconic people, including Michelle Obama, Oprah, Sidney Poitier and Judy Dench. These people are legit icons.
Influences at home, including classical music, were not all specifically jazz, but the family radio was always on... So there was always some connection to American culture, to American music.
The black hole in democracy is integrity. The great unspoken is integrity. When integrity is not first and foremost, it's quite palpable but not visible. It's always there. Jazz highlights it because musicians and jazz always represented a high level of integrity.
I did a radio interview; the DJ's first question was "Who are you?" I had to think. Is this guy really deep, or did I drive to the wrong station?
Musicians like to converse. There's always interesting conversation with musicians - with classical musicians, with jazz musicians, musicians in general.
I remember I did quite a lot of interviews when the book and the CD came out, and I did a drivetime interview for Radio London or something. You wouldn't immediately associate the music on Ocean Of Sound with drivetime radio, but people found things that they liked, and the DJ was playing some records at 5 o'clock in the afternoon on a weekday.The man who was playing them said to me, "That Peter Brotzmann track, it's like having your head boiled in acid."
I had grown up as a fan of Studs Terkel. In Chicago he sort of looms large and is mentioned often.
I've always been fascinated with radio and broadcasting. I did fake radio shows as a kid, where I was a DJ and stuff like that.
I started a radio show where I interviewed comics. And I interviewed Leno and Seinfeld and John Candy and Father Guido Sarducci and Garry Shandling, all when I was 16. And they kind of told me what to do.
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