Artist Profile: Eddie Marshall

by Jesse Hamlin

For Black History Month, Datebook interviewed 20 Bay Area African American artists about their creative processes, influences and goals. The profiles will run Monday through Friday this month.

Eddie Marshall, a noted jazz drummer and composer, has been an indispensable presence on the Bay Area music scene since the late '60s. The grandson of famed early-jazz drummer Kaiser Marshall, he grew up in Springfield, Mass., where his father was a pianist and where he cut his teeth in jazz and R&B bands. Marshall went on to play with a string of top artists, including Stan Getz, Freddie Hubbard, Dionne Warwick and Bobby Hutcherson. A committed teacher who's now involved with the music program at the KIPP Academy in San Francisco's Bayview district, Marshall, 67, is also an accomplished composer who received a grant from Chamber Music America to write a suite for his group Holy Mischief.

Q: What are your thoughts about Black History Month and have they changed from years past?

A: I live black history every day, and to have it put in a one-month context is insulting to me. I've always felt that way. Black history is part of American history and shouldn't be separated any more than Mexican history should. Why wasn't I taught about the real implications of slavery and racism when I was in grade school? Why did you have to wait to take a black history course in college to really know what happened? To talk about black history for 30 days, and then wait another 11 months instead of having a continuum in our schools, is ridiculous.

Q: Who were your key influences?

A: Art Blakey, Max Roach, Philly Joe Jones, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane. Art Blakey and Max Roach were the first jazz drummers I heard, and I just started loving that music. My uncle, Roddy Bridges, was a big influence. Because when he got drafted during the Korean War, when I was 16, he left me all his jazz albums.

Q: Anything you want to say about jazz and race?

A: African Americans invented jazz music, but it's an international music now. Most black people don't even like jazz music. And most white people don't like jazz music. It's an equal-opportunity art form that has very little support. But I love it. I just love to hear jazz from other countries. I'm really hooked on this West African music from Senegal and Bali, and these bands that sound like Weather Report. A few years ago I was in Kosovo, where I got a little band together to play bebop, and they played me some of their fusion stuff, and it was like belly-dancing music with an attitude.

Q: What do you hope people get from your music?

A: Joy and understanding.

2/13/06

Source: http://sfgate.com

Return to: Black Music Archives

Web afgen.com

Search:
Keywords: