Key Concepts Derived from Tony Williams’ Formative Practices
In this chapter I outline in detail the ways in which I interpret that Williams began to understand the qualities of feel, technique and creativity in the drumming of his predecessors and how he adapted these qualities in his own practice. In doing so I describe autotelic personality, heutagogy and entrainment in the context of complex adaptive systems as a model for learning and cultivating originality in jazz drumset performance studies.
Feel, Technique and Creativity
Crucial to Williams’ emergence as one of the most influential drummers in jazz history is the awareness he acquired from personal observation that what he regarded as good drumming reflects a number of specific qualities. According to Williams, only in combination do these qualities “make the perfect drummer” (Williams 1985) and his adaptive modeling of these qualities throughout his career became an essential and identifiable characteristic of his distinctly original musical personality on the drumset.
Williams first identified the qualities as being displayed in the playing of three local Boston drummers in the late 1950s and early 1960s, namely Alan Dawson, William
“Baggy” Grant and an unnamed third drummer19. According to Williams’ analysis, Dawson embodied technique, Grant personified feel, whilst the third drummer represented creativity. When he began investigating the work of drummers from outside Boston later in his youth, Williams deemed that three more widely-known drummers in particular displayed these same qualities with great clarity.
Williams uses the term “feel” to point toward the overall impression Art Blakey’s drumming made on him, also using the terms “passion” and “fire” interchangeably. Similarly, Williams summarises Max Roach’s drumming as embodying “technique” and being “melodic”. Williams also characterises the drumming of Philly Joe Jones with the term “creativity”, stating that he heard Jones play figures that he would not have
expected to hear, and that Jones played in a way that combined many features of Blakey and Roach’s drumming. Williams does not go into any more verbal detail regarding his use of these terms and this forms one of the most significant reasons for the present thesis. There is however considerable evidence in what Williams has said to show that he gained a great deal of insight and ability in his formative years by studying the work of these as well as many other drummers, some of whom I listed earlier. Therefore, Chapters Two to Five are investigations of evidence to justify my own interpretation that:
19
Williams forgot the name of this third drummer during the presentation in which this sentiment was voiced.
1) Feel is the ability to perform the improvisation of musical figures in a variety of conventional and novel ensemble settings in ways that integrate constant high-level affective and mutual musical interaction with the combined musical effect of figures performed simultaneously by each other ensemble member whilst establishing and retaining an autonomous and differentiated musical identity on the drumset, thus exhibiting collective autonomy amongst the ensemble members. Feel is also
characterised by Blakey’s love for “swingin’” that is resultant from his exhortation to “play [music] from the heart”.
2) Technique is the ability to improvise musical figures across the range of the drumset in both ensemble and solo settings that enables dynamic performance utilising
extremes of and gradations between various combinations of the elements of: - volume (loud and soft);
- tempo (fast and slow);
- harmonic density (simple and complex); - melodic motion (stasis and motility); - rhythmic density (continuous and broken); - pitch (high and low);
- timbre (conventional and extended); and - duration (long and short).
With Roach recognising himself as a composer first, technique is also characterised in a drummer’s skill in spontaneously balancing this contrasting array of musical elements when improvising in solo and ensemble contexts.
3) Creativity is the ability to analyse and understand the musical figures one enjoys hearing in the prior work of other drummers in such a way that any number and / or combination of the elements described above—each combining in various ways to constitute musical figures—may be varied independently of each of the other elements in musical improvisation, thus resulting in the emergence of possibly new figures that are adaptively modeled on those past figures and cultivating originality. Creativity is also characterised in Philly Joe Jones’ statement that he is happiest at the time that he newly plays something on the drums that he has never played before, thus revealing his adventurousness.
Autotelic Personality
Although he says that any attempt at developing one’s own individual style per se is unimportant, Williams, by his own reckoning spent a significant portion of his drumming life listening to and thinking about the individual style of each of the drummers mentioned above. In doing so he adaptively modeled rhythmic figures identified in their playing in a way that resulted in the emergence of a differentiated style of his own that he believed a combination of these drummers “would be playing [like] if they were [he]” (Williams 1985). This was not however done as a way of impressing his own personality on the instrument in any self-aggrandising way. In a number of interviews, Williams’ principles reveal an inner urge primarily to understand and pay homage to the tradition of great jazz drummers and to the drumset itself as a sign of respect by putting the importance of the instrument before self-importance, thus
showing signs of possessing an autotelic personality. The musicians he observed inspired him, and so he set about trying to do what they did in his own way:
You know the reason I play the way I do is because when I first started playing, all I ever wanted to do was to sound like Max Roach, was to sound like Art Blakey, was to sound like Philly Joe Jones, was to sound like Louis Hayes, was to sound like Jimmy Cobb, was to sound like Roy Haynes. I really wanted to figure out why they sounded the way they did. I wasn’t interested in my own style. So, I set about playing like these guys religiously, and playing their style because it was just such a wonderful, magical experience. I don’t see that kind of wonder in others. I get guys comin’ up to me – they just got a drumset, they’ve been playin’ maybe four years – and they want their own style. They want to be expressive. I say, ‘Well then, if you want to be expressive, you gotta find out what the instrument will do. And to do that, you gotta go back and find out and get an idea of what’s already been done.’ That’s what the instrument’s all about. (Ephland 1989, 22)
I interpret much of what Williams says here as being part of his primary motivation in his striving to attain a high degree of excellence and therefore propose that he
possessed an autotelic personality. Derived from the composition of two Greek words, auto meaning self, and telos meaning goal, “autotelic” literally means “a self that has self-contained goals” (Csikszentmihalyi 1990, 209). An autotelic activity is “one that is done not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward” (67). Finally, a person with an autotelic personality is someone who has learned to control their own attention and who can, for example, engage in learning for the sake of learning rather than learning for the sake of being
knowledgeable (1997, 129).
Csikszentmihalyi outlines in his work the limited way in which attention functions within individuals. For example, estimates have been made stating that an individual’s
central nervous system can process a maximum of seven “bits” of information—such as differentiated sound—at any one time and that the time taken to discriminate between one set of “bits” and another is approximately 1/18th of a second. By this conclusion, it is possible to process up to 126 “bits” of information per second. These figures are, of course, only speculative and, depending on the point of view they may been seen to be either grossly overestimated or underestimated. Csikszentmihalyi reports that optimists claim that the human being has evolved the proficiency to “chunk” bits of information over time so that many tasks demanding attention become automated over time, making consciousness “infinitely expandable” (1990, 28-29), bearing important relevance to the playing of a drumset as it involves the coordinated performance of polyrhythm and polymeter amongst four limbs.
Regardless of the accuracy of the estimates described above however, fundamental to their importance is the fact that an individual is limited to being able to experience only so much at any given time. Examples of activities that exhaust attention toward the limits of its capacity given by Csikszentmihalyi are 1) walking across a room chewing gum—very little more can be done concurrently in this activity, 2) the inability to truly experience either happiness or sadness when thinking about a problem and 3) the impossibility of running, singing and balancing a chequebook simultaneously (1990, 28). These examples are somewhat obvious in themselves, however, a person must be very careful of the information they consciously allow into their attention at any given time as a person’s ability to retrieve memories, to evaluate them and to decide on an appropriate course of action is determined by their capacity for paying conscious
attention to selecting appropriate and relevant details in the myriad things and events surrounding them at any given moment. All of this information is processed at a maximum speed as described above and one’s ability to do this well depends on one’s ability to ignore superfluous detail, to eliminate distraction at will and to sustain
concentration for as long as is necessary to achieve their goal and no longer.
Csikszentmihalyi refers to attention as psychic energy in the sense that, without energy, no work can be done, and that, in doing work, energy is dissipated (1990, 30-33).
The analysis of Williams’ musical output on the drumset in Chapters Four to Five reveals the interactive improvisation of extremely high-level complex rhythms amongst his four limbs, a skill that takes a considerable amount of physical and psychic energy to perform successfully in the context of an improvising jazz ensemble. Successful interaction within an improvising musical ensemble is determined by the degree of differentiation and integration within the ensemble, a topic also addressed by Csikzsentmihalyi in his discussion of the autotelic personality.
Differentiation and Integration
The more consistently a person is able to effectively concentrate their attention on appropriate and relevant details over time, the more that person, according to Csikszentmihalyi, is said to be in flow and that their quality of life improves toward achieving “optimal experience” more frequently in that the self becomes “more
complex” following each flow experience as the result of the broad psychological processes of differentiation and integration (1990, 41).
Here “differentiation” refers to the process of moving toward uniqueness and separating oneself from others while “integration” refers to the opposite process of moving into union with others “with ideas and entities beyond the self”. A “complex self”, then, is one successful in combining these two paradoxically opposing processes (1990, 40- 42). Here, Csikszentmihalyi points out that
A self that is only differentiated—not integrated—may attain great individual accomplishments, but risks being mired in self-centred egotism. By the same token, a person whose self is based exclusively on integration will be connected and secure, but lack autonomous individuality. Only when a person invests equal amounts of psychic energy in these two processes and avoids both selfishness and conformity is the self likely to reflect complexity. (1990, 42)
Williams’ autotelic drive is obvious when considering his claim that he would spend periods of up to a week at a time practicing all day and not communicating with other people (Cox 1970, 15; Wald 1978, 7). He also claims that when he was a child he was so eager to begin practicing each day that he would “not even bother getting dressed” and that he would play the drums in his pyjamas (Wald 1978, 7). Williams’ passion for learning to play the drums and to make them sound good is revealed in his recollection of crying when listening to drumming that he didn’t enjoy:
The whole idea of the drummer has been a motivating factor for me for many years. Really I love the drums. This is kind of a sappy story, but I remember one time as a kid listening to a band. The drummer was a very cold drummer, and he played louder and louder, and stiffer and stiffer. I looked at him and started crying. I thought, ‘This guy is really playing the drums terribly.’ And I just got very emotional because I really love the drums and I want the drums to sound good. I see a lot of romance and beauty in a drum roll; I really hear it as a
beautiful thing. So the idea of a drummer, and being part of that fraternity, has been strong, and it has carried me. Max Roach was the first drummer to really express it for me. He wrote music and expressed himself well. That was important to me. (Mattingly 1984, 45)
In another interview, Williams cites one drummer’s playing as being “offensive”: When I was a kid there was this guy who I thought was really an insensitive drummer, you know, just like a clod on the drums. And one night he was playing so loudly and so badly that I just started crying. Tears were coming out of my eyes because it was so offensive. Not because it was hurting my ears, but it was just so offensive. I was so emotional about things. (Tolleson 1986b, 36)
Williams’ emotional reaction to the quality of sound he did enjoy listening to also made him cry as is revealed when he remembers
…coming to tears [as a child] because Art Blakey sounded so good and I couldn’t duplicate that sound on my drumset. And I didn’t realize that it was because he was in a studio with microphones and everything. Here I was in my bedroom, playing my tinny drumset, and I didn’t sound like Art Blakey. I was so broken by that: ‘Oh God, I’ll never be a good drummer.’ Blakey sounded so good, the way his hi-hat sounded in combination with the cymbals, the press rolls. And there I was, 13 years old, totally broken. (Milkowski 1992, 78)
When asked if he were thrilled to be part of the Miles Davis band in the ‘60s, Williams commented,
Well, when you’re doing things it’s hard to say, ‘Oh gee, this is going to be historical sometime.’ I mean you don’t do that; you just go to the sessions, and 10 or 20 years later people are telling you that it was important. When you’re doing it, you can’t really feel that way. (de Barros 1983, 15)
Here Williams confirms Csikszentmihalyi’s claim that one cannot feel either happy or sad when truly thinking about a problem as stated earlier. Williams is also clearly stating that his attentional objectives in the recording studio were strictly and autotelically musical and not driven by exotelic motivations—those described by
Csikzsentmihalyi as being driven from external desires, such as playing the stock market to make money, or to teach children for the purposes of turning them into good citizens (1990, 67). These objectives are not autotelic as they are focussed on the consequences of an activity rather than focussed on the activity itself for its own sake.
Though he did receive pedagogical instruction from Dawson, that Williams directed his own artistic development primarily through extensive and continual self-learning
fuelled by an emotional desire to play reflects significant traits no only of autotelicism but of a heutagogical approach to learning as well. The possession of an autotelic personality is what appears to have driven Williams toward the continual achievement of greater musical complexity on the drumset by continually and adaptively
differentiating his skills and by integrating his effort in order to make his music contextually relevant to the musical and social environments in which he was immersed and from within which he functioned and innovated. The utilisation of heutagogical learning served as a means of enhancing his autotelic personality.
Heutagogy
As stated earlier, much of the prior work conducted in jazz drumset performance studies revolve around essentially pedagogical methodologies and ideals with respect to learning and education (Woodson 1973; Abbott 1999). Pedagogy is the science of teaching children, however the term is often loosely and somewhat misleadingly applied to teaching and education in general. Noticing such conflated methodologies
between learning systems, several education scholars began to move beyond purely pedagogical models (Schön 1984) toward the application of andragogy, a specialised model appropriate for teaching adults (Knowles 1970).
Although androgogy incorporates methods of self-determined learning appropriate for adult education, it is shown to have limitations in an article by Hase and Kenyon (2000). In their article, Hase and Kenyon discuss the traditional Lockean educational model that pedagogical and andragogical methodologies are centred on. In such a methodology, the individual mind is assumed to be “a clean slate at birth” for which “learning has to be organised by others who make the appropriate associations and generalisations on behalf of the learner”. In this way, “random individual experiences are taken to be totally inadequate as sources of knowledge, the educational process needs disciplined students, and literacy is seen to precede knowledge acquisition” (2000, 3). In order to extend the basic premise of education beyond pedagogy and adragogy in a way that is appropriate for truly self-determined learning, Hase and Kenyon coined the term heutagogy, etymologically derived from a variation on the ancient Greek term for ‘self’ (heut-) combined with the suffix -agogy (2007, 211-212). The concept of heutagogy therefore is “the study of self-determined learning”, resultant from Hase and Kenyon’s combined study of phenomenology, systems thinking, double loop organisational learning, andragogy, learner managed learning, action learning, capability, and work-based learning (2000, 2).
The basic premise of heutagogical self-determined learning includes the theorisation of a model for learning in which the student determines how and what is to be learned as an alternative to the prevalent convention of the teacher determining what and how students learn in the teacher-learner relationships of pedagogy and andragogy (2000, 2). It is a model in which the importance of “knowing how to learn” and “knowledge sharing” are fundamental, whereas “knowledge hording” is central to the previous “teacher centred learning” models (2000, 3).
Of particular relevance to the current study of the life and music of Tony Williams as a model for cultivating originality in jazz drumset performance studies, Hase and Kenyon discuss distance education and the “’myth of flexible delivery’” as follows:
Since Knowles and the rise of concepts such as instructional design there has been a rapid rise in the use of distance education in both the higher education and vocational education sectors. This has been important for reasons of equity and access. However, there is a myth that the carefully crafted print based materials somehow enable self-directed learning and enabled ‘flexible learning’. The delivery is certainly flexible, but not the learning. Any examination of
distance education materials and, the various forms of just in time learning found in VET, are teacher-centred, not learner-centred. The recent emphasis on