Noisy People is a documentary about a group of experimental and improvisational musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area. Director Tim Perkis talked with Ingrid Taylar about the film and about the Bay Area arts and music scene.
IT: In Noisy People, Cheryl Leonard says, "if I want to hear people play tree parts, then I’m going to have to do it." Is that how you felt about making Noisy People?
TP: Very much although it became more attractive as time went along. I've been playing and working in this scene in the Bay Area for 25 years, and it seemed completely underreported and kind of misunderstood when it was reported sporadically. I hoped someone would do it and it just didn't happen.
IT: In the film, a sense of community emerges. Phillip Greenlief talks about not getting paid for busking, about it being a community endeavor. Tom Djll also alludes to community with respect to Mockracy
TP: There’s a strong community. . . . In the final section — the big piece on Gino Robair — almost everybody that I cover in the film is in that band.
Gino said something great. He said, 'it's almost like we’re one big band that's been playing together for years.' One night it will be a group or certain sub-group of people. . . and then another group on another night . . . in different combinations, it happens constantly. So, there's a strong sense of community, that -- as George Cremaschi says in the film -- is unlike what you get in New York or Chicago.
IT: How does that differ from what you might experience in a traditional practice?
TP: I think the Bay Area has a strong communal feeling in all of the arts. Part of it has to do with — unfortunately and kind of paradoxically — the lack of financial support. It’s good for community in certain situations. It's not competitive -- there's nothing to compete for.
IT: Gino Robair mentioned the "frontier spirit of the Bay Area." You have a lot of work that entails traveling worldwide and working with international musicians. Do you still find that to be true, and if so, how is the Bay Area different?
TP: All of the people in the film, I think without exception, play internationally, travel and are known in Europe, Japan or around the world. There’s a distinctive dialect of improvisation in the music that goes on here. But, it does go beyond the Bay Area.
There's a player, Jack Wright, from Philadelphia, who comments at the end of Dyll's Mockracy piece. He says he couldn’t imagine [Mockracy] happening in London or Berlin because people are too serious. There is an aspect of humor in the Bay Area arts, which has been there in funk art, in the visual arts as well. I think you can see it in California art from way back . . . a certain relaxed California attitude.
IT: Tom Djll mentioned that coming from jazz, he saw it as sort of as a burden. Would you say that you felt a freedom when you started exploring modalities outside of the accustomed norms?
TP: To me, it was very gradual process. . . . I got into doing improv music when we had kids and when I had less time to compose and to rehearse. I was getting into a situation where I could work freely, and work with a lighter weight of preparation.
I think it's a strange history, the history of this particular kind of improvised music because it has a strangely defined relationship with jazz. Many of the American players like Damon Smith and Djll as well, are very much influenced by the European players — improvisation players, who themselves are influenced by American jazz.
IT: Most of the musicians have either classical or jazz training . . .
TP: And a voracious appetite about all kinds of music. That's what characterizes the scene differently from other musical scenes I have contact with. You may not hear it in the music because their music is so free. But they’re listening to everything.
TP: I didn't realize what an influential and unifying force Mills College was for all of these musicians.
TP: It has been since the 30s. Mills has been a center for experimental music and avant-garde music in the Bay Area. Many of the great influential players have gone through there -- to this day. Fred Frith is there and Chris Brown — it’s been strong in that way.
IT: I'm interested in the idea that Laetitia Sonami brought up — the idea of creating an anti-space that can be filled by somebody else’s experience.
TP: I thought that was an interesting idea. . . . She’s more articulate and explicit about it than most, but it captures something about the nature of this music.
Usually when people are thinking, "I don’t get what’s going on," it’s as if they're looking for something that isn’t there. Because there is a stepping back from shoving the meaning down your throat -- there's an acceptance of accident -- an acceptance of, "I don’t know." There’s an acceptance of audience participation -- that listening to this music involves a more active process. You're not getting it handed to you on a silver platter.