THE FRIDAY FEATURE: David Reaboi
THE FRIDAY FEATURE: David Reaboi
On aesthetics, design, expansive beauty--and the necessity of Brazilian music!
Today on THE FRIDAY FEATURE David Reaboi joins the conversation! Being best known these days for his impressive decades-long curriculum vitae in the American and international political scene, many are still unaware of his extensive background in the jazz music world and his work as an accomplished designer and visual strategist. Coming on to discuss the importance of beauty and aesthetics—and a mature, expansive, creative expression of these rather than a sometimes stilted one—we also touch on why North America is starving for Brazilian music and how one ends up deep in the professional New York jazz scene. Accompanying us today too in photo form is his now-famous, beautiful pup, Miles!
KAY CLARITY: Thanks so much for coming on THE FRIDAY FEATURE this week, David! As we’ve spoken about a lot, and which you’ve been pointing people toward for a very long time: we need to care about aesthetics, art, and music again. So much depends on this but it is yet still so commonly overlooked. Your discussion about this is so welcome and needed; thank you! As someone who deeply cares about art and prioritizes it in your life, why do you think this has been such an uphill battle for us to communicate to otherwise sensible, wonderful people? What do you think the cause of so much apparent artistic stagnancy and resistance to creativity is? And is there a solution?
DAVID REABOI: All over twitter we see a lot of people bemoaning the death of beauty. It’s undoubtedly a good thing to bitch and moan about the sorry state of the arts; not only is it true, but criticism and longing for something better is an essential cultural function. I’m a bit concerned, however, that many of these people look around at the artistic decay around us and seek little but more predictable and very tightly-defined conceptions of the beautiful. Classical artwork is gorgeous to look at and appreciate, but I find that most of the people with very rigid stylistic or aesthetic tastes are appreciators rather than creators themselves. That’s fine, of course; nobody is preventing them from enjoying what they like, or arguing with them about what they find beautiful. The artist is different because, in order to be successful at conceptualizing and executing something truly miraculous, he needs to be open to navigating the mysterious places between good and bad, beauty and ugliness. The smallest aesthetic choice reveals an infinite number of potentialities and directions. Undoubtedly, being involved in this process in any way opens one up to a more expansive idea of beauty. Contrary to what many of the Twitter classicists believe, investigating this place doesn’t necessarily leave oneself without boundaries, in aesthetic freefall. I understand that many people are revolted by the ugliness they see around them and, for that reason, are resistant to someone telling them to have an open mind about what is or isn’t beautiful. Maybe a better way would be to convince more people to become involved in some kind of creative process themselves. On social media, there's no shortage of art that’s beautiful and brilliant, and learning how to play or paint or do anything has never been more accessible.
KC: A lot of people don’t know that you were heavily in the music scene in New York before choosing a successful career in politics and policy. Would you tell us about that time of your life, how it continues to inform your work now, and why people should pursue some artistic aspect in their lives, regardless of their career path?
DR: I’d begun listening to jazz in high school–by the time I was in college, it had become a joyous obsession that had consumed every part of my imagination. The love of jazz began, for me, as it does for most people: simply as sonic wallpaper that conveyed sophistication and elegance. I began listening closely, though, and I was knocked out by the depth and profundity of that music. The desire to play double-bass hit me in the most profound way after hearing Charlie Haden on “Beyond the Missouri Sky,” a beautiful, quiet album of bass and acoustic guitar duets with Pat Metheny. It took me some time to really appreciate the note choices and subtle rhythmic magic of the accompaniment, but the absolute lyrical beauty of Charlie’s solos knocked me out right away. I’d never heard anything so expressive and perfect. I came back from a semester in Budapest, where the idea had rattled around in my brain, and found the cheapest upright bass I could find. I knew absolutely nothing–so little, in fact, that I had no idea the bass was strung up with round-wound electric bass strings! I was ripping my fingers apart and bleeding like mad when I tried to play along with my favorite records (especially this one, with Chuck Israels’ absolutely gorgeous articulation and glissandos). At the time I had fallen in love with different streams of the jazz avant-garde, in which the most important element of a musician’s playing was a successful, self-referential and interesting conception – the ultimate expression of jazz’s prioritizing of individuality and virtuosity. But it’s not merely experimentation or abstraction; the best of this music was an earnest quest for creating flashes of beauty in unusual circumstances. For example, here is my old mentor Paul Bley, alongside Charlie Haden and Paul Motian, refracting the old standard “I Can’t Get Started”--but improvised without any reference to the melody, and with only the barest, least obtrusive harmonic guides from the bass. Over the next several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I threw myself deeply into what was called “the Downtown Scene” in Lower Manhattan. In addition to playing a lot solo, we were exploring ways of collaborating in ensembles with little to no written music. I recognize that this music isn’t appealing to everyone, but it can be both exhilarating and beautiful.
KC: Brazilian music! Such an untapped treasure in North America—and another lesser known passion of yours. I will also link to your article on this subject, but in a shorter form, what is it about Brazilian music that has drawn you so strongly to it for so long? What can America and its arts culture learn from the Brazilians in this area?
DR: A friend’s dad was a big fan of Bossa Nova, so I’d heard little bits of most of the foundational records at his place. Of course, “Getz/Gilberto” and the more jazz-oriented Bossa records were mind-blowing, but “Elis and Tom” and Joao Gilberto’s so-called “white album” explained how these beautiful compositions could be real songs and sit, totally contented, outside of genre boundaries; it wasn’t pop, rock, art song or jazz, but it was somehow related to all of them.
When I was in college, the classic Tropicalia albums from the late 1960s were finally being released on CD, and that was another stop-time moment. Here was music that, by every measure, was more interesting and satisfying to me than the psychedelic music recorded in England or North America–and for a curious and adventurous listener, it was another world to encounter, sample, and try to understand. My interest in Brazilian music really intensified when YouTube appeared, and I dove into old clips and began trying to learn as much as I could about MPB (Música popular brasileira), focusing on the 1970s and following some of the great artists like Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, Djavan, Gal Costa, Novos Baianos, Maria Bethania, Jorge Ben, Marcos Valle, Gilberto Gil, and many others through the rest of their brilliant careers. A few years ago, I became obsessed with the different styles and traditions of samba during the pagode and roots samba craze–like Cartola, Paulinho da Viola, and Clara Nunes–as well as percussion ensemble-focused music like Olodum.
More than 20 years ago, I lent a girlfriend a record, and she said, “Brazilian music has too much pathos for me,” which still makes me laugh. Possibly it’s that, but music–like all art–is made up of different component parts, technical elements, and characteristics that contribute to the effect it has on our moods or imaginations. One thing that appeals to me, I realized, was how disconnected it is from the blues forms that are ubiquitous in American and British popular music. There’s something primordial about the rhythmic thing too; these days, I’m often content listening to samba and batucada loops on Youtube–just percussion, without any harmonic or melodic information at all. The universe of Brazilian music isn’t limitless, but it might as well be.
KC: What’s one Brazilian song you think everyone needs to stop right now and listen to? Why this one?
DR: Picking out just one is so difficult, so here are two. “Seca do Nordeste” from Clara Nunes’ genius 1972 LP, Clara Clarice Clara brings together much of what I love about this music. The composition itself is simple, like a hymn. But there is the sound of a single voice, together with what sounds like a massive, ethereal choir in the hills. Nunes and her singers are floating above a world of Brazilian percussion, and the infectious sound of the cuica exists between rhythm, melody and harmony. Jorge Ben’s “Sem Essa No. 5” was a B-side of a single, also in 1972. It captures his peerless genius in crafting a catchy pop song that’s somehow insanely tight and loose in equal measure. The way his voice dances over the bar lines in the verse and nails the tricky rhythmic refrain is something else. As soon as the song is over, you want to put it on again. Both of these selections play with our understanding of time: listening to the Nunes piece is like taking in a stunning landscape at dusk; Jorge Ben’s song seems like it’s only 30 seconds long.
KC: What drew you to your current design work? And if you could tell people anything about design and its importance, especially those who may be inclined to overlook it, what would you say?
DR: When I was a little kid, we had two of these strange, low-saturation, monochrome Cubist collage works framed in our living room. It’s amazing how much this piece influenced my aesthetic sensibility, and led me into a passion for Cubism and early 20th Century abstract painting that I’ve had since. Years later, I found one of the pieces, and it’s now in my office. And the walls of my house are full of artwork along these lines. Over the last two decades, I brought a love for design to my political jobs, and very quickly the boss would find out he’d gotten a graphic designer in addition to a comms guy when he or she hired me. People seemed to love the work, especially because they really aren’t used to seeing modernist pieces and tasteful collage work associated with the political Right. In the last few years, I started taking on clients book covers, advertising, logos, and things like that. You can see a collection of some of my work. Doing this work is immensely gratifying because I get to make things that are beautiful. Sometimes, the subject matter is dark, or even grotesque–but the composition itself can contain beauty: taste, balance, color, rhythm, shapes, etc. The process of discovery and refinement is very appealing, and is almost meditative.
KC: What’s the artistic thing from your life—design, music, whatever—that you’re most proud of being a part of?
DR: That’s a tough question, because I think the most important work–and the best quality work–is always ahead. While art isn’t necessarily meant to always create beauty, I think it is about exploring its boundaries. What I do in writing, design, music, communications, or anything else is unified by a creative process. I don’t think that I try consciously to bring that process into everything I do, but it seems to wind up there anyway.
KC: How can people get in touch with you if they have a great artistic project in mind they’d like to have you involved in?
DR: Folks can contact me on Twitter DMs or through my website, davereaboi.com.
Thanks so much for doing this interview. It’s such a treat to have you on and as always, I'm grateful for your persistent advocating for a better culture and the re-prioritizing of aesthetics. Glad to have this chance to share some of your arts-specific insight and wisdom which is so needed. It's so good!
