Metaphorically Speaking

Liner Notes During the process of recording this CD, I reached my 51st year. Like most people reaching this point, enough time has passed that I can look back on the years with a different perspective. As one who has always sought to penetrate beneath the surface of things, it was an insight in and of itself to discover that some realizations can only come with time and experience. No matter how much one's heart longs or how hard one works, things often unfold in a manner that is beyond our control and infused with a Divine wisdom. On some level this music represents a convergence of three paths in my life that have been there from very early on: my musical life, my martial arts life, and my spiritual life. For most of my years I saw these as divergent paths. Until recently I saw them as things I did, not things I am. Thankfully, I've come to see this as an illusion. They, in essence, aren't three paths, but one. In other words, I've grown enough to perceive the essentials of these paths in all things-or from the Islamic/Su' perspective, Tawhid: Unity or Oneness From a musical perspective, this has been present from my youth. I've always loved all kinds of music. I've never felt the need to pick a team, and frankly I see these delineations more as a byproduct of commerce than anything to do with musical expression. For me, the power in great music lies in how it expands the heart and consciousness, not contracts it. In martial arts, the ability to #ow and respond in the moment to an unknown presumes the ability to transcend stylization, rigid dogma, ego and self. Of course, spirituality, the heart of religious practice, is by de'nition the ability to see the light in the lamp and not become 'xated on the different colors and forms of the lampshade, which is really only there so as to not overload the fragility of the human being in the worldly state. From a pragmatic standpoint, this longing to look beyond the lampshade has allowed me the gift of being in many musical settings and feel completely at home in all of them. This music represents my attempt to draw from various musical wells in a way that re#ects the road I've walked over the years and continue to walk. While I was making this record, friends and colleagues often asked, What kind of record are you making? Is it jazz? Is it funk? I 'nd it hard to answer that question because I don't feel the need to de'ne it that way. I guess the most honest answer is that it re#ects my attempt at expressing myself based on all of the music that has in#uenced me. I think that is what all artists do, but we seem to be living in an age where everything has to 't neatly into some category. The irony is that we also live in an age where interconnectedness, at least in a material sense, is like no other time in human history. But I understand the need for a description. I guess if music is food for the soul, it follows that some people will want a menu. Most of the rhythmic base of this recording is Funk, R&B, and various world in#uences from the Caribbean, West & North Africa. For me, the physical reality of time is what holds creation together, from the movement of celestial bodies to the beat of our hearts. There is truly something Divine in it. Groove/Rhythm is how we delineate time so we can ride it together. It is an amazingly sublime beauty that each peoples' uniqueness is somehow encoded in rhythm. It's one of the many ways we know each other. I've been fortunate to live in many different rhythmic worlds and I love being in each of them. I also drew from various orchestrational palettes, using bass #ute, alto #ute, bass clarinet, various colors of brass, and at times a more traditional horn section. It was lots of fun experimenting with the sound of bass and alto #ute, Harmon muted trumpet, trombone in a bucket mute, all over a hip hop groove. Some of the tracks-The Longing, Turning Inside Out, Land of The Blind-I not only made use of these various instrumentations but also accessed the endless array of sounds that modern sonic technology has given musicians lik