Episode 1486 - Laraaji
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fuck, Knicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:Congratulations, SAG-AFTRA members, me being one of them.
Marc:Back to work.
Marc:Time to get back to making the make-believe.
Marc:Yay, strikes over.
Marc:Good job.
Marc:Good job for holding out.
Marc:Union strong, folks.
Marc:Union strong.
Marc:Means something.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Today on the show is a guy named Laraji.
Marc:Yes, Laraji, also known as Edward Larry Gordon.
Marc:That was his original name, but then he changed it to Laraji.
Marc:Now, who is this guy?
Laraji.
Marc:Here's what happened.
Marc:So I got a box set in the mail.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And it's called Segway to Infinity.
Marc:It's a four LP box set.
Marc:And I had no idea what it was.
Marc:And then I talked to Gimme Gimme Dan.
Marc:And he goes, oh, yeah, that guy.
Marc:He's like kind of, you know, one of the...
Marc:originators of what became sort of New Age music or meditative music or experimental meditative music, ambient music.
Marc:Well, that's the thing.
Marc:Ambient music.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So I didn't really know who the Raji was.
Marc:And then I did a little more exploring.
Marc:And it turns out that he is...
Marc:Ambien 3, which was an Eno-produced record that I assumed was an Eno record.
Marc:And it's called Ambien 3 Day of Radiance.
Marc:And it says right on the cover, an album by Laraji.
Marc:So I've had that record...
Marc:Probably for 30 years.
Marc:I mean, a long time.
Marc:And I never put it together.
Marc:I've listened to the record.
Marc:I kind of lump a lot of those ambience together.
Marc:I assume they were Brian Eno, or at least a collaboration with Brian Eno.
Marc:But this is a Laraji record that I've had forever.
Marc:I had no idea.
Marc:Now, this guy's got a very interesting life.
Marc:He went to Howard University to study music composition.
Marc:He went to New York and he tried to become a standup comic.
Marc:And, you know, he was a guitar player a bit and he was going in and out of some combos and playing out, doing gigs.
Marc:And then, but he was also this guy who was very savvy about music composition, a very smart composer.
Marc:But here's apparently what happens is that he needed some money.
Marc:So he goes to pawn his guitar at a guitar shop and
Marc:And through you'll hear in the interview through some divine intervention or some signs, he decided that he needed to basically leave with a zither, an auto harp.
Marc:He modified it and he started busking in Washington Square Park.
Marc:He amplified it and he started creating these improvisational sounds that were totally unique.
Marc:And he got noticed by Brian Eno, and then he worked with Brian Eno on that record.
Marc:And now this guy is one of the most prolific New Age musicians ever.
Marc:So what do you do with New Age music?
Marc:Now, I don't know what your experience is, but hold on.
Marc:Let me just do some other work here, some other business.
Marc:I'm in Denver, Colorado at the Comedy Works South for four shows, November 17th and 18th.
Marc:The early shows are sold out.
Marc:But get over there and go get some tickets.
Marc:Or you can go to wtfpod.com slash tour.
Marc:Los Angeles.
Marc:I'm at Dynasty Typewriter on December 1st, 13th, 28th.
Marc:The Elysian on December 6th, 15th, and 22nd.
Marc:And Largo on December 12th and January 9th.
Marc:Then my 2024 tour gets started in San Diego at the Observatory North Park on Saturday, January 27th.
Marc:San Francisco.
Marc:I'm at the Castro Theater on Saturday, February 3rd.
Marc:That's going to be the last show with seats.
Marc:at the Castro Theater.
Marc:That's all I know.
Marc:Then I'm in Portland, Maine at the State Theater on Thursday, March 7th.
Marc:Medford, Massachusetts, right outside Boston at the Chevalier Theater on Friday, March 8th.
Marc:Providence, Rhode Island at the Strand Theater on Saturday, March 9th.
Marc:And Tarrytown, New York at the Tarrytown Music Hall on Sunday, March 10th.
Marc:Go to wtfpod.com slash tour for tickets.
Marc:More dates will be announced soon.
Marc:So, Laraji, now, I don't know what your experience is with music or who guided you into the music that you knew and loved getting, you know, when you were back when you were in high school.
Marc:But I mean, some of you know the story.
Marc:I knew this guy.
Marc:Steve LaRue, rest in peace, who worked at the record store next to the bagel place I worked in high school.
Marc:And he had turned me on to all kinds of weird music.
Marc:The Residents, primarily, I remember.
Marc:Fred Frith, I remember.
Marc:And Brian Eno, I remember.
Marc:John Hassel, I remember.
Marc:Eno and Hassel are kind of, you know, they've worked together as well.
Marc:But I didn't really know what it was or understand it, but I had a mind for it in the sense that, you know, I kind of dug it.
Marc:I kind of got the idea.
Marc:It made me understand there was other types of music and things going on out there.
Marc:But I just, I lumped it all together.
Marc:And then over time, even with Brian Eno, as much as I love him and I love the work he did solo, but the ambient stuff, when new age music or what gets categorized as new age music...
Marc:starts to sort of fill the space a little bit.
Marc:And usually those are yoga studios or massage room spaces.
Marc:I start to wonder what is the validity of it?
Marc:What is, you know, can anyone do it?
Marc:Because I had some moment when I was getting a massage at some point, and I'm talking about legit massage, where you start to realize that that music they play during massages is categorically new age music.
Marc:So what makes it different from
Marc:Then when a genius does it, there is new age music.
Marc:And that is what fills spiritual spaces that are usually at spas.
Marc:But generally, it's not that hard to do with a synthesizer and some patience.
Marc:and a basic knowledge of the keyboard.
Marc:So it kind of got muddied for me.
Marc:And also just the idea of new age, new age music.
Marc:It seems kind of silly somehow, or it's definitely connected to the full spectrum of loopy spirituality.
Marc:But then as time went on and I do a little yoga, I meditate and whatnot, I can still appreciate it.
Marc:And then I got a bunch of records from some label
Marc:with a lot of these early New Age people.
Marc:There's a whole world of it, I guess, is what I'm saying.
Marc:And they don't want to be categorized as jazz.
Marc:But how you take it in, you know, as art is sort of up to you.
Marc:And you have to make an effort.
Marc:So when Laraji came up as a possibility to interview, I thought, well, hell, that would be interesting.
Marc:I mean, I'd like to know what differentiates it.
Marc:I wanted to know about his past because he's not choosing to do this out of nowhere.
Marc:This guy is a deeply educated and experienced musician, both compositionally and he did something fucking wild with his instrument.
Marc:Had an auto harp, pulled the buttons off it.
Marc:and amplified it ran it through a phase box and then you have this amazing transcendent sound that has very deep um intent on his part in terms of what it means and where it takes him and where it should take other people so so i was excited to talk to him and it turns out he just has this history with new york that's very interesting and
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that's how that came about.
Marc:I got this box set.
Marc:Dan told me that's this guy or he's a guy.
Marc:And then somehow or another, I get to the Eno record that I had for years that I'd listened to, but never knew anything about it.
Marc:And then come, I don't guess it's full circle, but you know.
Marc:Get him in the garage.
Marc:A very good conversation.
Marc:It was interesting.
Marc:The box set segue to infinity.
Marc:It's like four LPs.
Marc:It contains his earliest known recordings.
Marc:It's out now from Numero Group.
Marc:You can go to numerogroup.com to get it.
Marc:And this is me talking to the very pleasant and peaceful Laraji.
Guest:You got your kalimba?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:That's all of it.
Marc:You can do it all with that.
Marc:How is that instrument tuned?
Guest:It comes tuned in G major.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And A440.
Guest:And what I do is I retune it by moving just a few of the reeds to accommodate whatever alternative tuning project I'm working with.
Guest:So it can work.
Guest:To a minor?
Guest:Right now it's in a...
Guest:G minor.
Guest:What about it?
Guest:Whoa!
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Your ears.
Guest:Ah.
Guest:So what did you add to the G tuning?
Guest:The active G minor is relative to B flat major.
Guest:I think I was working on a project with a B flat major tuning, and this was a compliment.
Marc:I just, for the first time, tuned my guitar to open G. First time in your life?
Marc:Yeah, recently.
Marc:And I took the E string off and just have an open G. And I've just been trying to play some slide.
Marc:If the E string is off, that means a little less tension on the bottom.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And it's got a nice, you know, Keith Richards plays everything like that.
Marc:Really?
Marc:He takes the E string off?
Marc:Takes the E string off, plays open G. And that's why you get that interesting kind of meaty sound on some of those stone songs.
Marc:But I think he learned it from Ry Cooter.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I never thought of that version to take a string off as opposed to putting it somewhere else in the G scale, like making a D. Yeah, I don't know.
Marc:I think it might be the tension thing.
Marc:And it definitely lets you hit that...
Marc:What you've got a little harder.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Right?
Marc:There's an idea I'll give some energy to.
Marc:Yeah, it's kind of interesting.
Marc:I mean, you know, I haven't really played around with the fingerings too much, but it gives you a lot of resonance.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:Because you don't got to bar anything if you can figure out where to put your fingers.
Guest:Ha, ha, ha.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I play a lot of guitar with finger.
Guest:On top?
Guest:Bar, yeah.
Guest:Oh, on the bar, yeah.
Guest:Totally like a mountain dulcimer.
Guest:Oh, dulcimers.
Guest:Do you have a dulcimer?
Guest:I do.
Guest:The mountain dulcimer is shaped like an hourglass.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, I've seen those, yeah.
Guest:And you can run a dowel rod or steel slide up and down the strings.
Guest:So it's got a droney...
Guest:aspect, drone aspect.
Marc:It's interesting, though, that you took these instruments that were primarily seemingly kind of Appalachian hill folk instruments and turned them inside out.
Guest:Yes, I call it the well-tampered with auto harp.
Guest:Take the chord bars off, change the tuning, put electronics on, play with various implements.
Guest:I was not totally exposed to the auto harp to know
Guest:how exactly it is to be played.
Guest:I know it's plucked, and that's all I know.
Guest:So I think I'm breaking a lot of perceptional rules about... Well, it sounds like that.
Marc:I mean, you can certainly fill the space.
Marc:I listened to some older stuff, and I'm relatively... I'm not new to your work, but I had the Brian Eno-produced record forever.
Guest:The ambience.
Marc:Yes, the ambience three.
Marc:And I had not associated because that world of music is not something I'm that knowledgeable about.
Marc:But I always was an Eno guy.
Marc:But it turns out that it seems to me that you opened up almost an entire field of music outside of what was originally thought of as sort of experimental jazz, right?
Right.
Guest:I don't know if I was using terminology to guide me at the time, other than groovy, beautiful, exploration, let's see what happens if you do this, and if something happens, you go with it, and not really giving it a name, even though the word new age, experimental, explorational.
Marc:I like those better.
Guest:New age...
Guest:Deep listening.
Guest:New Age seems confrontational to many people.
Guest:You say, what is that?
Guest:It sounds kind of whippy-wappy.
Marc:Well, I think what happened, and I kind of make this observation before, was that, you know, there's a world of, I guess, New Age music.
Marc:that if it's not done with sort of passion, it can be pretty lazy.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Passion and, I say, a devotion.
Guest:My place, I come from schooling in theory and composition.
Guest:So I like to...
Guest:act as a composer while I am improvising.
Guest:So being conscious of form.
Marc:And it's second nature.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:To find the difference from just like massage music
Marc:And somebody who's a true artist, you know, sometimes you go to a yoga practice or you go get a massage, and they'll play this type of music on a loop.
Marc:That sits in the background, I guess, functionally.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that's sort of under the umbrella of new age music, but none of it sounds, I shouldn't say none, and maybe I don't know the artist who I'm talking about, but a lot of times it just sounds like it was intended to be background music, but
Marc:or just something almost like a progressive Muzak.
Guest:Yes, and you might be suggesting a new age function or use of music.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Whether they use it in Bach's...
Guest:People have massage music in the background.
Guest:Also, maybe the advance of, let's say, the planetary public being exposed to spiritual technologies like yoga, tai chi, breathing, that...
Guest:I believe there is a large community that is familiar with Shavasana.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:The deep dive into the now.
Guest:And that music to function as a backdrop or as a container for a person in that yogic state.
Guest:Whether we call it New Age Function of Music.
Guest:You say, what is that music about?
Guest:Well, it's the whole space for someone who is...
Guest:In the zone, their body is in a corpse pose, so it's not music for dancing.
Guest:It's not music for sending your thoughts into your last romantic affair.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's not pop music.
Guest:Yeah, music to keep you, support you in remaining undistracted.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But that was not the beginning.
Marc:Like you said, you studied theory.
Marc:So wait, because I know...
Marc:There's almost like a mythology to you in terms of how you evolved into this shaman-like person.
Marc:But it started in New Jersey?
Guest:Yeah, Perthamon, New Jersey is where...
Guest:I grew up, had schooling, and the school system was very strong on offering music options to students there.
Guest:That's nice, right?
Guest:You got lucky.
Guest:Yeah, even in the third grade, something like a fife, a tonette, we were given.
Guest:And in the fourth grade, we were given the opportunities to study the violin, the cornet, or the...
Guest:What's that black thing?
Guest:Clarinet.
Guest:Clarinet, yeah.
Guest:And the violin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Something inside of me kind of jumped up and pointed, let's do that.
Guest:The violin.
Guest:Yeah, the violin.
Guest:So I got into string music, and shortly after that, maybe within half a year, my mother...
Guest:who observed my interest in piano, obtained a piano and put it in the house, an upright piano.
Guest:So there I was with piano and violin, and plus I was singing with the school and church choirs.
Guest:So music was my default mode or my staple.
Guest:Are you the only musician in your family?
Guest:Yes, committed, devoted this way.
Guest:Although my mother sang around the house and sang in the choir.
Guest:I believe I'm the only one who gave this much energy and intention to music.
Guest:And it was, I was almost going to be one who didn't give...
Guest:Give the attention.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you have brothers and sisters?
Guest:Two brothers.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Two brothers.
Guest:No music, huh?
Guest:No music.
Guest:But it wasn't until somebody mentioned how Howard University had a good music school that something in me responded.
Guest:Says, hey, maybe I don't really want to be an architect or a chemical engineer.
Guest:I want to go to...
Guest:I want to pursue music.
Marc:Those were the options?
Guest:Yeah, I was preparing to go to MIT to study, to be a chemical engineer or either architect.
Guest:Wow, what did your dad do?
Guest:My dad was a tailor.
Guest:He worked for a clothing chain a pretty...
Guest:groovy clothing change in new jersey called jim dale and then it was called american shops and uh his influence um gave me the appreciation for clothing styles textures of material yeah and uh looking dapper dapper dad yeah dapper dad but that was not the thing engineering and architecture well architecture seems like it would be kind of amazing
Guest:I realize now that I was under a superficial image of what it would be like.
Guest:I thought you become an architect and you go out and design fancy buildings.
Guest:But then somebody says, you don't do that.
Guest:You have to...
Guest:relate to what your client wants.
Guest:So music seemed like a freer, creative place where I could create.
Marc:So you had an impulse of artistic freedom early on.
Guest:Yes, it was important, artistic freedom, spontaneity.
Guest:And it was early in life that I noticed that when I was really into the zone, improvisational zone,
Guest:I wasn't able to hold a conversation.
Guest:Somebody come up and talk to me.
Guest:It seemed like I had to switch the space in which my mind was focused.
Guest:And I didn't realize what that was about.
Guest:Maybe I was on the left side and couldn't function on the right side at the same time.
Marc:Totally engaged.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So when you decide to go to Howard...
Marc:What was that program like at that time?
Marc:What year are we talking, do you think?
Guest:62 to 64, Howard University.
Guest:And what was going on there?
Guest:The College of Fine Arts School of Music.
Guest:When I arrived, it was my first real deep immersion into, like,
Guest:wall-to-wall dominant people of color, seeing people of different skin textures, different eye colors, different bone structures, different hair textures, seeing people of color from around the world.
Guest:That was eye-opening.
Guest:How so?
Guest:Different dialects.
Guest:It was a time when the civil rights movement was heating up.
Guest:Stokely Carmichael was on the campus at that time, and I remember just seeing on the news, a person that I knew on campus, seeing him on the news laying in front of a tank.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Whoa, holy moly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's all going on.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Did you get involved?
Guest:I didn't get involved.
Guest:I didn't feel my footing was strong enough.
Guest:I was on scholarship.
Right.
Guest:And I did not know as much as Stokely Carmichael knew about what your rights were.
Guest:I mean, does somebody have a right to drive a tank over you?
Guest:It was eye-opening and alerting.
Guest:I did grow up connected to the NAACP.
Guest:So in my youth, I was a...
Guest:So soft activists.
Guest:In other words, being active, but not really connected to the harsh reality, the experiential reality of what was going on in the South.
Marc:I think that's most people.
Marc:I mean, in general, when it comes to sort of activism, I think a lot of people's hearts in the right place.
Marc:But when it comes to putting the rubber to the road, it can get a little... You got to acknowledge the risks.
Marc:The risks and...
Guest:Your inside, I grew up very indoctrinated in Christian sensibility.
Guest:And passivism?
Guest:Passivism...
Guest:Kind of, yes.
Guest:Although there's one song in the Christian tradition called Onward Christian Soldiers.
Guest:Onward as to war.
Guest:With the cross of Jesus marching on before.
Guest:But violence and hardcore resistance...
Guest:I think it was taken out of me by my father and mother, the way they administer corporal punishment.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So the idea of being an activist against authority was kind of compromised by, you know, mother and father up there watching.
Marc:Well, also, yeah, but that's interesting because early on you realized one of the reasons why you didn't want to be an architect was that you didn't want to...
Marc:Have to answer, you know, be part of someone else's vision or requirements or task.
Guest:Yes, I had misunderstood what that meant.
Marc:But in the same way, you know, standing up to authority, there's an essential sort of fight there, and it's a righteous fight, but through art you can transcend all of it.
Guest:Yes, when you ask, you stand up to authority, you think you want to know who's got your back.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And how much of the authority is really responsible for what you're protesting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you've got a question, just how do you fix the situation?
Guest:Have you really defined the situation?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I found that diving into spirituality, there seems to be a common surfacing aspect
Guest:statement of what the real problem is.
Guest:That is the misidentification with our bodies.
Marc:But when did that quest happen?
Marc:When did you acknowledge that or realize that?
Guest:It happened after many years of spiritual investigation that somewhere around 1980s when I started...
Guest:hearing this idea that before you go out and do anything, mind your own business.
Guest:So what is your real business?
Guest:You go out and fix a leak over there, and you realize that the leak is in somebody else's house.
Guest:But how to know what your house is, who you are.
Guest:And when you hear that in the beginning, it sounds, what do you mean?
Guest:Who am I?
Guest:I'm Edward Gordon.
Guest:I'm LaRodgie.
Guest:I'm
Guest:and my rights have been violated.
Guest:But that kind of thinking just leaves out the core
Guest:that we are one, we are a unified field, something that doesn't appear to the faculties when we use the faculties to gather linear information.
Guest:We overstep the immediacy of the now.
Marc:Right, and by we are a unified field, that is the frequency of...
Marc:Life.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Humanity.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Continuous present time unfolding.
Guest:Creation is here.
Guest:Yeah, always.
Guest:That's trippy to know that it's always here, yet somehow we have the feeling we should try to process the creation that was past or creation that's going to come.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, manage it.
Marc:So when you go to Howard, what's the focus?
Marc:What is the kind of context of the education?
Marc:Was it classical?
Marc:Was there a lot of jazz happening at that time?
Guest:Well, when I went, I had to make piano my major and composition my minor to catch up my piano skills.
Guest:There was classical.
Guest:I was immersed in classical music, classical orchestral music, classical choir music, the big Bach, Beethoven, and all the big names.
Guest:And it was yummy because it gave me a deep sense...
Guest:of harmonies, grand harmonies, and how this immersive sound experience could bring the listener to an exalted state.
Marc:It's interesting, because I'm not that educated in classical, but I'll go.
Marc:I do believe that whether you know anything or not,
Marc:certain things are either going to lock into your mind and your heart or they're not.
Marc:And I found when I go to Lincoln Center or something and see, like, an orchestra, it's undeniable.
Marc:You're lifted almost immediately.
Guest:That's not to say that I didn't grow up under the influence of...
Guest:New Orleans sound and the Philly sound and the Motown sound.
Guest:I danced a lot, partied a lot, and mimicked the music on my piano.
Guest:So there's a blend of everything.
Guest:And I remember falling in love with hearing...
Guest:female choir from Hungary singing.
Guest:And I said, whoa, is that beautiful?
Guest:At college?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And Negro spirituals from Southern colleges coming up to New York or New Jersey and giving concerts of spiritual music, Negro spiritual music.
Guest:Faith?
Guest:Gospel?
Guest:Well, gospel was part of my regular church Sunday, but you had the Southern colleges would send up their choirs singing...
Guest:The term loosely was Negro spirituals.
Guest:That was what the term was then.
Guest:So it had a very heart-centered, heart soliciting kind of sound.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because much of it would represent the way people spoke in the South.
Guest:Right.
Guest:What are some of those?
Guest:My Lord, what a morning.
Guest:My Lord, what a sky.
Guest:My Lord, what a sky.
Guest:My Lord, what a morning.
Guest:And songs that I guess were sung on the plantations were sung after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Marc:Do you ever think about the nature of songs that were created by
Marc:in bondage, as elevating.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Because like you listen to that, even the one phrase or two phrases that you're saying, the lift of it, when you think about the backdrop of its creation, requires a real power.
Guest:And I would imagine under any kind of slavery, there are pockets where you get a
Guest:whiff of freedom, whether it's in the commode or it's in the field where the masters aren't, or the ruling party allows you time to party by yourself.
Guest:Then your jazz and your dance comes up and your laughter comes up and then you're...
Guest:And your communal, your inner sacred communal energy gets a chance to breathe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So did you stay for the four years at Howard?
Guest:I went for four years.
Guest:I would have had to go for five years to get a degree for teaching music.
Yeah.
Guest:My intention of going to music school was to get to a place of no longer feeling like a trespasser in the field of music.
Guest:And I reached that in the second year, but I floated through the third and fourth year and enjoyed the college situation, and it reinforced my musical skills.
Guest:And what was the plan?
Guest:The plan was to...
Guest:become clear enough to navigate as a composer.
Guest:And in the fourth year, during the four years at Howard, I dabbled in comedy improvisation.
Guest:And it was so good that we were attracting
Guest:The suggestions, you should go to New York, the bitter end, and try out.
Guest:You were in a group?
Guest:I was in a comedy team.
Guest:Oh, two of you?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Who was the other guy?
Guest:Charles Moore.
Guest:He's probably somewhere in the American dream, a family with children, a car, a house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Maybe retired with a pension by now.
Guest:And he chose the other path.
Guest:I chose the road less traveled by.
Guest:So you leave Howard and you're in a comedy team.
Guest:I left Howard after four years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I go to New York.
Guest:Well, before I left, there was the trial period of Thanksgiving.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:break from Howard, Charles and I, he lived in Newark, I lived in New Jersey too.
Guest:We went home for the holiday with the plan to rendezvous at the Bitter Inn on a certain night, on a talent night.
Guest:When I got to the Bitter End, he didn't show up.
Guest:Who was at the Bitter End at that time?
Guest:Got any memories?
Guest:Bill Cosby was famous for having started the Bitter End, and somebody named Weintraub, I think, owned the Bitter End at the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I don't remember who else, but you had quite a few comedians at that time.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah, I think Woody Allen was there.
Yeah.
Marc:I don't know, maybe, I feel like... Martin Braverman.
Marc:Oh, Braverman, yeah.
Guest:You know Martin?
Marc:Oh, I know the name.
Guest:And so I got there, did my act, I converted my act from a duo to a single, and it went over pretty good enough to get encouraged to move to New York.
Guest:And do comedy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the next, when I returned to Howard after the Thanksgiving break, I see Charles.
Guest:I think, Charles, what happened, my man?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he explained that when he went home, just like I went home, his mother intercepted him and changed his enthusiasm.
Guest:His trajectory?
Guest:Yeah, he says, you're going to use your college education to do what?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
Guest:So I went on, and he's a funny person.
Guest:Well, he knew how to be himself in a way that allowed other people to laugh out loud.
Guest:Now, did you have...
Guest:Were you a fan of comedy at that time?
Guest:I was.
Guest:I had my favorite comedians.
Guest:I grew up television comedy.
Guest:Red Skelton, Red Buttons, Steve Allen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Steve Allen was crazy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:His group of Louis Nye.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Jonathan Winters.
Guest:Oh, the best.
Guest:I am still a connoisseur of good laughter.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And I'm amazed at how many more comedians
Guest:Comedians and comedians I'm getting to know through way of Pandora.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:But at that time, how about some of the black comics in the early 60s?
Guest:That was Dick Gregory.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Godfrey Cambridge.
Guest:Godfrey Cambridge.
Guest:And Slappy White.
Guest:Flip Wilson was in there.
Guest:Flip Wilson.
Guest:Yeah, I think Richard Pryor came a little later.
Guest:Yeah, mid-60s probably.
Guest:Yeah, he opened up the envelope pretty big.
Guest:They were impressive.
Guest:If he can do that, I want to see if I can do that.
Guest:Make some money.
Guest:Then the plan, as you asked, was to get enough money to set up an apartment...
Guest:I visualized it with a large red carpet and a stunning grand piano.
Guest:And I would get into just writing and composing.
Marc:So you looked at comedy as sort of a side hustle to get you where you needed to go?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, were you touring at all or were you just doing the city?
Guest:I did some touring with something called the Job Corps Camps.
Guest:There was an agency who set up...
Guest:three artists to go out on Job Corps camps.
Guest:It had to be interracial, intergender.
Guest:So I went as MC and comedian.
Guest:What was your act?
Guest:Do you remember your act?
Guest:I did one-liners, and I would say at that time, I was doing comedy that was sort of self-deprecating.
Guest:It was... It was all your original stuff?
Guest:It was all my original stuff.
Guest:It was things like...
Guest:I portrayed myself as someone who was more attracted to ugly women than beautiful women.
Guest:And that my adventures with ugly women was... That was your angle?
Guest:That was my angle, and it worked.
Guest:But at the time, it was starting to overlap with my investigation into comedy, I mean, metaphysics and the laws of consciousness.
Guest:And I began thinking, hey, if I keep doing this kind of material, sooner or later, I'm going to attract a whole herd of ugly women into my life.
Guest:So I said, do I want that?
Guest:I said, no, I don't want to create that situation.
Guest:And so I became mindful of speech and thinking as a result of the metaphysical teachings.
Guest:What you think and what you feel and what you image really impact us more than I was aware of.
Guest:Really?
Guest:So explain that to me.
Guest:In terms of manifesting?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You set up the vibration of the...
Guest:The way you want creation to show up in your life, moment to moment, it's like you sign up on the menu.
Guest:This is what I want for the next 24 hours.
Guest:I want to be fucking pissed off.
Guest:So if I use that language, that's what I'm asking for.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:If I'm fucking pissed off, the universe, oh, fucking pissed off is how he identifies himself.
Guest:We'll make sure we enforce that for him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And surround him with fucking pissed off people.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:And that's the same with music.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And so in music, eventually I evolved to understanding that what I wanted to do with music is relax the nervous system, relax the listener, uplift the spirit.
Marc:Were you doing, like along with the comedy, were you gigging?
Marc:Were you doing stuff?
Marc:It's interesting as a musician and an inspired one that you chose comedy, but you were composing at home or you were also playing in bands or what?
Guest:I was composing, literally composing onto paper, writing songs and sending it off to the Library of Congress.
Guest:I was playing Fender Rhodes piano for a jazz rock group.
Guest:called The Winds of Change.
Guest:And so we were gigging in Brooklyn and in New York and for schools, public school systems.
Guest:What kind of tunes?
Guest:They were jazzy, kind of jazzy, and there was a spoken word element to it.
Guest:So it was jazz before the rap.
Guest:It was sort of jazz-like.
Guest:Rock rap.
Guest:So this is the mid-60s?
Guest:This was the mid-70s.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:70s, 60s, I had moved to New York at 66.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And established myself with the acting agency, Ernestine McClendon in New York, who handled people of color.
Guest:Did you get roles?
Guest:I got roles.
Guest:She got me roles in television commercials, in off...
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So you did some stage work as well?
Guest:I did some stage work.
Guest:I remember one of my favorite commercials was for all detergent, where I would stand in this empty container and rotate as if I was the agitator with a stain on my shirt.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the water would fill up while I was on screen.
Guest:And during that, I wrecked my driver's license because it was in my pocket at the time.
Guest:But that was the kind of things I was doing.
Guest:And essentially, Putney Swope.
Marc:Putney Swope.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:You played the product tester.
Guest:Yes, and that's very interesting, Mark, that it took me a while to connect the dots that in that movie I'm playing a chemical engineer.
Guest:And I didn't make the connection that here I was almost going to go to MIT to be a chemical engineer, and I shifted the last moment.
Guest:So here's my vicarious fulfillment.
Guest:You closed the circle.
Guest:Yeah, with a white robe on, handling it.
Marc:Now, what was your sense of that?
Marc:Because that film was sort of a game-changing moment in independent and art cinema.
Marc:It had a profound impact on people I know, primarily the films of Louis C.K.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Because I was actually with him the day he bought it in a bargain bin at Blockbuster, one of those places.
Marc:But I remember we were walking around.
Marc:It was in a bargain bin.
Marc:He bought it and watched it, and it changed his entire perception of what could be done on film.
Guest:Yes, it did.
Guest:It's a game changer for me because when I saw the film, I had no idea what it was going to be until I saw the final.
Guest:And it started me thinking, what am I going to do about my role in the mass media?
Guest:Because am I going to manage it more mindfully?
Guest:Do I care?
Guest:Is the money going to be the big thing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:so I can get a piano.
Guest:And what helped me to get deeper into that concern was experiencing a young poet of color who was reading a poetry at a church one Sunday in which he, da-dun, da-dun, da-dun, da-dun, and the niggers who did Putney Swope should be offed.
Guest:And the niggers who did Putney Swope should be offed.
Guest:Offed means annihilated.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:And I was in the audience.
Guest:He didn't know I was in the audience.
Guest:And I said, hmm, just what kind of responsibility do I want to take?
Guest:Yeah, what are you manifesting?
Marc:Yeah, yes.
Guest:And I said, well, where do I start?
Guest:And what gave me a clue was Shirley MacLaine at the time was doing things in spirituality.
Guest:Already, huh?
Guest:Yeah, and I thought maybe that's what I should check out, meditation, to see if meditation is an activity that would allow me to sense my deeper heart's direction.
Marc:Now, so Putney Swope was divisive within the African-American community or what?
Guest:it appeared to be with that one person.
Guest:But when I saw other people who recognized me, they praised the film.
Guest:So there was kind of a mix.
Guest:Other people thought it was funny and, well, welcome forward is a new step.
Guest:And some thought that it did not.
Guest:It was another maybe Amos and Andy that sure didn't portray...
Guest:Black potential in the highest light.
Marc:Oh, I see.
Marc:So the satire fell short in its representation.
Marc:It could say that.
Guest:Maybe it was walled the best it could do at that time.
Guest:And maybe if it did much better, it wouldn't have gotten as much circulation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And maybe if it was conceived and created by a black director, it would have been different.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:What was it like?
Marc:Do you remember Robert Downey Sr.?
Guest:Yes, I remember he was pretty flowing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My parts were filmed at night in Wall Street.
Guest:They obviously had rented empty Wall Street buildings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I just remember him...
Guest:What at the interview audition, I went to interview for one role, and he said, you've been better for that role.
Guest:And when we finally shot the film on two nights, it was very...
Guest:Improvisational.
Guest:He left a lot to be improvised.
Guest:That's cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I didn't see any of the parts or even felt that there were parts about the use of marijuana or strong sexual images.
Guest:I didn't know any of that was in the film.
Guest:You didn't get a script?
Guest:No, I just got my two pages.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I thought maybe it was a Greek tragedy.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so there's the question.
Guest:Do you dare do that again?
Guest:Do you jump on board a project when you don't know it's in game?
Marc:So what was it after you got hip to Shirley MacLaine?
Marc:Where'd you start with your journey into metaphysics, spirituality?
Yeah.
Guest:I just mumbled around, fumbled around, until I found something that seemed to address what I was looking for.
Guest:And...
Guest:I went to Sri Chinmoy, Osho.
Guest:It wasn't until I got my hands on this book by a Western writer, Richard Hittleman, a book on Bantam Press.
Guest:It was called Book of Meditation and Yoga.
Guest:That book demystified it for me.
Guest:Up till then, I thought meditation and spirituality was monopolized by the East.
Guest:So this was a book explaining it?
Guest:It gave me a point of departure, what to experiment with, what an assignment.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And it helped me to liberate from the term of transcendental meditation as being...
Guest:a copyrighted term.
Guest:But the generic meaning, transcendental, to go beyond and go beyond the thinking mind or the thinking function of mind to see through the mind that isn't clouded with linear thought.
Guest:And so when I learned how to be still, sit still, breathe, and focus for 21 minutes, another version of the universe would come up into awareness.
Guest:And I was always impressed by that.
Guest:that the way to the bigger and the better is really within the moment.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, musically, were you hip to what some people were kind of doing at that time around that, like Sun Ra or anybody?
Guest:I was vaguely aware of Sun Ra.
Guest:I couldn't really catch up to him until I moved to New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was aware of John Coltrane.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:The energy of listening seemed to represent...
Guest:An energy.
Guest:Energy consciousness.
Guest:Music of energy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I became more aware of music and sound as energy made audible.
Marc:Same with Monk too, right?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yes, he did.
Guest:But the deep dish...
Guest:New Age kind of crystallized when I heard a music by Stephen Halpern and Yasos.
Guest:And I was living in Park Slope at the time, and I was...
Guest:living in a loft and working in a coffee house, an Aquarian coffee house.
Guest:And one morning on radio, there was this christening for listening.
Guest:And I was just listening.
Guest:Wow, look where this music is going.
Guest:Look where it is not going.
Guest:Look what it's holding space for.
Guest:Look what it's not holding space for.
Guest:And christening for listening, which is part of Spectrum Suite.
Guest:So I would say that Stephen Halbern and Yastos
Guest:Showed me another opening and validated my already unfolding exploration into.
Marc:Did you look into, did any of that sitar stuff resonate with you at the time?
Guest:The sitar?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ravi Shankar's music, especially with music, Ravi Shankar and friends.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:opened me up to the joy, the kind of sensual joy.
Guest:I also was exposed to Sun Ra while living in Park Slope.
Guest:His music did like a Roto-Rooter job on my over-Westernized... Sense of music?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Because with the sitar, because even when you play the way you play with...
Marc:with mallets of different kinds and rhythms of different kinds.
Marc:There is sort of, you know, I know that ragas have a structure, but in some points in your music, there is sort of a rolling sense of movement.
Guest:Yes, I do move around, and sometimes I find myself getting too caught up in maybe a classical sensitivity about what I'm doing, and so I sort of let the good times roll and let some jazz influence come in.
Marc:So when do you lose the guitar or the piano?
Marc:When do you move into, how does the transition into what became your thing happen?
Guest:Living in Park Slope in the late 70s, I was playing music for rock, jazz rock, Fender Rose piano.
Guest:I also had an electric guitar that I would play on my own.
Guest:And one day I needed money, more money.
Guest:I went to a pawn shop to pawn the guitar.
Guest:While I'm going into the pawn shop, I'm noticing the auto harp in the window.
Guest:I get into the pawn shop.
Guest:I offer the manager this Martin six-string guitar in a fiberglass case, well worth about $175.
Guest:He offered me $25.
Guest:And I said, whoa, I can't handle that.
Guest:And just then, I'm hearing, or I'm sensing, and I'm translating a real direct, loving suggestion
Guest:don't take money, swap it for the instrument in the window.
Guest:And I'm saying, what?
Guest:The voice was so clear, yet there was a depth of compassion and nurturing affection that I just could not ignore.
Guest:And I'm wondering, how is this happening?
Guest:And I decided to follow this rabbit hole by swapping it for the otter harp, not knowing where it's going to take me
Guest:And it's like the foundation of my new music life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I left there with $5.
Guest:I made a little deal.
Guest:$5 and the auto harp.
Guest:And I began exploring open tunings, my favorite guitar open tunings.
Guest:Eventually taking the chord bars off, electrifying it, and using the Stanislavski or the acting technique.
Guest:What if?
Guest:You just...
Guest:You go into a store.
Guest:What if I played the instrument with that?
Guest:Or what if I electric?
Guest:What if I put it through that effect?
Guest:So I explored a lot of what ifs.
Guest:And at that time, the available effects were somewhere between $95 and $125.
Guest:This is the early 80s?
Marc:Early 80s, yes.
Marc:So we're dealing with flangers, phase shifters, distortions.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And phasers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And loopers didn't come to much later.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, they were complicated.
Marc:They had tape and everything.
Marc:How about echo?
Guest:Echo was difficult.
Guest:There was the echoplex.
Guest:I would get to use it if I was at somebody's studio.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the phase shifter was my main thing because it could...
Guest:keep an inner sound motion going, which seemed to represent timeless current.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So once you get the auto harvest, is that when you hit the streets?
Guest:Yes, the sidewalks of Park Slope and Manhattan.
Guest:The plan there was, since I had contacted a very convincing level of meditative practice,
Guest:place and myself, was to explore.
Guest:It was easy to operate the electric zither while in that state, in cross-legged position.
Guest:And I was curious to see how much of this inner nonverbal abstract space would get transmitted through performing this rather free-form sound bath.
Guest:And I was impressed with how people would listen and absorb the sound and how it would draw them out of
Guest:The linear mind, the world mind.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It must have been amazing, like on the street, because it kind of stops time, right?
Guest:Stops time, stops rush hour traffic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was a good learning model of how to perform in an environment that was busy.
Marc:And how do you come upon your name from the original, you know, Edward Larry Gordon?
Guest:Edward Larry Gordon, Larry Gordon, Larry G., Lara G., eventually some friends at a bookstore, Tree of Life in Harlem in the late 1970s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:After a few years.
Guest:moments of my offering music for psychic fairs at this bookstore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My Kanya, brother Kanya, operated the Tree of Life in Harlem.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I would sit out front and just do this music that was supportive of psychic function and meditation.
Guest:One day these two brothers came to me and says, we've been listening to your music and it takes us to a place far unlike...
Guest:Edward Gordon.
Guest:Well, we come up with a suggestion of a name for you.
Guest:And I thought, uh-oh.
Guest:You know, if they suggest a name to me and I don't resonate with it, this could be awkward.
Guest:I said, let's meet in Central Park tomorrow and you can reveal the name to me.
Guest:What they didn't know that I was really looking for a name and that I felt intuitively it would be a name with three syllables and it would have something to do with the son because by that time I had
Guest:A really deepened relationship with the sun.
Guest:We meet in Central Park the next day, maybe Bethesda Fountain.
Guest:They reveal the name to me, and I am like, wow.
Guest:It was a name that evolved softly from Larry Gordon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:into Laraji, and the Ra is the Egyptian sun god.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yo!
Guest:And the divinity of the sun coming down into humanity and uplifting humanity.
Guest:That's sort of the loose translation of the name Laraji.
Guest:Ji is usually a spontaneously supplied name, part of the name that you apply it
Guest:in affection for someone.
Guest:So there was La Raji, and I was, wow.
Guest:And I did a little altering so that the name would have a numerological value of seven.
Guest:Why that?
Guest:Because I considered seven to be a level of meditation and calm.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And also... That's why you added an A?
Guest:I added an A without knowing that that A was correct in the Egyptian spelling of Ra, R-A-A.
Guest:So we have three A's in uppercase, which...
Guest:would expose three equilateral triangles, which at that time I sensed that NASA was sending spacecraft which would have a symbol of a triangle on it to suggest intelligent life somewhere or whatever.
Marc:Was that a theory or is that a fact?
Guest:The fact that NASA...
Guest:was using the triangle as a universally interpretable symbol for peace, goodwill.
Guest:So I did that.
Guest:And so there I was, the name Laraji.
Guest:I was a little concerned that if I changed my name now, will it start a streak of wanting to change it later?
Guest:Well, it didn't.
Marc:But you added some stuff.
Guest:The A, yeah.
Guest:And my biological family...
Guest:Did not find it comfortable to get on board with the name.
Guest:With Naraji?
Guest:Now, lovingly, they politely will vibrate the name and or call me Larry.
Guest:And you're right.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:One of the big things to watch out for is any sense of attachment.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, because that leads to confrontation.
Guest:Attachment would mean...
Guest:That you still got some work to do, that you're still identifying with the physical dimension as your main business.
Guest:I believe my main business is this eternal current.
Marc:Yeah, so once you start playing the eternal current or channeling it...
Marc:Once you start surfing the eternal current with your music, are you beginning to build a following for it fairly quickly?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And, for instance, in Japan, a following since the release of Day of Radiance, the Brian Eno-produced album...
Guest:The following developed there maybe six years before I even went to Japan.
Marc:From that record, because in the new box set, which is stunning and interesting, one of the discs is the first record.
Marc:Very first.
Marc:Celestial Vibration.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Which did not get the type of exposure that Brian's...
Marc:Correct.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I am quite impressed, too, when I listen to it.
Guest:Wow, I was doing that then.
Guest:Why did I stop doing that?
Guest:And now I pick up the evolution of that idea.
Guest:Being free, spontaneous, and experimenting and trusting, experimenting in the flow in order to keep myself freed up.
Marc:Well, I think that's the real, the gift of it is that, you know, you do get into a state where, you know, your sense of timing and when to do whatever you're going to do in that moment of expression really fits in with the foundation that you build improvisational.
Marc:And that just has to come with time, right?
Guest:It does.
Guest:And I also realize that it keeps unfolding.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is like meditation.
Yeah.
Guest:At the beginning, you think meditation is dull, boring, the end of life as we know it.
Guest:But it keeps opening into these more serene layers.
Guest:And the big part of meditation is that the self, as I know it, undergoes a transformation.
Guest:So it isn't the old self thinking it's going to be boring.
Guest:The newer self is understanding, hey, this is no way boring.
Guest:This is freedom.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And this is what it sounds like.
Right.
Marc:And also the thing that struck me today when I was listening is that there's no reason to end.
Guest:Yes, that very good point.
Guest:That the music that...
Guest:that I've recorded, when someone asks, can they edit it?
Guest:And am I concerned about how it's edited?
Guest:I'm not.
Guest:Because you can end it anywhere, start it anywhere.
Guest:Sometimes I call it vertical music.
Guest:It's all about every moment is the whole moment.
Marc:Yeah, because I was wondering, because there's no sense, because it's improvisational, where you're moving towards a conclusion.
Guest:Yes, that's classical.
Guest:Is it?
Guest:Well, classical tends to have a resting tone, I call it.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Or an intro, an interlude.
Guest:But as a composer, we have artistic freedom to let the feeling flow as I'm feeling it.
Marc:Do you still consider it composition when you are in a flow or an improvisation?
Guest:I tend to allow elements, simple form is ABA, open up with a theme, whether it's rhythmical or, and then you flow and return the theme again so that the listener is saying, oh, there's a familiar point.
Marc:Is that a jazz thing or is that a classical thing?
Guest:Uh, it seemed to happen in both.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The theme and improvisation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It could be a theme and variation.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And all right.
Marc:So getting back to, uh, Ambien three day of radiance.
Marc:So I know there's a story behind it, you know, cause Eno's an interesting guy and he found he, it was a coincidence or I don't know that you believe in coincidence that, you know, he approached you and,
Marc:Well, here's the law of manifestation.
Guest:Before Brian Eno and I met up, I was doing affirmations for the right producer.
Guest:I didn't know who the right producer would be.
Guest:Just use the term right in your affirmation so that the universal intelligence takes care of the details.
Guest:So there I am in my favorite performance spot in Washington Square Park, the northeast corner.
Guest:There was a cobblestone circle
Guest:and around which were seats, benches, and people could sit.
Guest:And I sat in the center and radiated this music.
Guest:On one particular warm, maybe early fall night, I had finished playing for a few hours, and this couple comes over to me, very polite and kind, and says, have you ever heard of Frippinino?
Guest:I didn't know what they were saying.
Guest:Frippinino?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Is that one word?
Guest:And they suggested if you have your time, you might want to check out their music.
Guest:And I sort of made a mental note.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so that was that evening.
Guest:Oh, they took me home for dinner.
Guest:That couple?
Guest:Yeah, the couple.
Guest:And further reiterated, they lived in the village.
Yeah.
Guest:So a month later, I'm in the same place.
Guest:Well, all through the next month, I'm there.
Guest:But on a month later, I'm at the same situation, finishing up, counting my change, and there's this piece of paper in my zither case.
Guest:It looked like I had been ripped from a very expensive...
Guest:And it was written meticulously.
Guest:Dear sir, please excuse this impromptu message.
Guest:I was wondering if you would be open to discussing working on a music project, signed Brian Eno.
Guest:And I'm saying, what's going on here?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I called him either that night or the next morning, and we agreed I'd come over.
Guest:I brought some, I think, orange juice.
Guest:And we sat down.
Guest:He was living on 8th Avenue in a penthouse.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Right across from the art school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he had set up in his living space this... Across from, like, FIT?
Guest:It was more the art...
Guest:Students League, I think on 8th Avenue, 3rd Street.
Guest:And what did he set up a studio?
Guest:Three speakers.
Guest:Normally you would see two.
Guest:And he was trying to explain to me what the third speaker was about, taking information from both sides and...
Guest:including something that's getting missed by the ears.
Guest:I didn't quite grasp it, but what I did grasp it to hear was an advanced thinker.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who was locked into what you were doing.
Guest:Yes, and he brought up the subject of ambient, and he could see that I had not...
Guest:developed the ability to use the word ambient in my music.
Guest:But I did assure him if we went into a studio, something interesting could happen.
Guest:And we both agreed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we went into a studio in Soho within maybe a week and recorded the beginning of Day of Radiance, Ambient 3.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:And what was it like working with him as a producer?
Guest:It was easy, fast, intuitive.
Guest:He left a lot of space, and he showed me some very quick and new thinkings about my instrument.
Guest:Basically, depending more on high-end microphones than my pickup.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:And also dampening the strings with duct tape.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:And also double-tracking the zither.
Guest:My first time of double-tracking the zither on a high-quality recording situation.
Guest:Oh, so it must have been mind-blowing.
Guest:You know, there's something that rises up inside of me to the situation.
Guest:You know, I can be in a mind-blowing situation, but then another part says, here we are.
Guest:We're the ones for the job.
Guest:This is our time.
Guest:This is what we've got to do.
Guest:Try to keep a little of that engaged.
Guest:Yes, you realize this is what you've been prepared to do here and now, do it.
Guest:And that sort of set the tone.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:The studio turned out to be good for the excited, ecstatic, hammered work.
Guest:When we listened to the meditative track, which he was not aware of that I could do the soft meditative work.
Guest:We listened back and realized that mechanical sounds from some other part of the studio, that building in Soho, was leaking onto the soft recording.
Guest:Six months later, we recorded another meditative side, which turned out to be meditation one, two, and three.
Yeah.
Guest:And then it was released through EG Records.
Guest:Yeah, that was his label, right?
Guest:That was not his label, but that's the label that was working with him.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And it was funny because people would see EG and they said, is that your label, Edward Gordon?
Guest:No.
Marc:Well, some of those, I mean, I think he did one with, what was it, John Hassel and... Yeah, they might have come out on EG at the time because... I can't remember.
Marc:But there was a world of music.
Marc:Yeah, Harold Budd.
Guest:Harold Budd, yeah, yeah.
Marc:You know that guy?
Marc:Yes, we did concerts together and a tour, Opal, in Europe.
Marc:But that record just, you know, kind of in terms of recording, just got you going.
Marc:I mean, you recorded like one or two records a year.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yes, and no complaint about that.
Guest:Put me on the bigger map, and what comes along with that is that I'm just slowly getting to realize Brian's credentials.
Guest:I just know that he was part of Roxy and later found out that he basically studied in an art school, so his approach to music is very art-sensitive.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But I would be at...
Guest:Parties are gathering somewhere in the world, and people would walk up to me and start talking, and I don't quite know who they are or what their intention is.
Guest:And somewhere in the middle of a conversation, they'll reach into their pocket and pull out a cassette.
Guest:Can you get this to Eno?
Guest:It happened more than three or four times, enough for me to inquire.
Guest:I say, Brian, these people are trying to...
Guest:I don't want to encroach upon your private time.
Guest:What should I do about this?
Guest:And he said, well, there's a place they can send the material to and listen to it.
Guest:So I got that straight away.
Marc:Did you maintain a relationship with him?
Guest:Yes, it's a soft-spoken relationship.
Guest:Understanding he's quite busy.
Guest:We haven't done any major recording together.
Marc:We visit each other.
Marc:But you've done plenty of recording.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:It's kind of amazing.
Yeah.
Marc:Like, and you play with other people, and then you integrated other instruments.
Marc:When did you start using this one?
Guest:Kalimba somewhere in the mid to 80s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've always loved the instrument, but it wasn't until someone placed one in my hands and I could feel it.
Guest:I got initiated into it and went out and obtained my own.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Of course, each person... I used to get quite a few of them from this person, Hugh Tracy.
Guest:I made contact with him, and he allowed me to get them very inexpensively.
Guest:And I gave him his gifts, and I would observe how each one...
Guest:person would have their own approach to it one person would keep it next to his seat when he was driving and doing stoplight or whatever play it other people had their approaches so it was very different from the earth wind and fire maurice white yeah kind of fast i thought fast climber was the only way to do it until i discovered you can get very gentle yeah
Guest:It's beautiful walking through a wooded area alone with this or with a non-talkative person with this.
Guest:Well, it's almost immediately meditational, right?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And the story is that this is used very much in ancestral celebrations and family celebrations in Africa.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's portable and it's...
Guest:Tunable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's charming.
Marc:So now there's a bit of a story behind this new box set from Numero, which, you know, got me kind of reacquainted with you.
Marc:And it sounds like a very interesting story that you don't really recall the sessions.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And segue to infinity.
Guest:Now...
Guest:There were two different major recording situations going on in the space of two or three years.
Guest:One was at the ZBS Studios recording Celestial Vibration.
Guest:And then the relaxation company wanted to distribute it.
Guest:And they said, why don't we record another album or...
Guest:do more of that and so a studio somewhere in Long Island Huntington I remember going into the studio and recording more tracks sort of as a possible second album yeah
Guest:And there were outtakes from the first and outtakes from the second.
Guest:And I don't remember which ones were which.
Guest:And I do recall the company Folded, Relaxation Folded.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They sent me some records that they weren't selling anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I don't remember getting the masters.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yet...
Guest:Douglas comes up to me and says, this student in New Jersey has found your master's at an auction.
Guest:And it's boxed into this package that has your home address on it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm scratching my head and saying, what?
Guest:Yeah.
Ha!
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And so it's a good what.
Guest:So I let it go without needing to really get investigatory about it.
Guest:It seemed like it was going in the right direction for all the good reasons.
Guest:But they weren't, were they tapes or acetates?
Guest:They were...
Guest:The original acetates.
Guest:The plates.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:That included the voice of the engineer on them.
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And Douglas says, we should release this.
Guest:And I'm saying, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And this was recently?
Guest:This was, what, three years ago?
Marc:That's crazy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Some kid, some record nerd.
Guest:Yeah, as a college student, very articulate.
Guest:I met him.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:He said he spent his entire bank account $126 on it.
Guest:And I thought, wow, what a devotion.
Marc:Now, so that's how this, and it's four or five?
Guest:The four, which includes the original Celestial Vibration.
Guest:So there's three new, as of then, unheard of Laraji releases.
Guest:Given that every time I'm in the studio, I am accessing the divine current.
Guest:So...
Guest:If I listen back to any of my music, I can revisit the current through that music.
Marc:You get right in it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, when you... So now, how old are you now?
Marc:The body is 80 years.
Marc:That's good for you.
Guest:That's a lot of toothpaste.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:And now, as an 80-year-old artist, you do these performances, and it seems that you have sort of a position as somewhat of a spiritual, not leader, but guide.
Marc:A guide, a model.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So you've manifested a following and a practice?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:The following shows up...
Guest:In the sense of somebody who will come to me and says, your music inspired me to get into this and I'm doing computer music or I'm exploring the auto harp or open tuning.
Guest:Or I am exploring getting deeper into my spiritual core and bringing that into my art form.
Marc:And what did I read about laughter?
Marc:What is the laughter approach?
Marc:Laughter is the big yum.
Guest:It's a continuation of something I've always liked doing, getting people into the laughter zone, even as a child.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And doing stand-up comedy in New York, Greenwich Village.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And eventually...
Guest:Getting hold of Osho, Rajneesh book, Orange Book of Meditations.
Guest:If you don't know who Osho is or was, it's a very stimulating, provocative, spiritual model for evolving sincere seekers beyond any stuck entanglements.
Guest:So...
Guest:That book contained many pages of suggested meditations.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:One of them was laughter meditation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought up till then, wow, I didn't know meditation and laughter belonged in the same phrase.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:And it simply was, upon awakening in the morning, keep your eyes closed, stretch your arms and your legs...
Guest:check in with your breathing, and then laugh for 15 minutes.
Guest:That's all, just laugh.
Guest:Just reach for your laughter however best you can do it.
Guest:I did that for seven days.
Guest:I was impressed where it goes.
Marc:So you're not, but because it's meditation, you're not picturing funny things.
Marc:You're just tapping to laughter as an energy output?
Guest:Yes, and that was difficult at first.
Guest:Until after five minutes, I found out how to ignite because what starts coming up is a familiarity, body language.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How we natural, each of us laughs, what we do with our hands when we're in laughter, our facial expressions.
Guest:our breath patterning.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And when I started noticing that, it would snowball the laughter into authentic episodes.
Guest:And it would get into like an infectious, self-infectious laughter.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I was impressed that I could get there, self-ignite myself into laughter without thinking of anything funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As a matter of fact, I used to think, hey, this is a wonderful exercise for comedy writers or comedians, so it helps to sharpen our radar, intuitive radar, about what we're trying to get to happen in someone else.
Guest:Interesting.
Marc:But usually it's an involuntary reaction.
Guest:Yes, it's usually laughter, natural laughter is usually in a social situation.
Guest:Yeah, surprise.
Guest:It comes, runs its course, and then leaves.
Guest:And in that time, you don't really have the opportunity to dive back into the deeper health benefits of laughter.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like how it massages the thymus in the chest, the seat of immune system, how it can be used to massage the internal organs.
Guest:We know what a belly laugh is, but during the laughter play shops that I and my partner conduct,
Guest:We help to promote a conscious attitude when laughter breaks out to try to include the internal organs.
Guest:Or to let the laughter vibrate the brain and get the pituitary and the pineal gland and all the endorphins and the hormones going.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we sweep the intercon system, the body.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The laughter has been called the shortest distance between two people.
Guest:And I'm inclined to believe it's the shortest distance between me and myself.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Overthinking keeps us from being in sync with ourself.
Guest:And laughter is a way of transcending the thinking mind, even if for a while.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So between the music and the laughter.
Marc:Yabba dabba do who to.
Marc:It's nice talking to you, man.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:He brought an instrument.
Marc:Okay, so you can get that box set, Segway to Infinity, at numerogroup.com.
Marc:Hang out for a minute, people.
Marc:So we've got some more movie talk this week on The Full Marin, and this time it's all about Martin Scorsese.
Marc:I love The Wolf of Wall Street.
Marc:I love it.
Marc:I think it's one of his best movies.
Marc:And that guy, totally morally compromised, but totally excited.
Guest:He's maybe the worst guy that Scorsese has depicted.
Guest:The most irredeemable worst person.
Guest:And the whole movie is about showing at every step of the way he's lying that this thing that happened is not true.
Guest:This thing that happened didn't it didn't turn out well.
Guest:It's like every step he fucked up and it gets you all the way to the end where people are still paying their hard earned cash to listen to him because they think he's such an expert and will make them all rich.
Guest:It's like Trump.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:And then that movie was 2013, three years before Donald Trump becomes the president.
Marc:The maleness of that movie.
Marc:There is definitely throughout almost every one of it.
Marc:He's exploring the male psyche.
Guest:Oh, and like this was a movie about toxic masculinity before people were even talking about that.
Marc:But what was known as the fun kind of toxic masculinity.
Marc:Like every shot as the movie goes on of that trading floor.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:At some point there are guys doing acrobatics.
Marc:Yeah, it's like a backflip, like standing backflip.
Marc:Testosterone driven shit show.
Marc:To get the latest bonus episode plus every episode of WTF ad free.
Marc:Go.
Marc:Go to the link in the episode description to sign up for the full Marin or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF+.
Marc:Next week, we have Chef Jose Andres on Monday and Fisher Stevens on Thursday.
Marc:Dig it.
Marc:Here's some sloppy slide guitar.
Thank you.
Guest:guitar solo
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey La Fonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.