Up and coming Mother City songbird Lisa Bauer favours a fresh approach to interpreting jazz standards at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival this weekend.
What does ‘jazz” mean to you?
Jazz is such a huge, umbrella term. It’s like classical music, what does that mean? It could mean anything. Apart from labeling jazz as a genre, it’s a form of expression. Improvisation is a very important aspect of it. But this doesn’t mean that there’s no form.
There’s structure to it, but within the structure you can play. That’s what I like about it, there is that element of tradition, I’m a little bit of a purist. Not that I’m close minded, but I love the tradition and I think it’s important for young people who are interested in jazz to check that out. It’s important to know where jazz has come from, how it’s developed because then we can go with it and move it forward. Jazz is also progressive. It’s not stagnant, it’s not about recalling or recovering history. It’s about taking the origin, playing with it and moving it forwards.
As a standards singer this must be quite challenging?
It’s a hell of a responsibility! But that’s the beauty of it, there’s a huge pot full of amazing jazz standards that can be rediscovered. And for me there has to be a fresh approach if you’re doing jazz standards. I love to do the slightly lesser known ones. We’re doing Sonny Burke’s Midnight Sun which was made famous by Ella Fitzgerald. It still has the chord changes that adhere to the original, but our version has more of a trip-hop kind of feel. We’ve added a few bars, we’ve re-arranged it a bit to make it more magical…and because the lyrics are so rich and almost ‘kitsch” I’m playing with that.
A trip-hop makeover, didn’t you just call yourself a purist?
When I say ‘purist” I still believe that the melodies of the tunes are so beautiful, so perfectly done and written by such geniuses that I don’t want to mess with that too much. I like to play with the rhythmic aspects, but the basic essence is still important to me. Also, as a vocalist you’ve got lyrics which is a huge responsibility. You’re not just blowing through something and producing a melody. You’re thinking about rhythm, tone production, it’s a story that you’re telling….
Right, what other stories are you telling?
We’re also doing Dizzy Gillespie’s classic Night in Tunisia. I’m a fan of vocalese and I love the father of vocalese, Eddie Jefferson’s lyrics to that, so I’ll be trying that. Then there’s Devil May Care – we’ll probably be giving it a darker atmosphere, arranging it to suit a more contemporary feel. And that South African classic, Ntjilo Ntjiko which has been done, of course by the late great Miriam Makeba. I’m not going to try and do it like her at all. I’m just going to try and make Andre Petersen’s reharmonised version my own with Andrew Lilley on piano.
You’ve got some cooking young cats in your quartet, how do you handle all their egos?
Phew, being a band leader is challenging. I mean in my band I’ve got Kes Naidoo [on drums], Mark Fransman [on sax], Andrew Lilley [on piano] and Shane Cooper [on bass]. These are strong musicians with strong personalities. Being a good band leader is being able to give them space to be creative, but also trying to crack the whip sometimes and be like, ‘you know what? That’s how I want it”. If you leave it open with all that amazing creative energy in one room it can get quite heated. But I love the energy they bring. I want to be the singer, but I also like to get my hands dirty with the band. I’m not a performer who is purely about being up in the front and doesn’t give a shit who’s behind me. I like to think like an instrumentalist.
Billie Holiday would’ve agreed. She famously said she felt like she was playing a horn, ‘trying to improvise like Les Young or Louis Armstrong”?
She was the queen of that, of course. She didn’t even have a fantastic voice, technically it wasn’t very good…but neither was Nina Simone’s.
Were either of them influences?
No, not really. I’ve always been inspired by Ella’s sound and technique. There’s only one Ella Fitzgerald. But I do also like the ‘ugly” sounding singers: Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae. My first teacher Natasha Roth had a role to play in that. She was excellent in exposing me to the right, ‘authentic” thing. If you’ve listened to enough of that music, done your time with it, it’s okay, as long as you’re doing it in your own way.
So, what is Lisa’s way?
Let’s not beat around the bush. It’s about me realising as a white jazz singer that I have a different kind of sound to African American singers. My focal point isn’t Afro jazz. As much as I can appreciate it, my music isn’t directly influenced or inspired by it. So to try and copy that, press that ‘Afro-jazz” mode button, that’s not it. Jazz is an extension of your speaking voice, rather than classical which is disconnected from your speaking area. What was a challenge for me was learning that it’s okay to sound a little bit rough, a little bit ugly. I like to be a perfectionist, so I had to play with that.
Have you found your own voice?
Thankfully, yes. While I’d never say that I wasted my time with classical training, I probably could’ve [found it earlier]….But I also believe it’s an organic process, that everything happened at the right time. When you’re training and going through that school of jazz it’s hard to be sure of what your sound is, until you’ve gone through a whole, painful teething process of transcribing sax solos and trying to emulate people. Because it is initially about copying, but then it’s also about what you do after that.
Thankfully, I really found my voice through writing my own original compositions. That really helps when you’re singing your own tunes, there’s no reference, you’re not copying anyone else, they’re your own lyrics. So I think it’s all about finding a tone, a tone that I feel is Lisa Bauer. When I wrote my first jazz inspired traditional tune, Deja Blues [included on the 2011 CTIJF compilation CD], when I started singing that I think I realised ‘oh that’s how I want to sound.”
So what can audiences expect from the Lisa Bauer Quartet on Saturday night?
Yes our music grooves and you can bop your head to it, but it’s not mindless jumping around. It’s listening music. I’ll be happy if there’s a real interaction between myself and the musicians. If we’re enjoying ourselves the audience will feel that. We’ve got a great mix of tunes, it’s fun to listen to but interesting enough to keep a real jazz listener hooked. One of my lyrics on my album, Finding a New Way is: ‘I don’t live in America, the whole world is spinning in my minds.” I’m saying we’ve got our own scene, so let’s embrace it.
The Lisa Bauer Quartet performs on the Moses Molelekwa stage on Saturday at 9.15pm.
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