It’s all nostalgia, right? References to mixtapes, endearing line drawings of cassettes, socks and t-shirts with cassette tapes on them, Walkman fanaticism, fondness for J-cards and the words “Maxell,” “TDK,” and “Memorex.” It reminds us of songs and people without clear distinction between them. Memories of the memories we were having that the songs evoked. It reminds us of special presents from special someones. The past.

No. Mixtape-making is alive and well! At least for Erin it is. I learned about Erin Margaret Day through social media and was anxious to find out more about her and her project.

Erin invested in a proper cassette deck a few years ago so that she could listen to a release by the DC-based bass and drum duo Blacks Myths. Soon after, she embarked on a mixtape making project. Part memoir, part music-sharing, part season worship. She makes mixtapes for friends with a stereo cassette player, then shares the result on her blog ComeAwayWithEMD.com. An analog process with both an analog and digital product. Why?

Erin: I had been making these seasonal playlists on Spotify and would share them with a friend or two or post them on my blog, but there was also a lot of pressure mounting to stop giving money to Spotify around the same time. My first mixtape was a double cassette set, each tape 120 mins, so four hours long total, and I made it the Pandemic Summer. It was kind of a tribute to protest music and a bit of an essay about how Black the vast majority of that music has been in America…I made a bunch of mixtapes for my friend’s kid in the fall and then started the seasonal mixtape series winter 2021.

Something about mixtapes has always felt very magical to me–capturing time and space and a person’s emotional state, train of thought, etc. Since I began this series, the tapes have very much felt like they are a way I not only process my life but manifest my future. So, I guess I chose them because I love them and I think they are magical, but I have continued making them because the process has proven itself to be magical and because it functions as a great way to process my life, share it with other people, and practice this talent I have for weaving sonic tapestries that communicate stories, truths, and connections.

A process that is just as important as its recipient. Erin has created a ritual. Maybe making mixtapes, even one-off tributes to burgeoning crushes, were always rituals.

Sarah: How do you select the theme for each tape?

Erin: Each tape is sort of different. When tapes are for people I am very close to or have known a long time, they involve a lot more themes that connect with who I know that person to be or aspects of our relationship, things I know they would like, things that remind me of them. When

I know people less, or I make a tape before figuring out who I will give it to, my own headspace factors more in what I create, I think…but the tapes are always kind of intended to document that season of my life, so there are often many meanings happening at a time. For example, my fall mixtape was for an old friend I have known for like half of my life who had just gotten married and released one of the best albums of last year and is really coming into their power as an adult, but I had also just started dating someone I had very serious feelings about who also has a long history in the DIY music scene, so it’s a narrative that captures that period in both their life and mine well, with a lot of songs that evoke moving from youth to adulthood, looking back while moving forward, and coming into power and wisdom, learning how to love in healthy ways. That friend is like a genius of crafting meaning and telling stories, so I also set out to prove to them in my track selections and mixtape craft that I am the greatest student of their own poetic philosophy, through the themes I chose and connected them into a wildly complex themescape!

Said mixtape is one for which Erin is most proud. She made it for someone who is very close, an old friend with whom she had not been in communication for a long time. She wrote:

I think that made the messaging really powerful…I wrote a long post explaining the story and trajectory of the fall mixtape here: basically the tracks and themes are so interwoven that it feels kind of impossible to isolate ones that do it very well, which to me is why the tape is so remarkable and powerful. It’s constantly unfolding and revealing new connections and recurring themes.

Every piece of art is a message given and received. I doubt it ever gets caught exactly as the throw was intended. All the artist’s meaning comes from places deep within. The artist probably doesn’t even know which tunnels to dig to find the real source of inspiration. Events and people and seasons are the tips of icebergs of the psyche, and all that meaning- that messy humanity- is interpreted by a recipient with their own multiverse of perspectives.

Enter Sevan. Sevan received Erin’s fall 2021 mixtape.

Sevan: So to be honest it took me 2 weeks to listen to it all. I wanted to be able to sit down and listen the whole way through, and being a Mama to a very willful 2 year old doesn’t afford me much time for things like that these days. But, I found the time. And I’ve gotta say, I LOVE that it opened with a song that I wrote (one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written, even). It opened me up to it in a familiar way, but in a way where I could sit back and appreciate it as an outsider. Because Erin made it for me, I can’t help but connect it to her and our friendship and the music and scenes we’ve shared and woven in and out of. In ways I maybe can’t articulate or explain specifically, it feels like an homage to the last decade and a half of my life. An intuitive honoring of the changes I’ve gone through, the ways I’ve grown, the past I’ve grown from, the spiritual qualities of my being and the devotional, mystical aspects that my life is grounded in.

…it feels like a mixtape carefully curated to express aspects of who I am, which is profound and totally amazing that Erin was able to do so with such attention and tenderness. Cos it feels accurate! So much happened for me during the Fall, and this mix encapsulates that while also inviting a reflection on the past 15 years. It’s love, it’s change, it’s death, it’s cycles and seasons, it’s mystery, it’s the stars, it’s the dirt and earth, it’s conflict and resolution, it’s the separation before union.

Important mixtape question. Which songs do you love?

Sevan: Well for one, I can’t believe I’d never listened to Th’ Faith Healers before!!! Wow, what was I missing? “Everything, All At Once, Forever” just as a title is like a deep, existential quality I often feel overwhelmed by.

I had never heard Devin Shaffer’s “Drive Into Wood” and that’s become a song I listen to on repeat now. Oh, and Nyagweno by Dr. Pete Larson and his Cytotoxic Nyatiti Band, sooooooooo effin’ good. And the Kings of Harmony Quartette’s “Fountain of Blood” has been a fave of mine since I was 7 years old and obsessed with blues, gospel, and religious hymns. Lots of good songs, but I mostly adore that she included Eartha Kitt speaking about Compromise. Because she’s asked if she’s willing to compromise in a relationship, and she’s like (mostly paraphrasing here), “What? What is that? Why? For what? What is compromise?” The interviewer asks, “well if a man comes into your life you wouldn’t want to compromise?” And she LAUGHS SO LOUD and says, “Stupid. For what?!? For what!? A relationship has to be earned, not to compromise for. Nothing in the world is more beautiful than falling in love. But falling in love for the right reasons. When you fall in love, what is there to compromise?” And the reporter asks if she just falls in love with herself. And she says “Yes. I fall in love with myself, and I want someone to share me with me” And I just love that.

What Erin couldn’t have foreseen, is that three months after getting married, my partner and I decided to live separately. So as of the first of January I moved out. We decided we both needed space to process the extremely fast pace of our relationship (I moved in at 2 weeks, got pregnant at 3 months, then the pandemic hit with no support from family, dealing with poverty, etc. it was tough). We also needed space to heal, to get back in touch with ourselves, and to create room so we could start to ground ourselves in ourselves, and then from there reach out to explore the other with love, kindness, acceptance. It feels very, very relevant to Eartha’s words. That love shouldn’t be about compromise, but about loving ourselves and inviting the other into this love that then expands and becomes even bigger than it was before.

Our lives and music entwine. Thank goodness. So do we. Thank goodness.

Sevan: I think a lot of what Erin intended really resonates with my experience of the tape. But also, in ways I can’t imagine how she would know, the songs act as sort of oracles for either things that have happened to me, or things that were to happen that only now I can reflect on (meaning things that happened between now and when she gave me the tape). It feels like a most exquisite portrait of me, and I feel totally valued and seen by it. I know it’s also meant to be for everyone else, but because I was an inspiration I can’t help but feel that way about it.

Sevan Mercy Arabajian is a mixed, queer Mama in Milwaukee who works as a Threshold Doula, supporting people through the full-spectrum of experiences, from birth and death, and every transition and transformation in between. They also offer spiritual services, sound baths, and energywork. They’re mama to a sassy, hilarious, willfull 2 year old, a creative, contemplative 12 year old, and a 7 year old ball python named Priestess.

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If ever this website was about seeking out people you like with whom you would like to be friends and from whom you would like to learn about music, this is it. If we were in high school, I would sheepishly ask this man for a mixtape. Since I’m an adult now, I asked for an interview. We can speculate on the merits of this pretense all we want. At the end of the day, I have come to believe that those of us who are deeply in love with music are wired similarly. And we should connect because of all the beautiful alchemy that may await. In the interview below I found that for music archivist, writer, and radio deejay Reuben Jackson, being wired to deeply love music has led to feelings of imposter syndrome, but also a triumphant embrace of the fact that “once something is in you, it is.” He embodies the mixtape concept, cross-pollinating music communities and influences, and eager to share.

Sarah: You were the kid who was playing music for all your friends. And you were saying that your parents played all kinds of music in your house. Could you say more about what it was like growing up in your house and how you developed this encyclopedic interest or knowledge of music?

Reuben: My parents belonged to—some people will get this, I guess—those record clubs they had back in the day. Like Columbia Records. You could get six albums for a dollar and with the fine print in the ad, you probably ended up hocking your house to pay for all these records. But this box would come every month, and I knew what that box was. I could read that it said Columbia Records. It might be Ray Charles, Beethoven, South Pacific. My father loved country music—Roy Acuff or something like that. Chubby Checker. It was this wonderful array of big band stuff that my father loved. I thought everybody was like this! And of course, my parents would play these records. We listened to this stuff as a family. In the basement, sometimes.

Also, I would spend time with them and see what this was. I mean, I knew who a lot of these people were. But, what’s this new album like? I just dug in. And then you start reading whatever constituted liner notes then. Who’s on bass? Who’s the banjo player on this record? “Recorded in Nashville, August 22^nd, 1959.” So it all kind of started to sink in. A lot of that curiosity and desire for detail comes out of love. You love this thing. And you want to know more about it. And then the sound of it- like that line in Ray when Jamie Fox says, “We gonna make it do what it do.” And then you’re trying to figure out how it does what it does.

And because my mom played classical piano, I could ask her things about music. I could play her something and ask her, “What is this in the third measure?” And she was self-effacing about her playing. We had this little piano in the basement. She’d say, “Well, this is like a ninth chord.” Just to have your first fox hole. And someone who didn’t laugh at you for asking questions about music. As opposed to just sitting there bobbing your head—which is cool, too! But it was very nurturing where that’s concerned.

My brother had a little transistor radio, which I would sometimes borrow off his dresser, put the little earbuds in, and listen late at night and cover the light with the pillow. So I was always listening, certainly. That could have been mostly top 40 because of AM radio.

But it was like a house of music. It was safe. And I was naïve. I thought everyone liked music, period. We’d have show-and-tell in grade school. One day I brought Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra’s Greatest Hits. And I’m thinking, “Everybody knows who Tommy Dorsey is.” He hadn’t been dead that long. It was sort of like one of these memorial albums. Here I am playing Sunny Side of the Street. The kids are looking at me like, “huuuuuuhhhh , this is not Motown.” And I was crestfallen. And it was my enthusiasm overriding any potential self-consciousness. Self-consciousness came when I discovered that people would laugh at you and say, “There he goes again.”

I think my work on radio and me working here [at the University of the District of Columbia] as a music archivist is kind of like revenge of the nerds, because as much as it would hurt to be labeled as odd or ostracized, I knew I wasn’t killing people. Once something is in you, it is.

Sarah: We had talked previously about how growing up you didn’t really think about genre-ization- you really didn’t know what that was. I was wondering if that may be a generational difference between the two of us. But your story leads me to believe that that’s not the case at all—that the kids you grew up with were interested in a few genres and were not like you at all.

Reuben: Yeah. Boy. About four years ago when I was still at Vermont Public Radio, I told my boss who was also at that time a programmer on VPR’s classical channel—I did a show once a month that looked at film composers from the ‘40s, ‘50s, and stuff. And I said to her, “I don’t like what is so-called classical music because it’s classical music. I just love – you hear something and it might be Schumann or it might be Debussy, but it had nothing to do with some hard and fast allegiance to a tradition.”

It’s the same with jazz. A lot of people say, “Well, he’s the jazz guy.” But those labels are funny because a lot of musicians who are considered this or this or this have interests far beyond what people might expect. Jimi Hendrix loved Schoenberg. He loved Andy Williams. He’d say this and the interviewer would be waiting for the punch line. And he’d go, “No. No. I’m serious.”

And I think for my friends. I love them. But if it wasn’t on the radio, It didn’t exist, basically. So that meant adherence, consciously or not, to a certain style of music. A certain sound. Whether they call it urban radio or whatever. R&B, I don’t know if that’s a style, like baroque music, or if that’s a cultural categorization.

The other thing growing up, too, is that after like ’67, ’68, and things were starting to explode in this country, there were- we called them checklists- how if you’re Black and you want things to get better, you have to do this, this, this, and this.

I once told a student that I was in the basement one day and my father came downstairs, and he took out a Count Basie record. Then he took out the Supremes and put the album on that side. And he took out a gun and pointed it to me- I’m joking!- and he said, “Pick one.” And then I said, ‘Well what if you love both?” And that’s the thing with me. You can love both. To love the Supremes doesn’t refute your love for Count Basie. Especially jazz people can be so, “How can you sell us down the river?” It doesn’t mean you love it less.

I think that also ties into what we were saying earlier about becoming yourself. If I had not been that way, beyond music, it would have taken me a lot longer to get here in general. And it has to do with music and life. So you meet somebody [now] and you can talk about all kinds of things. Like Russian Romantic poetry. It was in there [before] but it’s not the same.

Like being a musician and you play the same instrument. You’ll never know everything but you keep developing. And curiosity ties into it.

But I made fun of it. Like the comedian Bernie Mack said, “Humor comes from pain.” And I’ll hear silly stories about turning over the B side of some hit, and saying, “Listen to this countermelody. The French horn does this.” And my friends just start slapping their foreheads like “Damn, we were having such a good time. And there he goes!”

So it took me a long time to venture, not internally, but socially, in that direction, because I just thought, “Yeah, a lot of people just aren’t like this.” It can do a number on you. If something is such a big part of who you are or who you’re becoming. And you’re looking for people who are similar.

I saw one of these Quincy Jones documentaries and he said that he would cut school and go to the movie theatres. He was born in Chicago. His father moved the family to Bremerton, in Washington, just outside of Seattle, because his father was a carpenter and he worked in the navy shipyards. And he said, “I would cut school and just sit there. And the movies were okay. But it was the film music.”  It was like Dmitri Tiomkin and all these people. And he said, “I just had to bathe in that music.” And I’m in the movie theatre. I’ve got a box of Kleenex on this side. I’ve got a box of Kleenex on this other side. And I’m thinking, “Yeah, that’s it. When it’s in you.” And how his father would surreptitiously slip him money for a composition notebook, because he knew it was in him. I thought they were going to carry me out of the theatre. “There’s some guy in here who won’t stop weeping.” The story itself is moving. For me, connecting with this thing that means so much.

Sarah: And so you feel you can do that now. And growing up, that might have been more challenging?

Reuben: It was! Growing up, you had to be a lot of things. I don’t want to overstate this, because I don’t want people to think I am trying to make it sound like I was in some Jay-Z video years ago. But what people call bullying now, I think that’s too nice a word.

I knew about three different ways to get home from the movie theatre because I knew who was on this corner waiting to take what was left of your money. Gangs then were like fistfight gangs. They weren’t like TEC-9s and Uzis. But that was a reality. So you’re negotiating a lot of things at once.

I think even now, though, for men to be received as soft can be a challenge. I can’t say this was a cover because I was good at sports. I was a little more respected. I could play ball. Football, baseball, and all that. But I think it is a lot to handle at one time.

There were also guys in my neighborhood- by today’s standards, they would be considered quaint. Some of them dropped out of school. You’d see them. They knew when the report cards came out like they were school administrators or something. They would see me walking home from school. They called me “Bookworm” because I was always with books. “Bookworm, let me see your report card.” They’re saying this before my parents. This one guy, Clarence, would say, “Yeah, you gotta tighten up this math grade.” And I’m thinking, “They’re looking out for you.” So you have people looking out for you. And then people who can’t stand you because maybe your teacher is going on about some essay you wrote. And they want to beat your ass at 3:00. That’s too many jobs for a kid. Being a kid is hard enough.

I taught high school English for two years. I thought it made me a better teacher—not that you want to go through all that to become one. But It’s an understanding that at best the subject matter is secondary, maybe tertiary. It’s part of your development. I remember the kids would bring things into the classroom, whether it’s discussed or not. Because I did.

I loved my father. My father was also a functioning alcoholic. I grew up in Brightwood [in Washington D.C.]. The house was small. I would try to hide his bottles before he got home. Well, in a small house, you don’t have that many places to hide. But I knew he couldn’t bring it up at the dinner table to my mom. He was supportive, and he had a problem. I think ultimately what happens is—and this is true of both myself and my brother—in a parent you hope for “better” for your children. What if “better” is different- like so different that you don’t quite get it?

So in my case, the geeky music loving kid –  [as an adult, working] at the Smithsonian, and I get to go to conferences all around the world and all this stuff. I have this indelible image of him: One of my first books of poetry won the Columbia Book Award, and they had a ceremony at the Folger Theatre.  And Joseph Brodsky chose the book. And I’m sitting on the stage, and they’re reading comments from Joseph Brodsky. My mom was a Language Arts teacher for DC Public [Schools]. She was the extrovert of the two. She’s beaming like those lights on the top of the Empire State Building. And my father, dressed to the 99s, he’s proud, but he’s a little like, “Who the hell is this dude?”  Even though we had a common love for music—like, I love ballet and opera—he’d say really nasty things about that. It’s like the combo platter.

Sarah: Man! Okay. I went with you on that journey and I’m not thinking about music any more. I think when we first started talking, you were talking about getting your friends to listen to some particular technical aspect of some song you were playing, and to me that was kind of a corollary to the mixtape idea, where you’re sharing music with people. So I’m a little thrown that we are actually talking about how hard it was for you to do that! But, that must have changed as your life progressed.

Reuben: Well, you find vineyards. I started doing radio when I was 18 at Goddard College in Vermont. And that was an outlet for both the continuation of sharing music and in a personal matter, it’s a way of dealing with all your feelings. Programming is like baking the cookies, but you’re baking them for other people. They really aren’t for you. And I think learning that is important.

But I always felt different. My first year of college, my show was Tuesday night, 9 until midnight. I’d go to bed early Monday night. I’d eat dinner, go back to the room, I had this whole ritual before I’d go to the station. And it was kind of funny but it was serious because it was this thing you love and you don’t want to mess it up.

You know- college radio, a lot of our friends had shows. And their friends would come to the station during the show to hang out and talk. And people would say, “Hey, can I come by the station?“  I would say, “No. ‘Fraid not.” Because it’s my time. I cut out the lights above the board. I got the playlist. Any notes I needed. That was me. So, that helped a heck of a lot. And like with poetry, I didn’t know I was going to fall in love with it to the extent I did.

And then the other surprise was that fall 1975, someone calls the dorm, the dorm phone in the lobby. Someone said, “There’s some guy on the phone for you!” So I come downstairs. And it’s the program manager for WSKI. It’s a country and western station in Barre, Vermont, which is the granite capital of the world. So this guy said, “I heard your show when I was driving.” At this time, the station was 10 watts. So he must have stopped and hung out by the gas pumps at the general store. Anyway, he said, “I think you’re like the best announcer in the state. Would you like a part-time job?” When you’re an undergrad, you don’t have that much money. And I said, “Okay.” He said, “Well come by the station Friday, and we’ll talk about it.” So I get this program. It’s 12 to 3 on Saturday. Country and western. Merle Haggard, people like that. A proscribed playlist. The station is about the size of this table. At the top of the hour, I read the mutual teletype. Rip and return. “Today, President Nixon…”

There are more people of color in Vermont now, but it’s the second whitest state in the country. But at that time, If I saw someone Black I’d call all my relatives, “I saw somebody Black!” So imagine you’re 18, you’ve got this job. This station. It’s a small place. They know your voice.

 

So you’re at the grocery store, at the deli counter, and you’re getting an egg salad. People start turning around like this. “You’re that guy!” And they don’t mean anything by it. One day I was there, and this woman was with her husband. And this woman turns to her husband and says, “It’s that colored guy on the radio!” That’s what they know. It’s so isolated. I said, “Yes ma’am.” And she said, “You’ve made Saturday afternoons. We just love your voice, and of course the music you’re playing.”

Well, I’m from here [in Washington, DC]! And I grew up ducking gang fights and stuff, daydreaming. And it’s not like “Look at me!” But here you are, in this place where people just stare at you sometimes. And suddenly, by way of music, you’re part of a community in a way that you wouldn’t necessarily be as “merely” a college student.

And of course, the difference between these two things is, even though I had a certain format I did with the college stuff, this was all you-play-the-hits. Part of you is like, “Am I selling out to the man?” And the other part- the ham part- is, “This is fun.” It can be fun to walk down the street and the pick-up truck goes by and people wave, and I’m thinking, “My friends would not believe this.” I think it comes from opportunity and people thinking to give you a shot. And it’s an extension of having heard so much stuff—getting back to my parents’ house and all- and never surrendering my love for music.

Sarah: So, let me ask you: as you got to know who your audience was—who you were baking the cookies for—did that change what you were baking?

Reuben: I don’t think so. I would call myself, and I have been called, a cross-pollinator, One of the nicest, most moving, and perceptive things anyone ever said about my radio show for Vermont Public Radio was, this woman said, “My family and I really appreciate what you do. No matter what the piece happens to be, you’re trying to point out where the jazz is.” And I started to cry in this grocery store. Because that’s really it. But first and foremost, it has always been: Isn’t it wonderful that this exists? It’s a little quixotic. But I feel that way. And I still marvel at the wonder of creation. And I think that’s never changed.

On Sundays, I do this show with Larry Applebaum on WPFW called The Sound of Surprise. It’s 4-6. You get phone calls from people who are appreciative because they’ll hear things that’s maybe a little different from typical jazz radio. I think jazz radio and classical radio can be similar—and I understand that there’s revenue involved- but, the strict adherence to the canon.

For me, like the joke about Count Basie and the Supremes, the continuum doesn’t mean that the other stuff is not of value. It’s like, isn’t it great that these elements are found in some seemingly disconnected source?   

I’ll play Lester Young. For me, he’s one of the most original people, no matter what. And I think, “Boy! It’s like Ezra Pound, the poet. Make it new!” It’s fresh. To go from that to a new recording. This kind of bothers jazz people.

There’s some new version of a tune from the late ‘60s- which was a while ago now- but that adherence to stick to the standards, the 32-bar songs, the Gershwins and what-have-you. You can love that, too. I try to give as much of a sample-of a smorgasbord- as possible. And you do it the best you can in terms of coherence. But it’s for them. Maybe the audience are like the kids in the basement I don’t see. (Except they will call.) But I’m convinced it’s an extension of that: Isn’t this great?

This guy, Ben Williams, is a bassist from DC. He did an album. He had a subtle bass rendition of that song Nirvana did- Smells Like Teen Spirit. That’s a standard. This guy’s studying with Christian McBride. And he can talk about Mingus and all these people that are sanctioned. And you hear from people that are saying, “I never knew jazz people COULD do that.” Like maybe they broke out of jail. [laughter] It’s interesting to work within those rules and unwritten rules about this.

My bosses were kind of ambivalent about jazz to begin with. And maybe I used that to my advantage. I think of that character the Hulk, David Banner, and then the big green bicep starts to pop out. But it’s still all done for the listener. And it all comes from love. It’s not like thumbing your nose at people. It’s fun, but when the woman said that about pointing out where the jazz is, I thought, “Okay. She got it.”

Sarah: She got it. I would like to ask you what you are trying to showcase and why. In all the venues that you’re sharing music, like radio programs or what-have-you, what are you trying to showcase?

Reuben: I’m thinking of an interview that Charlie Parker did in the early ‘50s, when he said that there was no boundary line to art. And the thing about music- it’s so vast. I think of the vastness of music. If you just say “music,” you could be talking about Buddy Holly, you could be talking about Fugazi, you could be talking about the Spinners, or Mendelson. It’s like- freshwater, salt water. And so I think the immensity of it.

I think one of the good problems to have is that most people will never hear even a smidgeon of it- even, we were just talking about what is called jazz. You’ll never hear all the stuff. And to try to share some of it- it can be overwhelming. It’s a good problem to have, the overwhelming variety and beauty in spite of societal conditions which in many ways, especially with Black musicians, made their lives hell. People can- you could blow up buildings. You could knock somebody on the head on the street. Or you could do this. AND you could do this. So, if you think about what humanity is capable of, there is that, too.

I’ve been preparing a talk about the lesser known works of Quincy Jones for the last couple of weeks. So there’s like film score stuff. Some big band charts he did for people like Lionel Hampton and people like that when he was like 19 years old. TV stuff. People may remember it or not. It’s like that kid in the basement saying, “Yeah, but there’s also this!” There’s the score from the movie In Cold Blood. So it’s variety, immensity, possibility. What’s that thing Patti Smith said? The sea of possibilities. That’s really it, it’s the sea of possibilities.

Sarah: That is beautiful. So, we also talked about how you and musicians you admire are always looking for something different. So, how was that done in an era before the Internet (where it is so easy to find new and different things)?

Reuben: How was it done?

Sarah: How do you find out about something that you don’t know about?

Reuben: I see. Yeah. Every now and then I hear myself saying to students, “Well, you know, there was no internet back then!” And I feel like Samuel Morse’s homeboy or something. It took a lot of digging and curiosity. Because even then, even with radio and artists, like you could live here and hear about some great jazz station in New Orleans, but you couldn’t necessarily get it. You could read Downbeat magazine or something like that. And there were record stores. But I’d say even up until relatively recent times, the record stores here weren’t always that great.

My restlessness and curiosity—if I’d hear about some book somebody’s written about ‘50s jazz in Sweden, I would go to the Library of Congress and just stay all day and read stuff and take notes. When it was cheap—and this was even in the 90s—when it was cheap to take the train to New York, I’d go to New York and hit these jazz record stores that someone referred me to.

So- word of mouth, the few periodicals which existed at the time. Downbeat. There’s one called the Record Changer. But, it was hard!

Or maybe your hip neighbor who might know something. The cool outcast. I used to always say, “You have to dig. You have to dig for it.” And it’s kind of lonely. But I was on the road. I couldn’t stop. While these weren’t always things outside the “mainstream,” my parents’ tastes helped. Because if you’d hear some drummer on a record, I’d want to know more about them. It’s funny in thinking about this, see I’m saying this to you now, but partially when 2021 hit, I’m thinking, “I’m going to take out my phone and type it in Notes.” But see, you weren’t doing that in 1969. Or much longer than that. But that’s where it helps for me.

Again, like in New York, some store, a guy says, “Yeah, I have this record” and pulls it off the shelf. You might pay goodness-knows-what. It was a more circuitous path. I’ll put it like that.

Sarah: So it sounds like you may have had an outsider neighbor here and there but it was really your parents more than anyone, when you think of the key figures.

Reuben: Yeah. Some of the stuff left them scratching their heads. Things that they just didn’t get. That’s okay. That happens with everybody.

In 2009, I gave a talk at the Museum of Bethel Woods. Bethel Woods is where Woodstock took place. The emphasis was on the last year of Jimi Hendrix- ’69-70- what changed compositionally. So you’re in this auditorium in the museum. First thing, walking around the grounds, I was like, “Damn, this is like my Gettysburg.” Not a war. But stuff that’s really in your head and heart. So I got up there after being introduced and I asked everybody in the crowd, “With left or right foot, [give me] four quarter notes.” [stomp stomp stomp stomp.] And people are thinking “What the hell is this?” Anytime I played Hendrix in the basement, my mother would say, “It’s too loud!”  And she’d go [stomp stomp] three four shut up.”  I said, “So we just brought my mom back.” That’s an example of, “We don’t get this.” That talk [at Bethel Woods]- it’s that nerd stuff. And isn’t it great?

I once caused some stuff at a class at Goddard. It was called the History of Western Music, and we were talking about compositional devices. And there’s this concept called contrary motion. And the teacher played a piece from Stravinsky. And I went, “There’s a record by Kool and the Gang with the same thing! Can I bring it in next week?” What’s the name of that song? Who’s Gonna Take the Weight. I offended some people. “You aren’t possibly comparing Kool and the Gang to Igor Stravinsky?” I said, “We’re talking about the use of this technique. Boom. Kool and the Gang, Jersey City, NJ. Stravinsky, Russia. Boom. That’s what it is. And if you like it or don’t like it, there’s nothing I can say about that. But I think it worked.

I love Stravinsky and Kool and the Gang. And for what it’s worth, someone asked Stravinsky, after he moved to America, “Who do you like? Who are your favorite composers?” And he said, “I like the three B’s.” The interviewer said, “The three B’s?” “Yes, Beethoven, Bach, and Brown. James Brown. It’s the American sensibility, and he’s a great composer.” This still baffles people. Stravinsky- you talk about “mad skills” as the kids used to say. I always said he had the funk in him. That rhythmic stuff if you think about the Rite of Spring. And then you put on James Brown’s Funky Stuff and you think, “Yeah of course! They’re coming from the power of rhythm.”

Fortunately, there are some people out there, like airwaves, that think this way. It does knock down a lot of things in people’s heads, understanding that it’s not a crime to love all of this. Again, it’s that immensity.

Do you know who Michael Tilson Thomas is? He’s a conductor. He’s been with many orchestras. There was an American Masters last year addressing his life. He was talking about James Brown. I met Michael Tilson Thomas in 1971. James Brown was here. He played the Howard Theatre for a week.  There had just been an article in the Rolling Stone magazine about Michael Tilson Thomas.  He was the young person shaking up the classical music repertoire. He was with the Buffalo Symphony at that time. So intermission. You’re in the john. There’s like one white dude in there. And I knew that’s who it was because I had just read the article. So I waited. I said, ‘Aren’t you Michael Tilson Thomas?” He said “Yeah.” I said, “I read that article about you in Rolling Stone.”

So he’s talking about this in American Masters, and he says, “Well, when I conduct Stravinsky, I try to get that same kind of precision that James Brown had.” James Brown referred to it as the Situation of Music. I don’t care if it’s Emmylou Harris or Chuck Berry. It’s the situation of music. If we’re rehearsing and someone says, “What do you want from us in this measure?” He says, “I want you to break out in a cold sweat.” So he’s doing James Brown. And that’s somebody who’s not saying, “Well I can’t say this because it’s not classical.” And he wasn’t trying to be cool. I think for him, too, it’s like, “Isn’t it wonderful that this music exists?” “While I was in conservatory, we were all studying Stravinsky, but we were listening to James Brown.” It’s generational perhaps. But still, what’s being done within someone else’s work and how does it work? That’s no different than Jo Stafford or anybody else—what happening with the orchestration? Like anything, what is it communicating? Is it communicating something?

To me, the Jo Stafford thing. She’s like [swooning sound.] She’s like up there with the ability. You can play soul and science. She’s got perfect pitch. And a very sagacious vocalist. You believe her. My mother used to play this recording of Some Enchanted Evening. And I’m thinking, it’s like she’s my sister and she’s telling me. And I’m thinking “What is going on with life?” and she’s telling me “Some enchanted evening you may meet a stranger.” And I’m hanging on the words and the beauty of it and the sincerity. And the sincerity in music, if it’s not there, it’s just technique. It’s got to have that feeling.

Right before I took early retirement from the Smithsonian, December 2009, one of the things I was hell-bent on doing was to get her to donate some materials to the Museum of American History. Right after the World War II memorial was dedicated, American History had this weekend of all kinds of programming connected with that. I gave a talk about her. A lot of times they would play her music in barracks before G.I.s went to sleep. They called her G.I. Jo. There’s this beautiful essay by a guy names Gene Leeds called The Voice of Home. She was called the Voice of Home. So you’re looking out in the auditorium and it’s like all these WWII guys and families. I mean this lovingly—old dudes. And they’re crying. And I’m thinking, “I knew. But I didn’t know.”

I reached out to her. I wrote her a letter. One of my former colleagues had her address. And I get this letter back. It’s that old cursive writing you don’t see anymore. Jo Stafford. And her husband had just died. I wrote to her, “I’m approaching you…your story is an important part of the American story blah blah blah” I said “I’m going to be in California in the L.A. area in the next three weeks. Is it possible to talk with you more about this?” And I’m thinking, be ready for the big “no.” She wrote, “That would be wonderful. Let’s get in contact right before you leave and we can have lunch.” Okay. My heart is Jo Stafford. This is my job. And it’s like my parent’s basement. So I go. She had a condo in Century City. We spent a couple hours talking and carrying on. She made lunch. She’s so unpretentious and funny. And I told her about my parents.

She is someone who quit the business at the height of her popularity because of her kids. She said if both parents are working, this is not good. This was late ‘50s. At that time, she was making big money. So I’m leaving her condo and I’m on cloud 99.

Then two weeks later I get a letter. She said “I hate the telephone,” which made me adore her even more. She said, “I was talking to my son about it, and I don’t think I’ve really done anything to merit this. But I really appreciate your request.” The irony to me was at this point those big congressional allocations we would get for years were starting to dry up. And I think a lot of yahoos with some half- interesting stuff and a lot of money to pay for cataloging and processing were suddenly more attractive to the museum because Smithsonian needed the money. And I’m thinking, “Here’s somebody who sustained people during a time of great tragedy, sacrifice, and she’s too modest to do it.” But I still have those letters.

She has a version of the folk song Shenandoah. Now with COVID and thinking of travel and loss and not seeing something or someone, it always has this added resonance for me. But it’s always been there.

Anyway, same for Karen Carpenter. Oh my god. You talk about somebody that’s believable. Plus she was a great drummer and didn’t get props for her musicality. “It’s going to take some time this time.” And you hear it and you think, “Yeah, this happened” And it doesn’t matter if it did or not. You believe it. This vocal is so fresh and sincere. And those kinda gooey suburban white picket fence harmonies underneath it. And then this guy Hal Blaine, a great session musician, he’s playing these beautiful things with cymbals. See, this is what my friends put up with. It’s all going on concurrently. And you think it’s like you got Newt Gingrich and Bernie Sanders together in the same room. But it’s all part of this thing. And it all goes back to isn’t this wonderful? It can be the entire piece. It can be like 4-5 measures.

I used to sit on the stoop of my parents’ house just kind of hanging out. And I think about my mom, who would embarrass me [about my career and travel] if she were alive: “My baby’s at a repository in Germany.” And I get kind of weepy about it. But I’m thinking, “Well the stubbornness kind of paid off.” Not that my aim was to be documented somewhere. But I’m thankful that that’s the case.

And I talk a little bit more now about stuff that I’ve done that I didn’t do before. I was a voting member for the Grammys. It’s been a wild ride. You find yourself in these ballrooms with all these people and you kind of act like, “O yeah, I do this every day.” And there’s Dionne Warwick and Ringo Starr or whomever. But when people see who you are, name tag and all, you can’t act like you don’t belong. I have to kill the second grader being worried about getting beaten up for being a nebbish.

My mother used to call DC a big, small southern town. Which I think it still is, even with these incredible changes which have occurred. Like a lot of small towns, there are people who look askance at people who– “You got this job. You do all this travelling. Don’t think you’re better than we are.” I don’t.

I would go to Sweden or somewhere for a conference. I’d come back. I’d go to the barber shop. People would say, “Where you been?” I would never say anything specific. This is my problem. But I didn’t want to risk having to deal with people who are like, “Who do you think you are?” So I stuffed a lot of stuff in the closet.

The Smithsonian had this big gala on the Queen Mary to get moneyed people to donate money. I’m staying at this hotel. It was black tie, which is funny enough just to see me dressed up. They had all these limousines leaving the hotel and heading to the ship. I missed my limo. And someone: “There’s one down at the end there. You can get into that one.” So I get in. You should live as long as this limousine! I get in the back and see this woman to my immediate left and I say, “Good evening.” Sitting across from me is Elizabeth Taylor.

You’re from 5^th St NW, and you’re looking across at Elizabeth Taylor. So we’re chatting on the way to the Queen Mary. And it’s that, “Okay be yourself.” But the other side of your brain is going, “It’s Elizabeth Taylor!!!” I still don‘t believe some of it. I don’t know about “job of a lifetime,” but 20 years is a long time in the course of one human’s existence. I’m still unpacking a lot of this stuff. My mother would say if she were alive, “My god, you were even dressed up!”

I think I’ve succeeded despite myself. “Is it okay to do this? Is it okay to be this person?” I did dream about some things. I’d read liner notes and wonder how do you do this? How do you get to do this? When I was a kid, you didn’t really see many Black writers. I saw that Langston Hughes had done some. I thought “Maybe. Maybe.” But I kept it filed away. And when I had the opportunity to do it, to be considered for a membership in NARAS, you have to have a minimum of 12 liner notes credits. I had 15. They were looking to broaden their color spectrum with voting members. I said to my mother, “I have 15.” She said, “Just stop right there. Even if you don’t get in, just look at what you’ve done.”

Reuben Jackson is a Washington D.C. poet, jazz archivist, radio deejay, music lecturer and writer, and writing mentor, but in what order I cannot say. He currently works as an archivist with the University of the District of Columbia’s Felix E. Grant Jazz Archives. His two poetry collections are called fingering the keys and Scattered Clouds, respectively. One of the first things he told me is that he doesn’t know bupkus about mixtapes.

 

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Before I had the self-awareness to even know that I was doing it, I was using music to connect with people in absence of understanding how to do so otherwise. One such glaring example has been on my mind a lot lately. It’s because the U.S. political landscape has made it difficult for me to set aside my differences with Republicans, even those I love. And there is a mixtape that I prepared and gave to someone many moons ago, when like now, I was afraid that any real engagement would set back our relationship.

In the seventh grade, I gravitated to the girl in my class whose hair was the highest and make-up the brightest. She knew who The Cure was because of her older sister. I soon learned that her older siblings were all in their twenties. She was a surprise to parents who were pretty much done with being parents. My parents, on the other hand, were still deeply engaged in the work of keeping me safe. For example, they had a rule that I must dismount from my bicycle whenever a car passed me on the 15 mile-per-hour road on which we lived. Unlike at my house, at Liz’s house, we smoked in her bedroom and experimented with alcohol and boys when her parents were away. She and I were perfect foils. Quiet and loud. Cautious and bold. I brought her security; she brought me spontaneity.

Throughout middle school, we enjoyed new wave, collecting band t-shirts, and playing with black eyeliner and hairspray. We listened to The Cure’s Disintegration in her bedroom while painting our nails black and plotting our next excursion, usually cutting through the neighbors’ yards in her parents’ development to get to the local bar where the cigarette machine was unmonitored by the door. We would be friends forever. I was sure of it.

But something happened. I can’t exactly remember what. Maybe I repressed it. We had traded boyfriends—that may have been the death knell. What I do remember is that as I became more enamored in high school with the Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat, and The Misfits, Liz began wearing tie-dye shirts and moccasins. She had defected to the school’s hippie contingent. Her identity changed. Her friends changed. Our spheres diverged, and our close friendship collapsed.

Meanwhile, throughout high school, I was trading mixtapes with pen pals from across the country. They opened my mind. One pen pal made me a tape that bridged Velvet Underground and Iggy Pop with Pink Floyd and Jefferson Airplane. My little high school cultural walls began crumbling.

After a year or so apart, Liz and I began exchanging friendly hellos in high school hallways. She told me about her long-term boyfriend. We were becoming reacquainted. One day, Liz and the boyfriend picked me up so we could spend some time together. Would we rekindle our friendship? We went to the boyfriend’s house. I watched in bewilderment while they took bong hit after bong hit. I sat awkwardly smiling, unaccustomed to drug use. I waited for conversation to commence between lighter flicks and the gurgling of bong water. It was a cordial visit, but one that was never repeated.

That year for her birthday, I did a strange thing. I wanted to tell her that I loved her and that I appreciated her for who she was and what she liked—that I didn’t expect her to always like what I liked. I wanted her to know that she would always be special to me, even after we grew apart. And I did not know how. I took that tape that my pen pal had sent me—the one with Pink Floyd—I dubbed a copy of it and gave it to her. The beautiful artwork on the tape given to me by the pen pal was replaced with a boring TDK insert for the copy for Liz. I wrote “Happy Birthday” on it. I explained to her that it was a copy of a mixtape that I had been enjoying. Any pride I may have normally had about selecting songs and assembling a mixtape experience for someone was eclipsed by this need to share, to try to connect, and to not think too hard about it–to try something imperfect.

Liz told me that her boyfriend and she listened to the tape in his car before school and liked it. I was thrilled.

We never spent much time together again. As adults, though, we did reconnect. Now we get in touch on each other’s birthdays, on Mother’s Day, and at Christmastime. She moved with husband and children to a farm in the South-Central U.S. while I moved outside of the nation’s capital. Our conversations sometimes remind me of the city mouse/country mouse fable. I suspect we may have divergent politics to match. Last year, I delicately dropped a conversation about wearing masks during the pandemic when it seemed we were sailing into threatening waters.

One summer, my tiny backyard garden produced a freakishly gigantic zucchini. Liz sent me lots of suggestions for using it, including some zucchini bread recipes. She often jokes about how I should come visit the farm and how she will put me to work there. Recipes are our mixtapes now.

The gulf between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. feels insurmountable sometimes. Something like the same raw anger of adolescence possesses me when I hear people echo talking points from Fox News. It shuts me down. It feels incomprehensible. I don’t even want to understand. I rationalize that not talking or engaging with the loved ones with whom I disagree is best. But I know it’s rash, and it’s unfair. It’s unfair to them and to me.

Somewhere, deep down, I need to find the resolve to just connect, somehow, imperfectly.

Sarah runs this website for fun. She loves music and literature. She works statistics for a living. She saved all her mixtapes. She snapped the photo below upon completion of this blog post for posterity. And she changed the name of her 7th grade best friend.

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