I was born uptown in Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital on 168th st, in Manhattan. I am a member of that mystical generation known as the “Baby Boomers”. Soon, and over my strenuous objections, my parents decided to move to Long Island. I was precosciously hip, but at 4 years old all my talk about the “culture capital of the world” fell on deaf ears. By the time I was ten we were living in New Jersey. Ah, New Jersey, so near yet so far.
Up until the age of 13 or 14 my musical tastes were typical for my age. I listened to Elvis Presley and rock n’ roll. Then I heard Ray Charles sing “Drown In My Own Tears”. I was transformed and catapulted into a new world with a new aesthetic. It wasn’t long after that that I heard one of those great Sonny Rollins albums from the 50’s on Blue Note. It was the one with J.J. Johnson, Art Blakey, Paul Chambers, Thelonious Monk AND Horace Silver. Wow, you couldn’t go wrong there! The pressure was mounting within me to play some kind of instrument. At 16 I took up the bass because nobody else played it and I had met two drummers and a piano player, Barry Miles, who would go on to lead his own groups and become music director for Roberta Flack. Five weeks into the bass I played my first gig at a local coffeehouse backing a folk singer. I knew about four notes but that’s all I needed.
Before going up to Boston to Berklee School of Music I had already taken some lessons with Eddie Gomez and Fred Zimmerman of Julliard and the NY Philharmonic (Eddie’s recommendation). At Berklee I studied with the much underrated Bill Curtis who definitely got me to the next level on the bass. But in Boston it was the incredible music scene happening around me that forever forged my musical conception. This was the late 1960’s and the creative ferment in all the arts and the social upheaval in the whole country have never been matched. My fellow students were awesome; Ernie Watts was there, as were all three LaBarbara brothers, Joe, Pat, and John, Harvey Mason, Calvin Hill, Harvey S, Jerry Bergonzi, Jack Walrath. I remember the first day Miroslav Vitous arrived in Berklee. I started playing in Richie Beirach’s trio and the second year we got an apartment on Symphony Road together with a drummer and a guitarist. There was constant playing with all kinds of musicians coming and going. Buell Neidlinger, then with the Boston Philharmonic, lived across the street to add a touch of the bizarre to our community. I wound up taking private lessons with him. I’m not sure if I was expanding my horizons but I was definitely expanding something.
Fast forward and I drop out after my second year and return to N.J. It was the 60’s and dropping out was the thing to do. (Yes, there were some other issues, call me if you really want details.) So I bounce around playing gigs a few years until I decide to give education another shot at Rutgers University, in the jazz department at Livingston college with Larry Ridley, Kenny Barron, Ted Dunbar, James Spaulding, Al Harewood, later Frank Foster, Freddie Waits, Jimmy Giuffre, Don Friedman, Bill Fielder, and eventually Paul Jeffries. It was a young department and a direct product of the politics of the 60’s. Those first few years the level of students was horrendously bad except for vibist Steve Nelson who was just eighteen and had already been playing with Grant Green. We were the only two who had any idea of what jazz was and we kept each other from going insane. Things started to get better, Mark Helias passed through and slowly the quality of students improved.
Paul Jeffries really turned it around though and by the end of the seventies a whole new stream of young talent was coming in, Tom Chapin, Gerry Weldon, Terrence Blanchard, Frank Lacy, Rob Bargad, Ralph Peterson, Scott Munson, Radam Schwartz, Jeanie Bryson, John Bianculli, the Harper brothers et al. I had once again dropped out but stayed in town as the local bass player. I had also begun my private studies on the bass with Homer Mensch of the NY Phil and was commuting to New York three days a week to play with the Mannes College of Music orchestra when it was still on the upper east side. Steve was still around but by now there were other people in New Brunswick helping us not to go insane.
Then came The Next Big Phase. A point had been reached where I had to decide whether or not to move to New York. An idea that had been around since the 60’s and had been fermenting ever since was that the next great evolutionary step in culture and society would take place around Universities. They would become centers of thought and innovation that rise up and create the alternative to the corporate culture. I went with it. The jazz scene in New York seemed stalled and without direction and besides it was less than an hour away. In 1981, drawing on all the musicians, young and old, amateur and professional, talented and, well, aspiring, that had then accumulated in New Brunswick, I founded the Jazz Musicians Collective Of New Brunswick. Starting out as a party in a friend’s loft on Remsen Ave. we just invited every jazz musician in the area, put out a keg of beer, charged two dollars at the door and after 6 or 7 hours, exhausted, we stared at each other in amazement. Over 200 people had come and dozens and dozens of musicians showed up and jammed. The music was great, the spirit was exhilarating, we made some money, but most important we all understood that jazz musicians are a community and this was the vehicle that gave it expression. Five years later, without ever having established an organization through a formal written document, without ever having become a non profit arts organization, without ever having asked for or taken a dime from anyone, we could look back at an amazing track record.
The Jazz Musicians Collective Of New Brunswick never achieved much recognition beyond its immediate local impact area but it was truly unique and validated two very important concepts that have stayed with me. One is that there exists a largely underestimated jazz audience, it is not large but with patience, care and nuturing it is sufficient to support the jazz community. Second, there IS a jazz community. Musicians belong to a community and have interests and relationships that exist prior to their entering the music business and becoming professional musicians. Sadly, these interests and relations suffer as they become subordinate to the excessive demands of business. The New Brunswick Collective was simple in structure and fit the needs of its members at that particular point in their lives. Others can learn from it but every situation and every group is different. When the lives of the New Brunswick musicians changed, the Collective could no longer be sustained in its original form, it had to either change or be disbanded. And so an organization that could boast of a huge age range, having members that were in their seventies and some in their teens, that began quite naturally with an almost 50/50 black-white racial composition which never swung in either direction despite a changing and evolving membership, and that was never for one day in the red, behind on its bills, or over extended in any way, did in fact disband. And that was the end of it.
ITALY: THE ANCESTRAL HOMELAND: In the mid 80’s I traveled for a month in
Italy with my brother and came back determined to learn Italian. Rutgers University had a complete Italian Department offering a PHD for those willing to go that far. I just wanted some lessons but as they say “da cosa nasce cosa” (one thing led to another) and before I was done I had a Masters Degree in Italian Literature, one year at the University of Genoa Italy, and three years teaching experience as a T.A. at both Rutgers New Brunswick and Urbino Italy. In 1992 I moved to Genoa Italy and stayed until I moved to 14th st. in lower Manhattan on August 11th 2001, one month before 9/11.
While in Italy I paid the rent by teaching English but gradually began bringing music back into my life. I had a rented bass at first and was playing with some local musicians. The last four years in Italy my musical activity intensified to the point that I was playing and writing for a quintet and then I formed “Aria Aperta” a group that featured five female vocalists. The idea started out when I gave some of my tunes with lyrics to a singer and we began to rehearse them. Other singers showed an interest and soon it was “da cosa nasce cosa” all over again. I had a group. My decision to return to the U.S. was fairly simple. I wanted to put more time into developing my music, (I prefer American rhythm sections) and after 9 years my time in Italy was over. It was one of the great experiences of my life and one I will always treasure. I do keep in touch with friends and family and return for visits.
NEW YORK 2001. I had a great plan for when I came back. I would move to New York city in August 2001 and see what happens. What happened was that on September 11 four airplanes manned by a bunch of lunatic religious fanatics attacked America. The immediate impact on the jazz scene was dramatic, it collapsed. No one was going out and the city’s economy took years to recover. I was new in town, I was old, and I knew almost no one. In short, I was musically at a complete standstill. And then of course the buildup for the Iraq war began.
I instinctively understood very early on that the war was wrong, that it was
being hyped and that the rationale for it was bogus. In April of 2002 I began meeting with others and I became an activist for the first time in my life. Whether it was through organizing demonstrations with Not In Our Name, volunteering with Democracy Now!, or helping manage the documentary film series RESISTANCE CINEMA, I have been in the thick of it and remain committed to opposing not only the Iraq war but the entire militaristic thrust of U.S. foreign policy and that of all nations. We either disarm everybody or we will descend into an unlivable hell that is not worth defending.
The Russell Branca Quartet is the current vehicle for presenting my music. Gigs are only occasional but I’m working on that. I don’t have much faith in the entertainment business but I do have faith in my music and in people. The idea of creating a whole new alternative infrastructure for the performing arts is one that excites me and calls on my energies. So much seems so complicated but at bottom nothing can ever supersede the primary relationship of performer and audience. The struggle to maintain its simplicity and purity continues.
Russell Branca
November, 2006