Ghazi Al-Mulaifi and Arturo O’Farrill Let the Chaos Rule

Arturo O’Farrill is a Grammy-winning pianist, composer, and producer; Ghazi Al-Mulaifi is an ethnomusicologist, composer, and performer with Boom.Diwan — an ensemble inspired by Kuwaiti seafaring and pearl-diving music. Arturo and Ghazi recently teamed up for the record Live in the Khaleej!, and to celebrate its release in January, the two got on Zoom to catch up about its creation. 
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music

Arturo O’Farrill: The first thing I would talk about is how natural the instrumentation fell into place. When these pearl diving ensembles were first created, there was no such thing as an electric guitar — there was no such thing as a Steinway piano near them, there was no such thing as a bass clarinet or an electric bass. But to me, the sound of Boom.Diwan is the ancient with the contemporary. The sound of Boom.Diwan is the continuation of ancient values, ancient aesthetics, ancient thinking. It’s almost like you could say that Boom.Diwan is an example of Afrofuturism. It’s an example of seeing the future revealed in the ancient, and brought together under that guise. I mean, that’s what I always feel like, especially when we play. I feel like I’m on this strange new planet that’s thousands of years old and completely in the future.

Ghazi Al-Mulaifi: Yeah. One of the first times I played a concert in public in Kuwait, at the Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Center, I was with the late Sulaiman Mayouf Mejally — who played with us in the Cuban Khaleeji project, and was head of his dad’s ensemble. I’d given maybe a 20 minute talk about how this music was born of trade and exchange, and that its history was about change and bringing in new instruments and new ideas from interactions with different people, and an older gentleman in the audience came up to me and was like, “What do you think you’re doing? Our music never changed. On what basis are you playing with our arts?” And at the time, Sulaiman was alive, so I was like, “Um, sir, Sulaiman Mayouf Mejally is right there. He’s the head of the Mayouf Mejally ensemble, as you know. I’m doing everything with his blessing and his permission, so I’m sure he would be happy to talk to you.” So I sent the guy over to Sulaiman, but he was really upset that I was doing new things to the music. And then Sulaiman and I had a conversation after that, and I said, I think what people really forget is this music was always in motion. And the way it’s being represented today, as a representation of national identity and heritage — you know, that’s got a place, it’s fine. But if I think about my ancestors, they weren’t thinking about heritage or culture. Most of them were illiterate. They were just living, and really open to meeting people, to jamming with people.

I’d be curious to know more what you mean by “Afrofuturism,” but what we’re doing is technically old fashioned and traditional. The state that occasioned the music has been forgotten because it was all about travel and jamming with people. And while, let’s say, my ancestors could only travel as far as their ships could go, today we live in a different world and I can have the pleasure and the honor of playing music with you and your traditions. But I really believe the ancestors would be like, “Yeah, this makes sense.”

Arturo: Yeah. I was thinking about poor people living much the same lives that they’ve lived for centuries, and I’m thinking of my people — poverty and not being the power broker, I think, is central to a lot of what we are about. Power brokers are the kings and the presidents and the and the wealthy people. And to me, that’s not futuristic. Futurism is not owning or controlling others, or amassing great amounts of things. That’s not the future at all. That’s actually the end of civilization, in my opinion. And what people like our ancestors figured out is that there is nothing more noble or heartbreaking than being open to the idea of following a tradition not for gain, but for this love of who we come from and who we are. 

There are very many different definitions of Afrofuturism, and the one that I like is about the way that the future is Black. And, you know, on some level that’s speculative, and it’s assumptive, but it doesn’t matter. The idea behind Afrofuturism is that the seats of power are changing. You can see it historically right now — the European, northern nations and the people that control the power and flow of commerce are fighting the increasing wealth of Black and brown nations. The power mongers in the future are going to be like Abu Dhabi and Kuwait and Mexico and Brazil. And so to me, Afrofuturism, the best aspect of that I can think of, is that the world will be increasingly changing its reliance on European wisdom and aesthetic, and it will be controlled more by people who have traditions based in history, that are based on agrarian realities, on ideologies that are centuries old. When I go to visit Mexico, when I go to visit Cuba, I realize there are people whose rhythms haven’t changed in decades, if not hundreds of years. And I find that very liberating. I live in New York — everything’s always evolving and changing and growing, and that’s a lovely thing too. But it’s not conducive to the kind of music that you and I are playing in Boom.Diwan. 

Boom.Diwan beckons the people of a place like this back into a place that’s ruled by tradition, family centeredness — all values that are rapidly disintegrating, and that really are part of that Middle Eastern, African, Latin American world. Family values. Values of community — the village, the idea of your uncles taking care of your brothers and you and your cousins, and not knowing the difference between a cousin and a person from the neighboring village because you don’t care. You just know that you’re part of the same social cohort. For some reason, this music, when we play it, makes me feel like I’m stepping into a community that’s ancient, that’s connected. Even though it’s tens of thousands of miles apart from where my people are, it’s very much a part of who we are. And to me, that is futuristic because it means that we’re not we’re not looking to seats of power. We’re not looking to authorities or credentialed powers to do what we were meant to do from the beginning, which was create music — music that reaches across trade routes and geographies and political ideologies, racial divisions, religious belief systems. So, we’re doing the work of the ancients, and that’s futuristic.

Ghazi: Yeah. It’s so beautiful, man. I have a question that I was thinking about today in preparation for chatting with you, and it was about the rhythm that the guys play on “Compay Doug.” I remember when we were first rehearsing it and trying to record it, they were trying to use rhythms that they knew and figured out what fit. And I think I found something that fit the time signature, but I stepped outside of the black box for a little bit, and when I came back they were playing something I’d never heard before that you helped them reach. What was it like communicating with them? I mean, they don’t speak English very well. But you got something out of them that was really beautiful, and it sounded Arabic, it sounded Indian, it sounded Afro-Cuban. And I was curious if you remember what that moment was like for you.

Arturo: You know, I think what I tried to do with them — and what I try to do every time — is not teach a rhythm, but have people discover from within their own tradition. The tricky thing about that whole piece is — and believe me, it’s not tricky in Indian rhythms or in Middle Eastern, but it’s polymetric. It’s a measure of four, a measure of six… And sometimes people don’t realize that there’s polymetric divisions within their own ancient music. There’s all kinds of polymetric divisions in Middle Eastern music I’ve heard and, oh my god, it’s certainly in South Asian music. I think I remember I just said, “Don’t worry about it. We need to find your way of looking at this.”

And finally, I think the thing that I always realize in polymetric division is you can’t think 1, 2, 3, 4, 5/1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7/1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 — you have to think in chunks. And that’s actually a very natural way to look at rhythm. And by the way, this is always true about good storytelling, and this is always true about good section playing: Don’t play the letters, don’t play the words, play the sentence. You don’t sit there and talk l-i-k-e t-h-i-s. When I really, really think about life, it’s all about phrases and the complete essence of the thought. But as musicians, sometimes we’re taught to count and divide, and nothing could be more antithetical to music and life than integers. [Laughs.] And we still have trouble with these things because we fixate on understanding as opposed to feeling. And that’s another way another way of looking at integer-based thinking or metric deliverable thinking, as opposed to spacing out and letting the chaos rule.

Ghazi: Yeah. I remember the first time that I played with you in preparation for the Cuban Khaleeji Project, I was talking to Bill Bragin — who obviously has has a big role as a brother and a partner and a supporter — and I was like, “I’m not sure what’s going on in these rehearsals. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it, but I’m really confused, man.” He’s like, “Let’s go talk to Arturo!” I was like, “Alright.” And I was like, “Hey, Arturo, I don’t know what the fuck is going on right now, man.” And you were like, “Do you feel the ground beneath your feet?” And I’m like, “Nope.” You’re like, “Then we’re doing it right.” I didn’t get it at the time. I was looking for comfort. And then it came up again, not from me, but from the guys in making the album when they showed up. Because you and I had agreed that we would just show up without the ground beneath our feet and just see what happened and to have faith. I think that was your message — it’s about faith. It’s not about knowing. Not about the integers, as you say. 

Arturo: I have to say, I believe in being as prepared as you can as a human being, being as knowledgeable about your craft as you can be. And then in the real world, abandoning all of your training. Because at the end of the day, everything we learn at school is information. Everything we learn in life is experiential. And somehow our goal and our job as human beings is to make the information help the experience. What we’re taught is the opposite — we’re taught that the information is the experience. But what we really need to do is understand it. I’ve been saying this for 20 years, man — I don’t want to know the answers. I don’t want to be the spokesperson. I don’t want to be the expert. I don’t want anything less than to be genuinely surprised by what I don’t know every day, and experience life anew as an infant every day. And so for me, playing and teaching music is about discovering anew how little I know and how little I understand. And that helps me because when you think you know what you’re doing, you’ve lost all track of humanity. When you think you’re the man, you’re not the man. [Laughs.] Not only do I not think I’m the man, I don’t want to be the man. I want the Kuwaiti brothers to teach me and make me feel like I don’t know anything, because that’s the way I’m most comfortable. I want to be able to go into a situation and experience it like a baby. And it’s funny because there are a lot of people who don’t feel comfortable going into situations where they’re not the expert. But I long ago realized that not only am I not the expert, but even the experts don’t know what they’re talking about.

Ghazi: Yeah. As I hear you, I feel like this really does take trust and faith in the people around you, first of all. The guys in Boom.Diwan, outside of being caretakers of this tradition, when they step into sessions like we were in, they’re used to being told what to do when they play. So when they showed up to this recording and they were like, “What do we do? What are we doing?” And I’m like, “I don’t know what we’re doing.” They were like, “What do you mean you don’t know?” I’m like, “No, really, I don’t know. And that’s the point.” And they’re like, “So what should we do?” I was like, “Just bring yourself. I can’t tell you what to do.” And that was a big shift that happened at that point. When I told them I didn’t know what I was doing, and I was like, “and Arturo and I are cool with not knowing and just seeing what happens,” they were really upset in the beginning. They were kind of like I was. I had had that experience and they hadn’t yet. But then they brought it, right?

Arturo: It’s funny, I had a rehearsal yesterday, and I had one of my trumpet players have a meltdown because they weren’t clear on a tempo or a conducting gesture. And I realized that we sometimes really panic when we don’t feel we have control of a situation. And when we’re feeling challenged by a situation, not only do we panic, but we feel less than. I think that comes from an acculturation of thinking that there is expertise in any given situation. Let’s face it, at the end of our lives, we die. Regardless of your religious, theistic, or philosophical understanding, we don’t know. Faith is faith. Because if we knew, it wouldn’t be faith. Yet people of deep conviction live lives of simplicity and love because they yield to not knowing. The yielding to not knowing is a source of comfort, not a source of tension. And I feel that every time I pray. I go, Wow, I’m so lucky not to know, to not have a guarantee of anything. I’m so lucky not to quantize, buy, or sell the mystery of the divine. I think that’s where people get uptight. They go, “Oh, man, I didn’t see that cue! I’m angry because I don’t understand!” Now, if you find yourself sitting in the captain’s chair of a cockpit of a 777 and you’re being expected to fly it across the ocean and you don’t know what you’re doing, you can be upset. [Laughs.] 

Ghazi: Right. 

Arturo: But I don’t think many of us find ourselves in that position very often.

Ghazi: That has me thinking about when we played “Muneera” at Lincoln Center for Global Fest, because we played it so differently than we ever had before. Usually we have the transitions between the solos and we didn’t do that. We played that at the beginning, and then it was just open the whole time until we closed it, as if those were the heads. But there was no discussion about that. There was no agreement about that, and there was no uptightness about anything that was happening. It was just like this kind of stepping out of the way.

Arturo: You just said the phrase of a lifetime: You gotta get out of the way. That’s what I do when I compose, I try and get out of the way. That sounds like the most opposite statement, but when I’m putting notes down on paper, I try to let them live. I don’t often succeed. But I think the whole thing about joining in a band or playing in a communal situation is listening, getting out of the way, stating when it’s your turn to state, but also getting out of the way.

Ghazi: That’s funny because when we’re in the diwaniya and we’re playing the pearl diving music, if somebody starts going on an ego solo type vibe, the elders will just be like, “Yo, you’re not listening. It’s not about you. Sit down and listen and then come back and play again.” They’ll get told straight up in front of everybody, “It’s not about you, bro. You’re in the way.” [Laughs.] 

Arturo: I love that. That’s like what the great Lester Bowie used to say: Never let the notes get in the way of the music. I live with that every day. Never let the notes get in the way. That is it.

Ghazi: Yeah. You know, in some ways, it’s also hard to talk about what we’re doing. I was watching this Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan YouTube video at Paste Studios, where the interviewer is like, “You guys seem to have a lot of ESP together, you’re really in tune with each other. Would you like to say something about that?” And Bill Frisell just goes, “Words… words always fail to describe what we’re doing. Words.” And on the surface, it’s a really awkward moment during this interview, when someone’s like, “I’m trying to understand, I need your words.” And he’s like, “But words…” Once we start talking about it, we kind of diminish it, somehow. 

Arturo: I love this book by an author named Stephen Nachmanovitch, called Free Play. It’s a study on improvisation and creativity. He likens being a creative entity or improvising to playing like a child, and he talks about the idea of “galumphing” — like toddlers who walk across the room all shaky and they bump their heads, they knock this over, and they’re not afraid. I was thinking about that, that in a way, we are by nature biologically precise creatures. We learn very early on how to move, how to walk. But at the same time, we also crave this freedom that we have as children, and sometimes I feel like as we get older, we need to find that line. We need to find the line where our adult is and our child is, and live right in that line, in that place between intuition and ration, between chaos and regulation. I think that’s where the magic takes place, where you’re not either completely at random or completely controlled. 

Ghazi: I really love that. Because when we’re playing, whether it’s in the recording of this album or just in a rehearsal space or wherever, I do feel like we’re children, man. In the most divine way. There’s something pure, and I think that getting out of the way is touching upon what you’re talking about, that kind of liminal space between being an adult, rational, and also being free. And, in fact, remember when we were walking in Saudi and then you tripped and you rolled and you kept walking?

Arturo: Yeah.

Ghazi: That’s something somebody who’s in touch with their inner child would do. [Laughs.] 

Arturo: Yeah, yeah. I tripped — there was some sort of pothole in the road, but I rolled in and out of it. I did that on stage at Little Island, too. If you’re stiff and if you’re physically, mentally or spiritually rigid, you’re going to collapse and hurt yourself. You have to kind of go, “OK, this is fine.” If you smart about it, you don’t get hurt.

Ghazi: That’s a real metaphor for what we’re doing together in this radical un-intentionality, in this trying to create space and trying to get out of the way. If you fell and were rigid, you’re holding on to something. But if you let go to what is happening, then you have this ability to go with the flow in the moment. Because that’s just what’s happening. 

Arturo: That’s what happened to my trumpet player yesterday — he felt unsafe and got rigid and ended up hurting himself and hurting others. And it’s not worth it.

Ghazi: So why do we play music together, Arturo? 

Arturo: Because we have no choice, guys. We have to work together. You and I are brothers for a long time, and we need to play together. There’s no other reason.

(Photo Credit: Waleed Shah)