Jazz Interviewing

We learned to improvise.

Finally, the moment I was waiting for emerged. At the very beginning of our interview with musician Manuel Obregon, we left the script and simply engaged in a real conversation. Our youngest member, Crystal, showed the way. She stopped being "nice" and took charge, asking what she really wanted to know, in the moment, rather than the finely tuned question she had prepared beforehand. Things simply flowed from there and, synchronistically, all our prepared questions were still answered along with many others.

Following an amazing hour and a half, punctuated with Don Manuel's visual and musical examples played from his laptop, the group returned to the van wondering why we spent so many afternoons and late nights coming up with questions, prepping, and editing if the whole purpose was to break with the script?

They are on the edge of what poet Derek Walcott calls the "discipline of the poem". Understood most simply, it means that only within the bounds of a clear form and order does true creativity and freedom to improvise emerge. It was the safety and security of our elaborately constructed script, finely tuned, with questions assigned, that allowed their minds the freedom to listen and be fully engaged in the present moment. It was these that allowed us to wait and listen for the emergence of real, spontaneous questions. Without this guide, the anxiety and self-consciousness might overwhelm and swallow the creative capacity, potentially stunting our sense of wonder.

--Oliver