Go-Go Marc, Cary On! An Indigenous Person Tells his Story

Phil wishes he was a musician (well, he is one, but he wishes he were a good one) but he's not frustrated by it. He's frustrated with a lot of other aspects of the so-called biz. Therefore, he's excited by independently released jazz.

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Published: May 27, 2004

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MC: Enja records. Cary On. Even then, I had the GoGo stuff in it. Even that record people were like ,(he scratches his chin) "Oh, Okay." "Throw it Away", on Listen is a great example of mixing Go-Go and jazz. Listen and The Antidote were on Arabesque and Trillium is on Jazzateria .

AAJ: Antidote was a really nice record. The two percussion players on there really airs it out.

MC: That's some Randy Weston stuff. Randy does that. I have several records with just percussion, but I'd like to get into even more layered stuff.

AAJ:Well, getting back to the timeline...

MC: Yeah. By the way, I grew up militant. My mother was part of the American Indian Movement, AIM. That's where I got the name of the group, "Indigenous People."

AAJ: Pardon me? You're part Native American?

MC: Yeah, I'm Wampanoag, man. We're right from Chappaquiddick Island . My mother's a tribal chief of the Wampanoag people. A spiritual chief. We do the Pow- Wow every year here.

AAJ: So that song, from the Antidote ?

MC: "Chappaquiddick Woman"..that's my mother. Her name is Penny Williams. Penny Gamble-Williams. She kind of pulled the community back together. They were still doing things, but as community it wasn't as tight-knit before her efforts. She went to federal court to try to get them recognized. We have plots of land up there that have been in our family for years. Clarence-William Ponce, my great grandfather, was a Wampanoag man who was a marathon runner and swimmer. My great grandmother is a York. I got a lotta stuff in me and I'm aware of it, which is the important part. That's why I put together Indigenous People . That whole thing was to celebrate my Native American Wampanoag Indian Nation roots and to give some kind of light to that. We all have different things in us. I have just as much African blood mixed with Indian blood, not to mention Irish and Cape Verdean, There's a hell of a blend and thankfully, my mom traced it. I gotta keep the ball rollin' too with that.

AAJ: People, do not confuse "Indigenous People" with the band "Indigenous," right?

MC: Right. I know who they are. They're a Native American Blues band from South Dakota. They're heavy, man.

AAJ: So let me get it straight , now. Back at Duke Ellington, you're a working musician while you're attending?

MC: Totally. To add to that I never went back home after I entered the program. At sixteen I was payin' my own rent.

AAJ: What?

MC: I was on my own, which I must say was part of the fabric that enabled me at 23 to start a family, which I think is a little early, but I'm glad I did it. That age number seems young, but in my mind I was developed far past that. I wasn't really aware of what it took to start a family but I was aware and excited about getting married because I loved my wife. She traveled, we did everything together. We've been married fourteen years. All that's relative to the music too, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I graduated at the age of nineteen from Duke Ellington. One of the slick things that happened there occurred when I was playing solo piano at a benefit. Don Cherry played with Nana Vasconcelos. Nana had a Berimbau and a mouth bow and Don had a Dousongoni , a guitar the Griots play, with six strings on a young branch that's pliable, and that goes into a big gourd that sits on your lap, with a strap that holds it on, and he's got the trumpet. By the way, I also played with David Cherry , Donald's son, who played melodica and keys. I played Fender Rhodes and moog. My mother sings and does Native American chants, plays percussion and cello. So we did a concert together, the three of us. That's when I really realized I could do other things with my abilities in terms of sound. I could just get into a sound thing.

Anyway, at this Don Cherry gig a group called the "Front-Line Jazz Ensemble" heard me play Fender Rhodes by myself. As a group they came up to me and said, "Man, we like the way you play. Do you want to come play with us?" This was an "official" jazz band! At the same time, I kind of outgrew the Go-Go band. My talent and abilities were growing beyond what was acceptable in a Go-Go band. Holding the chords, makin' the hits and into the pocket was acceptable. None of that solo shit! They didn't want that...to them that was showin' off. Man, that ain't Go-Go!

So my goal, the way I got to Indigenous was to merge improvisation with Go-Go and make that viable. The rhythm of Go-Go has a clave, it's percussion oriented, it's African oriented and there's form to it. So, when I realized that, the validity of that, I said, "Ok, I want to put original music on that, not covers, that's also improvisation driven."

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