Thinking Big with Immanuel Wilkins

Interview, From the Magazine, Immanuel Wilkins

By Bill Milkowski I Sep. 17, 2024

“What happens when we put special people with other special people?” asks Immanuel Wilkins, who seeks to cross-pollinate the arts.
(Photo: Jimmy and Deana Katz)

After bursting onto the scene with his acclaimed 2020 debut, Omega, Immanuel Wilkins announced his arrival as a talent deserving wider recognition. Hitting the DownBeat Critics Poll trifecta last year with wins in the Alto Saxophonist of the Year, Rising Star Group of the Year and Rising Star Composer of the Year categories in the wake of his 2022 outing, The 7th Hand, only upped the ante on Wilkins’ prospects. Now with wins in the Jazz Group and Alto Saxophone categories in this year’s Critics Poll, Wilkins has firmly established himself as a prominent figure in jazz.

In this recent interview with DownBeat, Wilkins chatted about his upcoming, and provocative, Blue Note release, Blues Blood, which examines the story of the Harlem Six: a group of teenagers falsely accused of murder in 1965 and brutally beaten by prison guards in order to elicit confessions. Relying on actual testimony during the trial from 19-year-old Daryl Hamm, one of the accused, Blues Blood is also Wilkins’ first vocal project. The release features guest appearances by Cécile McLorin Salvant, singer-songwriter-lyricist Alyssa McDoom (aka June McDoom), singers Yaw Agyeman and Ganavya Doraiswamy and guitarist Marvin Sewell, all of whom augment Wilkins’ working quartet with pianist Micah Thomas, bassist Rick Rosato and drummer Kweku Sumbry.

Bill Milkowski: “Blues Blood” is probably the one track on the new album that could have fit on either Omega or The 7th Hand. The rest of the tunes on Blues Blood have that quality of finding a more peaceful, meditative space through ostinatos and vamps, but this tune is just killing right out of the gate.

Immanuel Wilkins: That was the roundup tune. That one was the chance for all of us to get some playing in with the quartet and also feature the singers and Marvin in a way that felt like vignettes.

It’s also meant to be played at the end, just because of the fact that it’s all-inclusive. There are moments for Genavya, moments for Yaw, moments for Alyssa, moments for Marvin, Micah and me. So it just it feels like a collection of small vignettes. And, yeah, it’s probably the most intense tune of the album. It’s also the only track that doesn’t have lyrics on it. On that tune I was thinking about Genavya and Yaw as improvisers, really as other instruments. It was just a way to feature everybody in a way that still felt organic and natural, but also we were able to really stretch out and play.

Milkowski: The presence of singer Ganavya also lends a kind of world music appeal to this project.

Wilkins: For sure, Ganavya is amazing. She sings in Tamil, which is a South Indian language. And I thought that Ganavya and Yaw, the male singer, and our drummer Kweku, who also plays djembe in the West African Farina Kan Percussion Ensemble, all bring the factor of improvising using a past tradition. Kweku and Yao come from the Ghanaian tradition and Ganavya comes from the South Indian tradition.

And so, when tasked with the idea of improvising within a vamp or a certain world, they are calling upon past traditions that date back thousands of years. So on the piece “Motion” from Blues Blood, I was just thinking about how the body kind of holds that memory in their improvisations.

Milkowski: I enjoyed those four brief interludes on Blues Blood, especially the West African drums on “Air” and the backwards spoken word stuff on “Assembly.”

Wilkins: Kweku recorded “Air” in Ghana with a lot of West African talking drum players at a ceremony. And he got permission from them to use it for this record. And then “Assembly” … there was a lot of post-production on that. Meshell Ndegeocello [the album’s producer] was pretty instrumental in encouraging me to experiment with stuff that I would normally just do in my house on my computer and the world would never hear. I often play with soundscapes at home and do little 30-second to minute-long interludes … just little things that require a lot of post-production. And so she was like, “Yeah, just make a bunch of those.” And then eventually she said, “OK, you have enough. Now pick which ones you love.” And so, it was a way for me to manipulate the already existing material into a new space, and just find new ways of moving some of the themes around. So I was really playing like a puzzle there and seeing if I can juxtapose different things against other things.

Milkowski: The collage of voices on “Your Memory” triggers memories of Steve Reich’s groundbreaking electronic music piece, “Come Over,” which loops a brief fragment of testimony from Daniel Hamm and then treats it electronically with phasing, echo and other devices.

Wilkins: I was definitely drawing on that. Also, I feel like when you collage all of those voices together, it actually does feel like memory. It feels like how your mind kind of drifts from one thing to the next. The way that I found out about the whole Harlem Six incident was via two people: Glenn Ligon, who is a visual artist, and Steve Reich. Glenn has a visual art piece called “Blues Blood Bruise,” which consists of just three words put next to each other. And it was based off of the Reich recording. In working with an archivist on this record, I tried to look into the archives of Daniel Hamm to see if we could find a full recording of his testimony, but I wasn’t able to find any conclusive info. There’s no real reference for the full audio recording of Daniel Hamm talking. The only thing that exists is that brief fragment that Steve Reich used for “Come Over.”

Milkowski: Meanwhile, you’ve already built an impressive body of very thoughtful, very substantial work at the age of 26 with these three Blue Note albums.

Wilkins: Thank you. But for me, I want to look back on my life when I’m 80 years old and know that I knew other people who were making things at the time that I was making things, whether that’s artists or cooks or fashion designers or filmmakers. I want to look back and say I knew the other people who were being just as creative as me and my colleagues were in other avenues. I think of Ornette’s obsession with Jackson Pollock and Miles Davis knowing Pablo Picasso and even Bird visiting Stravinsky at his home. It’s important that writers know musicians and musicians know artists and artists know filmmakers and filmmakers know chefs; that we really cross-pollinate. There’s a lot of power in the collective.

A part of me is always thinking, “What would happen if we got a lot of cooks in the kitchen?” so to speak. What would happen if I get one of my favorite photographers, one of my favorite filmmakers and one of my favorite fashion designers in the room together? What do we talk about? What happens when I get my favorite vocalist and my favorite chef and my band together to make something together. You know, what happens when we put special people with other special people.

Milkowski: There you go, thinking on that big canvas again. You know where that’s going to lead you? To the Metropolitan Opera. Ask Terence Blanchard.

Wilkins: Well, yeah, you’re right. And it’s funny because I have been obsessed lately with Gesamtkunstwerk, Wagner’s term for works that cover the whole thing. [Wagner’s Ring cycle is considered the epitome of Gesamtkunstwerk, combining musical, visual and dramatic art into an all-embracing theatrical work]. I like that idea where the costume design is great, the art direction is great, the choreography is great, the singers are amazing. Firing on all cylinders like that is something that I think is important. DB