Rene McLean Speaks to Pan-African Music and Culture
Rene-McLean, Saxophonist
It has been over a year since alto saxophonist and composer Rene McLean performed in front of a live audience, due to the Pandemic. The live-music starved audience at New York City’s Cutting Room gave McLean and his band Music of the Spirit a prolonged standing ovation, after his most recent performance. Although many musicians jumped on the Zoom bandwagon during the social distancing period, and performed live stream concerts from their homes and empty clubs, McLean, a native New Yorker, declined to do so. Instead, he spent his time practicing and teaching virtually. During our recent phone interview, he said with a laugh that “I’m old school, and I want my audience to see me and feel my music up close and live.”
Although McLean didn’t use Zoom to perform or record music, he and his partner Jillian Mari Harris did use the hybrid platform to celebrate Rene’s father Jackie McLean’s birthday.(His father died in 2006.) McLean Senior, an award winning alto saxophonist, composer, band leader and educator would have turned 89 on May 17, 2020. This birthday bash evolved into a weekly Sunday forum from noon to 3PM called “The Institute of Pan-African Music and Culture,” or TIPAMC. This forum has attracted noted musicians, artists, dancers, educators, college students, writers and filmmakers from South Africa, Germany, Brazil, as well as the United States. Listeners tune in every week to inspire and be inspired. “This forum celebrates our ancestors’ works and accomplishments, and examines those contemporary artists who are creating in the realm of Pan-Africanism in the visual arts, dance, music, etc.” explained McLean. “For too long our culture has been defined by the thoughts of others. This technology is a tool that expands our voices as we attempt to liberate our culture and the dissemination of what we do as artists.”
During the Pandemic, McLean held his position as Professor of African-American Music on the faculty of the Jackie McLean Institute at the Hartt School of the University of Hartford. His classroom teaching was transformed into an online virtual reality. He is also the master Artist-in-Residence of Music at the Artists Collective in Hartford, Connecticut. This non-profit organization was founded by his parents Jackie and Dollie McLean in 1970, along with bass player Paul Brown, visual artist Ionis Martin, and dancer Cheryl Smith. “The mission remains to teach and develop the youth in our community in music, art, visual arts, theater and the performing arts,” said McLean. “Over two thousand young people of all ethnic groups have come through the program that is still a relevant force after fifty years.”
McLean is often described as a hard bop jazz musician. “I don’t pay any attention to those (labels); they are all tags that have been forced onto our music by media exploitation of the music and culture,” he said. “It is terminology to market the music but in real terms it doesn’t describe anything. I am not a jazz musician; Max Roach and J-Mac (McLean Senior) described it as modern music. We can’t allow corporate America to dictate and define what our culture is.”
The alto saxophonist’s long standing band is Music of the Spirit, of which he said “it feels like forever.” It reflects his musical concept of the Black diaspora. “The band includes a nucleus of my musical comrades: pianists Hubert Eazes III and Benito Gonzalez, percussionist Chief Baba Neil Clarke, drummers Ronny Burrage, Eric McPherson and Carl Allen, and trombonist Steve Davis.” Some of these musicians played with Jackie McLean early in their careers. When choosing band members, the younger McLean wanted them to be compatible with similar musical concepts: “this band is like a family.”
“I was always cognizant of who my father was. He taught me and developed me in the music,” Rene explained. “I was well aware of his significance and contribution to the music, but I never felt I was in his shadow.” The young McLean studied guitar before moving on to alto sax. “There was a method to my father’s madness when it came to teaching me how to play alto. “He gave me the saxophone in parts. First it was the mouthpiece (NY Meyer #6) with #4 and 5 reeds which were very thick. I had to sand them down. He was allowing me to develop an armature. Later he gave me the neck and finally the rest of the pieces.”
His father’s apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan was somewhat of a tutorial camp for young Rene. Musicians like Walter Davis, Walter Bishop, Art Blakey and Dexter Young shared stories of their experiences on and off the bandstand when visiting.
His father also taught him the art of performing early on, when he was just fifteen, by letting him sit in with him. “He let me sit in with him on certain nights at Slug’s (on the Lower East Side). He would leave the stage and I joined the band for the last set on the last tune. Playing with those cats was intimidating but it definitely built up my confidence. Billy Higgins was responsible for my getting paid.” One time in Washington, DC, Higgins asked “Isn’t Rene getting paid? What is this, child labor?” J-Mac looked at him and kinda laughed, and paid me.”
Rene became proficient as a multi-reed instrumentalist, playing alto, tenor and soprano saxes, bassoon, flutes, ney (a Mid-Eastern flute), shakuhachi (a Japanese flute) and indigenous African instruments. “I learned how to play all these instruments so I could work more, in the Broadway pit, various live shows, and back in the day, even the circus.”
He met trumpeter Hugh Masakela in 1962 during the musician’s exile in the US. They became friends, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that Masakela asked him to join the band that included Miriam Makeba. They toured Botswana, Swaziland, and Lesotho. “There were over 75,000 people at that concert in Lesotho, the most I had ever performed for.” McLean was even a lecturer in Jazz Studies at the University of Cape Town, from 1994 to 1998. Later he journeyed to Japan as a recipient of the Creative Artist Fellowship by the Japan-US Friendship Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. “I had to take an intensive Japanese language course before residing there to research traditional Japanese music culture, and to perform and teach.”
In conclusion, McLean mused “I don’t know if there is a post Covid-19 but we will be living with this in some shape or form for a while. My plan is to keep on doing what I do, as best as I can.”
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He’s blessed to be doing what he does so well
Rene McLean has strived all his life to become the master musician that he is. Jackie McLean set him on his path to greatness. However, Rene’s dedication, diligence, and determination was unrestricted in accomplishing his music goals!