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Bobby Hill

1.Describe your discovery of Music.

"I’m 51. When you say discovery of music, I am assuming that you mean what we affectionally call “the music”. While still strongly into a jazz-fusion bag musically during my teens (Brand X, Return To Forever, Passport, Gong, etc.,), I sifted through my father’s record collection and came across a John Coltane LP entitled ‘Last Train’, a late 50’s Prestige release. The opening selection ‘By the Numbers’ with Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Art Taylor, forever opened my ears up towards this music. I played this piece over and over for many days. It continues to be to the opening selection of each new calendar year of my radio programming on WPFW. WPFW, 89.3FM and www.wpfw.org, is Pacifica’s Washington, DC outlet. This progressive network also has stations in New York and Houston, and two stations in California. WPFW is the only station in the network where jazz is a formal part of its aesthetic mission. I’ve been an on-air programmer with WPFW since 1983 and currently produce and host alternating Thursday nights from 11PM until 1AM.

I am also a member of the group MOM2 (Mind Over Matter, Music Over Mind), an improvisational creative music trio of laptops, freeboards, wave stations and MPC, for which I perform on record players. Currently, some of our music is available on various District of Noise compilations."

2.Describe your research into various periods of the idiom as an ad hoc scholar and fan.

"As a fan of the music I read and learn from Wire, Signal to Noise, Wax Poetics, and Cadence magazines on a regular basis. I continue to purchase most of my music via Cadence (Note to artists and labels: I’m open to being serviced. Just contact me at [email protected]).

The three books that best provided my foundational understanding of the music are Amiri Baraka’s ‘Blues People’, Graham Lock’s ‘Forces in Motion’, and John Litweilers’s ‘The Freedom Principle’.

The three books that I am reading and enjoying currently are David Toop’s ‘Sinister Resonance’ and Philip Ball’s ‘The Music Instinct’. I also recently completed Caleb Kelly’s ‘Cracked Media’.

And the three books that I would recommend to anyone to read for a better understanding of the music and it’s associated cultures through its three principle artist-based organizations are George Lewis’s ‘A Power Stronger Than Itself’ (Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians or AACM), Steve Isoardi’s ‘The Dark Tree’, (LA’s Union of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension of UGMAA), and Benjamin Looker’s ‘Point From Which Creation Begins’ (St. Louis’s Black Artist Group or BAG).

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Interview

Transparency in DC with Bobby Hill.

Transparency in DC with Bobby Hill.

Source: Brilliant Corners, a Boston Jazz Blog

MOM2. 1.Describe your discovery of Music. “I'm 51. When you say discovery of music, I am assuming that you mean what we affectionally call “the music." While still strongly into a jazz-fusion bag musically during my teens (Brand X, Return To Forever, Passport, Gong, etc.,), I sifted through my father's record collection and came across a John Coltane LP entitled 'Last Train,' a late 50's Prestige release. The opening selection 'By the Numbers' with Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Art ...

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