Clarinetist Dr. Michael White Goes Deep

By Robyn Loda, Contributing Writer
The Louisiana Weekly, April 26 - May 2, 2004

This is the story of one man's deepest soul and its journey through jazz.

Meet 49-year-old Michael White, Ph.D. Born and raised in New Orleans, White is a clarinetist who has bilaterally been lauded within traditional jazz circles around the globe as a virtuoso. A master of ensemble improvisation, White also teaches African-American music at Xavier, where he holds an endowed chair in the Humanities Department. He holds masters and doctoral degrees in Latin American Literature from Tulane. In addition, he's been a regular attraction at Preservation Hall for more than two decades and writes historic pieces on jazz history. Clearly his is a very busy, multitalented man.

Then, one day he was offered the gifts of silence and solitude at a local artist's retreat nestled deep in Louisiana bottomland - only a few miles southeast from New Orleans, on the West Bank. The retreat is called A Studio In The Woods, located in Lower Coast Algiers, Louisiana. White was the first musician to be awarded such a residency at the Studio. Typically, it serves writers and visual artists. The universe seemed to be setting the stage for something big.

The unsuspecting White did not go to the woods to live deliberately. He had too many things going on. He hoped he might get some rest and write a song or two. But after completing the two-month residency, he emerged a new man.

"It was incredible what living alone amidst nature did for me," he says. "There are so many trees out there. Trees, plant life, animals, insects, a pond, and of course, the river, which was just across the road beyond the levee."

The main structured benefit of the retreat was long periods of uninterrupted time. This allowed White both intense practice and careful listening of his extensive collection of jazz recordings; from the roots of early jazz and 'classic' jazz of the 1920s, to later jazz forms and recent popular music. "You hear music at a different level with the woods and the river as your backdrop," says White.

His practicing and listening became more sensitized within a few days, and soon he felt a kind of spiritual awakening borne of his solitary communion with nature. "I could never have dreamed that this would happen. It seemed accidental," he explains. "Each day I walked along the Mississippi playing to the rhythms of the river. I would walk through the woods just to think. The birds and other animals would respond to the sounds coming from my clarinet. It was like speaking nature's language."

He realized it was all about living in the flow of his natural rhythm. They key was slowing down to find it.

"To have no schedule, no clocks, no TV, no news of violence in the city, no news of war. To listen to my own rhythms and live and work that way was phenomenal," he explains.

"It sounds cliché, but I became more philosophical," continues White. "I did a lot of meditating. I began to rapidly develop a dualistic consciousness. The experience out there made me think a lot about duality. There was obvious duality between urban and natural environments, but also the present and past, land and water, living and dying. A main theme, too, was the duality of the 'banks.' People from the Greater New Orleans area are very divided by the side of the river they live on. Some people never go to the West Bank, or over to the East Bank to the city, for that matter. I thought a lot about New Orleans through it all."

While he grew up in the city, White says he was not surrounded by the richness of his own African-American culture here. Classically trained, he picked up the clarinet and began taking private lessons at the age of 14. "I was 20 when I was first invited to play with a brass band, not like most of the kids who get that when they're very young. And come to think of it, that gig was after a church service in Marrero, on the West Bank."

Soon, White understood the culture of the neighborhoods and the rich complexities of beauty and sound that thrived there." I realized that New Orleans music has many voices within it because it's about the full range of experiences here. You can hear it in the people. From the Sunday second lines to families out on the stoops. From the social aid and pleasure clubs to women in the churches.

He had finally heard where he was from, and he loved it. And even when he was on a serious academic track with Latin-American studies into his 20s, somehow White continued playing. He "fell into" gigging with many of the elder statesmen of jazz who had played alongside giants like Louis Armstrong. White has since acted as a link between the generations with the lifelong mission of assuring that the city's classic jazz heritage continues.

But this mission comes with a great price: A tight schedule and a serious responsibility to others.

"During my retreat, getting away from the 'noise' of day-to-day life released so much of my creativity and personal truth that I could barely keep up with the ideas I was having. I was like taking dictation from God."

The parameters for the residency stated that White had to complete one song while in attendance; he completed 24.

You can hear some of the fruits of his transformation on his new Basin Street Records release, Dancing In The Sky. Be sure to catch him at Jazz Fest with his band, Dr. Michael White's Original Liberty Jazz Band with Thais Clark (vocals) on Saturday, May 1, at the Economy Hall Tent at 3 p.m.

(Robyn Loda is a freelance writer from Gary, Indiana, living in New Orleans for the second time and loving it. Her work has appeared in Jazziz, Rhythm Music, Offbeat, New Orleans CityBusiness and others. Contact her at rloda@aol.com).

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