Destiny Muhammad: Transcript Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman
Destiny Muhammad:
The desire to continue to do the work even if the fame wasn't coming with the quickness. That's why I talk about the farmer's markets. Four hours, you play at the farmer's markets for exposure and tips, and this man with tears in his eyes, not the first time, is looking at me and he's like, "Wow, thank you for sharing your story," and he's wondering, "How do I express to the student?" You just got to do the work and be willing to do it anyway. You got to love it that much and you got to be willing to work at it and to work it as a business.
Sometimes folks say, "You know what? I see such and such. They don't have nearly the talent I have! " But they were willing to work with the talent that they had.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman. I was so honored to have this opportunity to talk with the inspiring Destiny Muhammad, who is a California-based jazz harpist and composer. You get to hear inspiring stories from her life, as well as her music. She had a dream to play the harp, but didn't have the opportunity until she was 30 years old. She speaks openly about the challenges in the 1980's due to the crack-cocaine trade, her success as a barber, her determination and mentors, including John Handy, and her unique perspectives in celebrating the legacies of Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane.
When we recorded the episode, I experienced an incredible private concert, including several of her original tunes. However, after we listened to the tracks, we agreed it would be even better if she were to record the music separately to have the best possible harp sound, which she generously agreed to do, and like all my episodes, this is available as both a video and a podcast. The link for both is in the description along with detailed timestamps and a link to the transcript, which is published to my website, leahroseman.com. Hi, Destiny Muhammad. Thanks so much for joining me here today.
Destiny Muhammad:
Thank you so much for having me.
Leah Roseman:
I was thinking for those listeners who have never heard of Alice Coltrane or Dorothy Ashby, they probably have never heard of a jazz harp before. It's not a common instrument in the jazz world.
Destiny Muhammad:
I seem to think so, but perhaps maybe other folks haven't had the opportunity to hear its possibilities in the jazz world.
Leah Roseman:
Some of my guests, if they're going to share music, they actually like to play at the beginning. Would you like to play some music now or would you like to talk a bit first?
Destiny Muhammad:
That's a good question. Maybe I would like to play a little bit.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Destiny Muhammad:
Algorithms. (music)
Leah Roseman:
Beautiful.
Destiny Muhammad:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
Is that a tune you wrote?
Destiny Muhammad:
Yes. It's called Algorithms.
Leah Roseman:
Beautiful. You also do quite a bit of singing and spoken word as well with your harp playing.
Destiny Muhammad:
Yes, I do.
Leah Roseman:
Now, I don't always like to talk about people's beginning with these conversations 'cause I think it gets ... I don't know. I don't like to always have the same pattern, but I think with you, it's so relevant that you had such a difficult beginning and your inspiration for becoming a harpist, so when you were a kid, you saw Harpo Marx on TV in the I Love Lucy Show, is that right?
Destiny Muhammad:
Yes, I did. I saw Harpo Marx on the episode of I Love Lucy back in the '70, and that was the first desire for me to play the harp.
Leah Roseman:
But you didn't have an opportunity to study music outside of school?
Destiny Muhammad:
Yeah, it wasn't available to me at that time. We were going through some really difficult times at that time, and so when I mentioned I wanted to play the harp after seeing that episode, I mentioned it to my mom and she says, "That's not happening now."
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. When you finally were able to take harp lessons, it was after you had run a successful business as a barber?
Destiny Muhammad:
Yes, it was 21 years later. I was nine when I saw the harp, and 21 years later, I got my first harp at the age of 30. I was dating a man at that time, whose best friend was a harp builder, and that was in 1992, and got my first harp in May of 1992 and started to look around to see who might be available to teach, and things seemed to really fall into place. I found my first harp teacher in a little town called Long Beach, if any of you are familiar with California. I lived in San Pedro at the time, and I started studying with a woman by the name of Paula St. John, and then closer to me was a town called Palos Verdes, and I started studying with another woman who subsequently became a long-time teacher, if you will, and then she circled back to become a great friend, even now, Stephanie Kaufman Osborne, and I started studying with her, and I became her oldest student at the time as well.
Leah Roseman:
So the harp you bought, was it from that builder?
Destiny Muhammad:
The builder's name was Brian Stigers, who I think may still be making harps in a little town called San Juan Bautista, about two and a half hours from where I live now in Oakland, and I got my first harp from him, a beautiful folk harp that he was building at the time out of cherry wood, for you who want to know what the wood was. I think my first harp was made out of cherry wood, really sweet kind of soft sound, and I really enjoyed.
Leah Roseman:
So a folk harp doesn't have pedals?
Destiny Muhammad:
Folk harp does not have pedals. Folk harp primarily will have, if you all can see here, along what's known as the harmonic curve here, will have a set of levers on each one of these prong things right here, and the levers allow the harp to the ... I can say on that particular harp, the levers along this portion of it would allow me to lift them up and put the keys in sharp, so on that particular harp, it didn't have levers, so I was enjoying A minor and C major for a long time. Then, after that, I want to say about maybe two and a half, three years after that, I got a harp by a company called Triplett Harps based in San Luis Obispo, and they had a full set of those levers, and I was able to lift the levers up, and I could play in C, D, G, A major, and then when I learned how to tune down some strings so that I could play an F major, E flat, and I even tuned it down to a A flat major as well.
Leah Roseman:
What was that like being ... Were you taking group classes at the very beginning with children, or were they private?
Destiny Muhammad:
They were private lessons. I just happened to be my teacher's oldest student, and what she would do is she would have recitals with me and the other students, as I shared, that were younger, much younger, I think the second, the one who was closest to me was 15. He was a seven-year-old, and then after the seven, there was like a 15, seven, and I think five years old that were her students at the time, and she would have these recitals with us, and I got a chance to play with them at that time when we were doing a Twinkle Twinkle together as a group, but my lessons primarily with her were private.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. And how did you get into playing jazz?
Destiny Muhammad:
Stephanie said to me, she said, "I can hear what you're trying to do, and I'm unable to teach you that." She said, "But you'll figure it out," and then she mentioned Dorothy Ashby to me, who Dorothy had just joined the ancestors just a couple of years before, ooh, well, maybe about six years before I'd come to the harp, and she said ... And Dorothy Ashby, we really celebrate her as a jazz harpist, and she had mentioned that she had joined the ancestors. Then, we fast-forward, I was coming to the Bay Area ... Matter of fact, they had just moved to the Bay Area, and I heard a recording of Alice Coltrane playing Blue Nile on a jazz station here in the Bay Area, and I was like, "Wow, I don't know if I'll ever be able to play like that."
The gentleman I was dating at the time, he said ... We were with some friends of his, and that came on, and this man was standing. He was one of those jazz aficionados, and he said, "My girlfriend plays harp, and I don't even been playing a couple of years," and here was Alice just blazing away on Blue Nile. The gentleman looked down at me with this look that some jazz aficionados have that really can't play anything but the radio, but they know what jazz is. He said, "If you can't play harp like that, you can't play."
I said, "Well, damn. I had only had a few lessons. I'd only been playing a couple of years," and I said, "I know I can't play like that," but I knew that one day I would, and so I started to listen to Alice, and then really listen to Dorothy as well, so I'm listening to both of these beautiful sides of jazz that I feel that I embody and embrace because I love both of their styles. Their whole approach to jazz just feels good to me. I want to say that's how I started, really, to listen, which I find for myself and perhaps maybe some of my jazz contemporaries, is that we start to listen.
Like children listen to our parents when they're talking, and we start to try to mimic the way that the parent talk. For me, they're my harp mamas, and so I tried to mimic the way that my moms would speak on this instrument, so I started to really listen to them, and then years later, I started to take ... I really can honestly say study jazz with a man by the name of Khalil Shaheed, who was teaching jazz to youngsters. He saw me playing at the farmer's market, which I encourage every musician to go to the farmer's market and play. It's enlightening, it's humbling, and ooh.
I feel like for me, it helped me to evolve myself, and he saw me playing at the farmer's market, and the first thing he did was he invited me to a jam session, which I had never done, and that was extremely humbling. Then, he invited me to come and study with these youngsters where he was teaching them jazz. That jam session went a little south, and he said, "Come into this school with me. Come to my school where I'm teaching youngsters to play jazz," and I wasn't really ready then, but the last four years of this man's life, I start ... We didn't know he was going to start getting ready to join the ancestors.
2008, I started to study with him and these youngsters, and he thought I was probably going to be a one-off, just come to one session, and then bounce. I went every Wednesday. From 4:00 to 6:00 PM, he taught jazz and it was all blues. I can name a litany of wonderful jazz compositions that for me were the foundation.
From 2008 to 2012, I would go every Wednesday and study for two hours, and that really pushed me. I started to take that body of music that I was learning from him, and I put together a trio, and I said, "Let's go out and play these songs together. "I would get invited to play, and they said, "Well, we just want you," and I said, "Well, how about I bring my trio?," and we would go out and play all the songs, and they would give me a little extra money to bring my cats in to play with them. I can really say, that was my foundation from 2008 to 2012, and even now, because I keep learning so much and parlaying this beautiful music called Jazz, Black American music, the progenitors of my family who created and continue to embody, embrace this music with the ideas, and melodies, and tonalities of European classical music, which most people associate the instrument known as the harp wood. Parlaying those ideas and possibilities with jazz is just, it's really fun for me, so starting in 2008, really deciding I'm going to study and embrace it and move forward.
Leah Roseman:
And you had another mentor, John Handy?
Destiny Muhammad:
John Handy. So John Handy is still a mentor, but he is like, no nonsense. Y'all know how you are. You cats have been playing jazz a long time, and you all who were partnered with a John Coltrane and wooh, and McCoy Tyner and the litany of Melba Liston. You all, he's no nonsense, and he'll get on me about it, but it's all very loving, Mr. Hammond, and now, I can also say along with him is Reggie Workman, who I got a chance to play with the John Handy.
I got a chance. He invited me to come and play with him and a number of other gentlemen. There was a tribute to John Coltrane in San Francisco, ooh, maybe 2012 through 2013. He was doing Naima, and he wanted me to play alongside him and Jeff ... Ooh, I wish I could remember Jeff's last name, and a man by the name of Carlos, who plays harp and violin, and he invited me to play with him, then John on sax, just doing a beautiful, beautiful tonality and tribute to John Coltrane, and inviting me to play along with him, and it was just this real, almost celestial rebuttal, and then right into the body of Naima with him, and just all of his encouragement and his no nonsense in that moment was beautiful.
Leah Roseman:
I heard you say in a previous interview that with John, you would ask him a question, and then you just listened 'cause he talked for an hour.
Destiny Muhammad:
Yes. I think John is like maybe 85, 86, and so he has the essence of the music running through his DNA, and then all of that history going through the Civil Rights Movement, being able to tell the stories of even having been around with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and so when he's telling the story of the music or giving me the core progressions and the ideas, he's also telling me the histories and the things that actually, the music is also channeling the history of it as well, so I just let him go, and it's probably imperative for me in this breath to sit down with him and just click and put the tape recorder on and just ... Tape recorder. I'm dating myself a little bit, but just really letting him go because the histories are also embodied in the music, so that's why I just let him just go and tell. He gets tired of telling me the stories, which he doesn't.
Leah Roseman:
And how did you meet him?
Destiny Muhammad:
Oh, so light years ago when I was primarily playing folk harp, there's a woman who used to tour with him by the name of Tarika Lewis, who plays jazz violin, and she was part of a group that toured with him called Class, and I got a chance to meet her at a church. We were invited to play for a Good Friday service, and she mentioned John to me in that breath, and she said, "He needs to know about you." Then, a few years later, maybe a couple of years after that, there's a college here called Menlo College, and they were doing a music festival, if you will, and I was the opening act for John Handy and a group that he had put together, and that's how I got a chance. That was my first meeting with him. He said, "I'm going to talk to you one time later on."
"Not now, but I'm going to talk to you later," and so it was a few years later than that, and then I saw him in San Francisco, where he was receiving an award. I think I was playing again. He said, "I'm going to talk to you soon." I think it was two years after that when I got the call to do, so it was this ... I think that he needed to watch me for a while, which I really appreciate about these cats.
Some of them are just like, "You ain't ever playing with me," but he was like, "I'm going to talk to you soon." I think that he watched me over the years and felt like, "Yeah. Now, I can bring her in."
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, that's really wonderful that he trusted that, of course, you wanted to grow and learn as you went.
Destiny Muhammad:
Yeah. Yeah. Very grateful for that.
Leah Roseman:
Now, a few years ago, San Francisco Jazz asked you to do a tribute concert to Alice Coltrane.
Destiny Muhammad:
Oh, yes. Yes. That was in two ... They asked me in 2016 and 2017, which marked the 10th year anniversary of her ascension. I was invited to play to share her music, and they were clear that they wanted me to curate the Journey Into Satchidananda LP.
Oh, you talk about an experience. I got an email in 2016 from a young woman who works with SFJAZZ, and she said, "Would you be interested in doing a tribute to Alice Coltrane in 2017?" I think I read that email so long. Time started to lapse before, 'cause I was like, these are dreams for many of us to be actually asked to do this, 'cause I had missed Alice Coltrane when she was in the body twice, so I never got a chance to talk with her or touch her. So to be asked to do this was so awesome, so for six months, I just sat with Journey Into Satchidananda, listening to that sound, remembering the '70s and the sound of the '70s and how that sound was intrinsic, if you will, knowing that it was there, but it wasn't a part of my sonic vocabulary during that time.
Even seeing pictures of her at a bookstore that my mother used to take us to, called the Bodhi Tree Bookstore in Los Angeles, and seeing pictures of her at the entryway into Eastern philosophies and studies, and wondering who she was when I would see that photograph, so we fast-forward to 2016 and subsequently into 2017, and the invitation comes, and wanting to curate that tonality as close as possible, but still being able to put a little Destiny in there, recognizing, I'm not Alice, but the spirit of her, I feel around me. It was one song, Isis and Osiris, where there was one of the elements that was a part of that particular sound was an instrument called the oud. I hunted around and hunted around for a oud player and got close, and then he said, "No, I'm busy doing something else." I was like, "Ah, I can't believe you would do that," so I said, "You know what, God?" I said, "What are we going to do?"
"What is the sound that can invoke, still evoke Alice however would push the tonality into this new century?," and so the message I got was to get a kora, a person who played kora. A kora is the ancestor, one of the ancestors of the harp. There was a young woman who lived here. Oh my gosh. She has since moved almost like right after that performance.
I shouldn't call it a performance, and I'm trying to remember ... Oh, I can see her 'cause she was also an incredible visual artist, so I said, "Look, would you be willing to come?" I said, "We're going to reimagine this song by Alice Coltrane called Isis and Osiris, and I want to say it's the last song on the Journey Into Satchidananda LP, and she said, "Sure, let's do it. Let's do it." She said, "I'm just starting to learn about Alice's. Let's do it."
That was, what I did was we did a call and response between the great-great-grandmother of this instrument and the harp, so here, we have ...
Destiny Muhammad:
... of this instrument and the harp. So here we have kora and harp, and then we reimagine how the sound would've been if she had chosen to do it in this day and age. The audience went berserk to hear how we had re-imagined it. The whole piece was stunning. The concert was sold out, and I had two shows that I was doing at SF Jazz, and both concerts were sold out and people didn't want to leave. They wanted to talk. Some people had remembered that album. People had the album, she had signed it for them, and it was so beautifully received that I want to say I have probably done about five tributes to Turiyasangitananda, known as Alice Coltrane, and re-imagined it slightly by bringing in portions of Journey into Satchidananda and Huntington Ashram music, some songs from that LP as well, just also to expand her tonalities because Alice was proficient in piano as well as in harp, and she sang.
And then there was a song that she did with McCoy Tyner who is has quote unquote said that "she replaced in John's Quartet." I don't want to say that she replaced her. Him, rather. I want to say that there was an evolution and McCoy moved on to become his own person as a musician, still in love and respect of John. And he later on his Extensions LP, invited Alice to come and to play Message from the Nile. And I felt like that was a beautiful meeting between the two of them with her on harp, him on piano, Gary Barts on saxophone, and it was one other person. I think they had two saxophones on that. I'm trying to remember who was on drums. I don't think it was Elvin, but just bringing in that for me, just felt good.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I was just reminded of things. So in a previous season I featured a kora player, Sophie Lukacs, because I love the kora. And I've also featured the South African guitarist, Derek Gripper, who's very well known for transcribing kora music on the guitar.
Destiny Muhammad:
Nice.
Leah Roseman:
And just this week I released an episode with an oud player, Ali Omar El-Farouk, who is also a jazz guitarist, and the jazz tune he opted to play is Naima. So it's just interesting, these connections that come up sometimes.
Destiny Muhammad:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So Alice was from Detroit, which is such an important city for jazz artists and as well as Dorothy Ashby was also a Detroit musician.
Destiny Muhammad:
Yes. So Dorothy was, I want to say seven years the senior of Alice. If I was told correctly, they both went to Cas-Tech, which actually had a harp program and still does to this day. And Alice got the harp much later than Dorothy. This is something, this affinity I have there. I want to say Alice, the harp came into the household... If I have it accurate, the harp came into the household of Alice after John made his ascension. So he had ordered and purchased the harp, but if I recall correctly, he didn't actually hear her play the harp in the house. He had already ascended and she took on the harp and really made it her own. After that, Dorothy had studied harp at Cas-Tech, went on to continue her harp studies at Wayne State in Detroit, and had considered actually going into education, but the harp kept speaking so loudly to her, decided to go ahead and take it into the jazz world and just kept going from there.
Leah Roseman:
For people who are checking out Dorothy's recordings, so there's some she did that are very... I don't know. It's sort of orchestral, but it's interesting. It's sort of what you kind of expect from that era. And then she did a more modern album. I can't remember the name of it, but she also plays koto on it. You know the one-
Destiny Muhammad:
Oh.
Leah Roseman:
... that sounds like world music.
Destiny Muhammad:
Oh, the Rubaiyat.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Destiny Muhammad:
The Rubaiyat. And she's playing koto and kora and spoken word on that piece. Oh, that's such a beautiful album with being able to hear her voice. It's so powerful. Yes. She did a beautiful job on that. There's several cuts on that, and one of those... No. I have so much music and things happening through my mind it's like I have to go through my own personal inner database to remember the song that I actually liked the most on there, that I actually played with a group of dancers. It'll come to me. It'll come to me.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And when I was researching Dorothy Ashby, it was interesting. So her husband did a lot of theater and she wrote music for plays, and I think it was the second theater company for black actors. So it was a very important source of work and also for human rights at that time in the 1960s.
Destiny Muhammad:
Absolutely. So John Ashby, Dorothy's husband, he wrote, Dorothy composed the music for his plays. They moved to LA and if I recall correctly, they moved to LA, continued- They had the Ashby players. And I want to say there was someone who came out of that group that went on to do a number of movies, Hollywood mainstream movies from there. John, also if I recall correctly, he also was a part of the sitcom era and was writing alongside Norman Lear. I need to really check that to be accurate in that. But I think that he actually wrote for some segments as well.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, that sounds right. And also in my research that Dorothy was a very important in getting harps into schools in Detroit. She was the reason why they- Let's see what I wrote down.
Destiny Muhammad:
Okay.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, just that she made it happen. She got them to get these harps into schools.
Destiny Muhammad:
Wow. That part I didn't know. I just knew that there were harps at Cas-Tech and Cas was a harp in a... What is the word? It's under-resourced area if I recall correctly. And I think that happened before she came, but that's a possibility. That's some news I didn't know. That's good. Thank you for sharing that.
Leah Roseman:
So are there tunes of hers that you play or just more just having listened to her a lot?
Destiny Muhammad:
There are some of her music that I enjoy to play. One is the Back Talk that I love to play with my trio and Jollity by her. Those are songs that I generally play with my trio. They kind of translate all right solo but...
Destiny Muhammad:
If it's magic. (music)
Leah Roseman:
Hi, just a quick break from the episode. I'm an independent podcaster who does all the many jobs required to produce the series, and there are a lot of costs I bear as well. Please consider either buying me a virtual coffee as a tip or becoming a monthly supporter, starting at $3 Canadian, which is close to $2 US or two euros, and getting access to unique perks. The link is in the description. Now, back to the episode.
Destiny Muhammad:
That was Stevie, but Dorothy was the harpist who played for Stevie, both of them from Detroit, which was really great.
Leah Roseman:
Stevie Wonder?
Destiny Muhammad:
Wonder. Stevie Wonder. So I'm sorry, Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder wrote the song. I think he wrote the lyrics, had some ideas around how he wanted to hear the music, and Dorothy really just did her Dorothy-esque-ness, her Dorothy beautiful-ness on it, and she accompanied Stevie on If It's Magic.
Leah Roseman:
Okay, cool. So speaking of the koto, you have a friend and colleague in the Bay Area, Shirley Muramoto.
Destiny Muhammad:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
That you did a project with the San Francisco Symphony.
Destiny Muhammad:
Yeah. So Shirley was brought on that project and she invited me to play along with her on that project. Oh, we played a song called Rainbow. I have to apologize. I don't really remember the whole sequence of that music, but it was such a beautiful piece. And she gave me, oh, the most beautiful kimono that I wore to play alongside her on that date. It was just stunning. And she had written this piece. Just really beautiful here: us, she and I, and the symphony musicians playing together. It was spectacular.
Leah Roseman:
And you do a lot of work within the community with amateur musicians?
Destiny Muhammad:
I feel like I work- Well, do I work with amateur musicians a lot? I work with folks who are considering becoming more professional in it. When it comes to amateur music, I had an opportunity, if you will, to teach a master class for Amateur Music Network where we've got musicians again, who are considering the professional world, but are really very still shy about it. And really just sharing my experience as a professional and coaching them through those things, the stage fright and the anxiety. Many of these musicians that I can think of, and I'll augment this conversation, many of those musicians I can think of had either started like me as an adult or had dabbled at it as a child, and now maybe they're moving into retirement and want to pick up that idea again. That's what Amateur Music Network.
In the same breath, SF Jazz started their community jam session just last year around about this same time. And here we are with the amateur musicians who are excited about jazz. And this community jam session allows them to play alongside musicians who have been doing it for a long time. So I think of the shadowing sometimes that symphonies often do, and it's almost like shadowing and the jam session kind of working together. And one of the things we do is we send out a set list. In the old days of a jam session, there wasn't a set list. You just get on there, get on that stage and get the trial by fire. In this day, what the SF Jazz specifically asked me and the other teaching artist they brought in is to curate a sound that feels good to us.
For instance, in November, mine was the sounds of freedom. So I go back in time to when I was a shorty and especially in the seventies because the civil rights movement, which is still needed today, the sounds from that era, I grabbed from that era, sent out a set list of the music that we're going to do. We created some charts for them to start to feel. And I also wanted them to hear the music, which so beautifully is still available. Or even a YouTube. So creating a YouTube set list, sending it out to them so they can start to feel that music.
One of the things I personally understand about jazz is the power of listening that comes from the idea of the continent where the griot or the said master of the music would play something and have the student play it back. This is important to me. And so in those jam sessions, this gives the individual, the amateur musician or the budding artist, a chance to listen, and then we play it back together. So you've got that happening. I just love that. So in that essence, I do play with and encourage amateur musicians in this new evolution of the jam session.
Leah Roseman:
That's really wonderful. It's so important, I think, for musicians in any genre to have an opportunity to play with people who are further along than they are.
Destiny Muhammad:
To me it's imperative. This is how we learn. And what I am learning and continue to learn is having this level of empathy and compassion because it can feel daunting. I go back in time when the man said, "You can't play like this, you can't play." No. And that's right. I couldn't play because I needed to listen, to listen and to pray and to practice and to listen, to pray and to practice until I started to feel that and hear what was the conversation, what was the language, what was that? And then you put a chart in front of an individual, whether to put a chart in front of an individual and say, "Play that." And you don't have experience. They don't know what that is. Let's get you a chance to hear that. It's a language.
When I realized years later that it's a language and that we learn the language first by listening, that, it was liberating for me, even in this breath. And also in the language, you practice the language and you practice all the inflections. That's why the imitation is so important. What Marsalis said. He says, "You imitate, then you improvise, and then you innovate." But it's that imitation portion first, that imitation portion that leads to the improvisation. It's like you are reading and you're listening almost- You see folks who transcribe as much as they possibly can, and they imitate. And if they give their self permission to include me, then this little bit of improvisation comes. I go, "Oh, I never even tried that before, maybe I could try that." But this is the movement of it for me. And when Wynton said that, again, another portion of the education of the music itself.
Leah Roseman:
I was thinking about teaching, and are you teaching privately?
Destiny Muhammad:
I have taught privately, and I'm currently not. Now I get asked to teach privately, and I want to encourage those who may come and ask me. I ask a lot of questions when folks ask me to teach them. Who are you listening to? What brought you to the harp? Do you have a harp? Where do you see yourself in five years? What speaks to you? Are you willing to do improvisation? I'll ask a lot of questions of folks and sometimes that can be a deterrent. I just want to play. I want you to play. I'm asking you questions.
I'm going to share this with you. When I first went to Stephanie Kaufman to learn, to study with her, she was 29, I was 30. Stephanie had been playing, I want to say, since she had been about 10 years old. So she had 19 years, and here I come with my not even a year. She looked at me, she said, "How old are you?" I said, "I'm 30." And she said, "What do you want to do?" I said, "I want to play the harp." She said, "Well, you need to write me a plan." She said, "Because I don't mess with the old ones. They don't stick."
And we laugh about that. But you know what I know as a teacher is that we invest a portion of ourself. And when that student is getting it, oh, we want to invest more because we're excited about it. And when the student quits, a portion of us hurts a little bit. You feel me? Because we've invested a portion of ourself. And when those individuals quit or don't practice... That's why I started to ask the questions. And I can see why some folks, they even jack their prices up as a deterrent. And you ain't willing to pay this because it's an investment for me to take my time out and not just me. Any teacher.
So I share that, where I've had students and maybe life was happening for them, or maybe they realized we just make it look easy. We too, you feel me? We make it look easy. But how many hours have we spent sitting and just- That little, the look at the top of Dorothy Ashby's- See if I can get that right. How many times have we sat with just that to make it feel like it's in the hands, to build that muscle memory? And most go, "That's hard." It was like, "Yeah." "You mean I got to sit?" "You going to have to sit for a while to feel even comfortable. Sometimes you don't get that much time to learn it, especially if you're being asked to play for an environment, to play. You got to learn it with a quickness. But now you've got this study time and I'm asking you to practice just that." "Well, why do I have to do that? Can I just do like you?" And I'm looking at him. "Okay, honey, don't even bother about paying me. You have a good day. Don't worry about it, honey."
I got asked to speak at the school just here recently for their STEAM week. They called it STEAM because they added art. It was called STEM before.
Leah Roseman:
Ah.
Destiny Muhammad:
And I'm on stage and I'm given about 30.5 minutes to share as much of my life as possible and still add Q&A, so maybe 35 minutes. So one of the students, after I'd shared as much as I possibly could in the time that I had asked me, "How long did it take you to become famous?" I said, "30 years. I'm an overnight sensation. I'm an overnight famous." One of the teachers in the back that had been listening to my story, broke and ran. He ran. And when I saw him, when I got close up to him, he had tears in his eyes. When I...
Destiny Muhammad:
... to him. He had tears in his eyes. What I understand is that there are some folks that... They've got the foundation of the music down. They've got that down, but when the fame and the money and maybe the girls or whatever it was, wasn't coming fast enough, they opted to become teachers, but the desire was still really there to become a full-time artist. The desire to continue to do the work even if the fame wasn't coming with the quickness. That's why I talk about the farmer's markets. Four hours, you play at the farmer's markets for exposure and tips. This man with tears in his eyes, not the first time, is looking at me and he is like, "Wow, thank you for sharing your story."
And he's wondering, how do I express to the student, you just got to do the work and be willing to do it anyway?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Destiny Muhammad:
You've got to love it that much and you've got to be willing to work at it and to work it as a business. Sometimes folks say, "You know what? I see such and such, they don't have nearly the talent I have," but they were willing to work with the talent that they had and to work it. We aren't even talking about the business side of it, of being a full-time musicpreneur. We're just talking about the craft itself. I still, as you probably already know, and you as well. You still have to study and practice. Keep your chops up. Keep yourself healthy. Keep your mind sharp. Keep your spirit open. All of that plays into the music. So just going back to just talking about the teacher, all of that. I haven't given up on the students. The students have given up on themselves. Well, when am I going to learn it faster?
When am I going to be able to.... I remember one time there was a... There's a school here, the Oakland School for the Arts, and one of the students who was studying music in theater arts says, "When are the talent agents going to come and take us away?" And you just... I can't get mad with folks because no one has shown them what the road looks like to get there, to that proverbial there that is still an ongoing journey. I think part of the thing I'm wanting to be able to teach is how to fall in love with the journey. How to celebrate each step. How to celebrate the Twinkle Twinkles and the Hot Cross Buns as you get onto the Pachelbel's Canons, and all of these other wonderful compositions as you get into the jazz when folks wanted to learn how to...
Well, how do you celebrate even having that baseline down? You know? To celebrate each moment and know that that moment is going to build the next one? How do I teach that? I can go ad nauseum. So I had someone just recently who wanted me to teach me, and I asked them that litany of questions and what were they studying now? What were they listening to now? And they were talking about the harp. They were enamored when I said, "Oh yes, she's a wonderful harpist, and I want to play like that." What are you willing to do because you don't know what that woman gave up. She makes it look easy, but what did she give up? All the parties, maybe?Maybe all of her money was invested in lessons and not brand new shoes or a cool purse. What did she give up to be fierce and fabulous as she is now? And the he's that are out there playing this instrument? And it was a lot of stuttering on that other end of the phone. So, that's my teaching experience.
Leah Roseman:
I'm always curious to ask improvisers where the intersection is for you between composition and improvisation in your creative practice. When you're writing a tune, is it coming out of just... A practice of just free improv on a regular basis, or is it that you already... Something came to your head? Do you know what I mean? In terms of writing a tune as distinct from improvisation as part of play, as part of your at-home experience?
Destiny Muhammad:
So what happens for me, and maybe this happens for other folks, is that in my composing process, I will hear something and when I hear it, I generally don't edit it. Whatever I hear, whatever it is that I get, I'll... And I'll give you an example. I wrote a song for a... I wrote a composition for a player who commissioned to write for Classic Black. The stories and voices of black Americans in 19th century San Francisco.
So when I was asked to write their... One of... They had several characters of actual black people in San Francisco who became millionaires pre-civil war. One of those persons was a man by the name of George Washington Dennis. So just listening to his story and finding out how he had become wealthy, a millionaire in San Francisco, and I was asked to write a piece for him. So I said, "Okay, what does that sound like for me?" And I'm sitting and you hear me talk about God ad nauseum because God is first. I'm kind of hella ghetto sometime, but just let's not get it twisted. God is always first. So I'm listening to God, what are we going to sound like?
And that was the first thing I got. I said, so what is it? What else are we doing Lord?
So when I get that, I say, that's what it is. I figure out what the key is, and I get that. Write it down. Then I ask her, said "What the rest is?" And what I've found, and my few years on the planet... Did you ever see the movie ET? It was not ET, not ET. Close Encounters.
Leah Roseman:
Yes.
Destiny Muhammad:
You remember that?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Destiny Muhammad:
And that to me... And that came out way before I even thought I could be a musician. But as my musicianship continues to develop over a 30-year period of time, it just keeps developing. Spaceship comes down and it plays like these five notes. (Singing). I think it was something like that.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Destiny Muhammad:
But the person who's sitting there, they play it back for the spaceship. Spaceship gives him the notes. He plays those five notes. Spaceship plays it back. They play it back and forth.
All of a sudden, they start playing together. There's this symphony that happens. That is divine engagement. What I have found in my few minutes on the planet, if I'm willing to engage with the sound, the sound will give me the rest. It sounds crazy. I don't know how to explain it. I'm not even trying to, but this is what I found. If I am willing to engage with this infinite, everlasting, it gives me a tonality. I decide I'm going to engage with it. I write it down and I get a little bit more because I'm willing to engage with it. Then I get all of it.
Then I get all of it, and sometimes I get all of it in one fell swoop. But sometimes it's like, how about we try this? How about we try this? Are we willing to trust even the little... What we think are little? What we think... That very first... Are we willing to trust that? As opposed to saying, "Well, if it ain't a big old Mozart piece, it ain't nothing." No, I want this. Are we willing to trust that and say, "Okay, that sounds kind of cool. What else are we going to do?" And just work with that for a while.
And that's what.. For me, if it's the improvisation, sometime comes later on within it. Once I have what's considered the melody or that kind of meat part of it. But I have to be willing to engage with it. And I love this word engagement that my younger contemporaries have developed. Where they talk about in social media, the word engagement. Are you engaging with your audience? For me, it's am I engaging with the goddess of my understanding? And so as I am willing to engage with it and get this, I get more and it starts to develop from there.
I look back in my head where little messages like that have come to me through movies or through just conversation, ear hustling on somebody else playing. Those conversations come to me, and I'm grateful that they've come in a way that I could understand. And that's why I use Close Encounters. Am I willing to engage with it so I can get the full message and treat it respectfully? The thing is that I write on my Facebook page, I'm unapologetically grateful, being grateful for even that little nugget so I can be hungry for more.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, and it's cool when you get a request to do a tribute to someone or some... Maybe find out about somebody, and you were asked by the Berkeley Art Museum to do a tribute to Rosie Lee Tompkins, the artist?
Destiny Muhammad:
Oh my gosh. Whew. That was almost like... In a sense, it almost parallels with... That was almost like having to do the research on Alice Coltrane. Rosie Lee Tompkins, again, I call my people bamboo, if you will, where you plant the bamboo and it might be a long, long time before it finally hits the surface. So when I was asked to research... I wasn't even asked to research it. They said just write about... Write something for Rosie Lee Tompkins. But I wanted to know who Rosie Lee Tompkins, the person. Because to me, the person is what tells me what the music is going to sound like. So I go and do this research on Rosie Lee Tompkins and I'm asked to do the commissioning. And here's Rosie Lee. She comes from Arkansas, the daughter of sharecroppers. So we already know there's a sound from sharecroppers.
Folks who pick cotton in Arkansas, put her on a freedom train coming to California. She's the Seventh Day Adventist. What is the sound of the train? What is the sound coming to California? She comes to a little town called Richmond, California. That's literally about 25, 30 minutes from where I am. Seven Day Adventist, committed to God but... Not committed to God, but committed to God and exploring numerology and spirituality. She's all about the movement of black folks and Malcolm X, but she's very subtle about it. But you see it in some of her quilts and her quilts... She didn't start to quilt until she was 40. See, this is... But she was referred to as a nurse or an essential worker, which is a terminology that's used here in the US. And she's done this all of her life, and at 40, the spirit of the quilt comes on her.
Now mind you, her mother used to make quilts in Arkansas, but she had never ventured to even do them. But when the spirit of the quilt comes on her at 40 in Richmond, California, this sounds like Destiny Muhammad. This woman is selling these improvised quilts at the Berkeley flea market. Hanging them up, and a man by the name of Eli, Eli Leon. He sees her quilts at the farmer's market. He's completely enamored. He takes her quilts from being at the Berkeley flea market, and you have to be at the Berkeley flea market. It is an experience. There are African drums going. You got incense and oils and African food and fun and just any number of wonderful things being sold at the market, and here's Rosie Lee.
He takes her course from the Berkeley flea market to the Metropolitan Museum. She becomes, what I call, that overnight sensation after all of these years. And so her work was likened to John Coltrane's work, his improvisation. So here I'm asked to create a piece based on her quilts. I need to know about her life because the quilts are saying one thing, but I'm going back to her church experience, her life. I think she had three or four children, and she had these challenges with her mind where sometimes she said she would hear voices and what did that sound like? And so being invited to... I chose to... The first iteration of that composition, I pulled in the young man who is a rapper, who comes from her religious tradition, and then it was my trio. Then I said, I need to... I'm still hearing more. It's not done. Even now, that composition isn't done.
The Minister of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco is a fierce spoken word artist, not just a preacher. I asked him. I said, "I need for you to fill me on this. I need for you to write for this." So he shape-shifted the music a little bit, and I brought in Tammy Lynn Hall on piano. I still had Leon Joyce Jr. on drums, and Chico Lopez on upright bass and SF Jazz had invited us to come. I said, "I really want to bring this piece." It expanded itself just based on him speaking from the spirit of a Rosie. 2022 I was the Hillsberg Jazz Festival resident artist, and I was asked to bring something. I said, "I want to really bring Rosie Lee." And they said, we have a church we think that would be very powerful. And it was not a big church, but a beautiful old church.
And this time, Marvin wasn't available because his work at Glide is... He had his hands full. I said, I want to hear what the voice of a woman would say, but not just one woman. I wanted two. I wanted the voice of Rosie Lee Tompkins, the artist, and I also wanted the voice of Effie Mae Howard, the woman who was morphing into this. And she chose... She was given the name by Eli Leon of Rosie Lee Tompkins because she felt that she didn't have any privacy now that this fame had come upon her. I wanted both voices to come. And that was, again, a whole expanded... Expanded experience of Effie Mae Howard and Rosie Lee Tompkins, having Enid Pickett speak as Effie Mae Howard and Devore Major, former port laureate of San Francisco, speak as Rosie Lee Tompkins and having the voices even... Their voices speak and intertwine and play off of one another with the music. These improvised suites of music coming in and out of what they had to say.
It was, again, so beautiful. And I was asked to speak on it at a library the day before we were... I want to say two days before we were to present at this church Hillsberg. I want to say Hillsberg Episcopalian Church. And the quilters in the area, the African American quilters of Hillsberg came out and they brought quilts and tribute to Rosie. And in the library, they had this space where you could actually hang, I want to say, probably more of paintings and such. We hung those quilts up while I did this talk and played a little bit behind the two spoken word artists because I wanted them to speak portions of what was going to be shared. It was... Oh, it was...
I just say that this is oftentimes what happens, maybe not just for me, but for others. But when we're asked to speak of people who have joined the ancestor realm, I could feel the spirit of Rosie Lee, Effie Mae Howard in the house the same way I felt Alice Turiyasangitananda. Whenever I've been asked to do a tribute, I could feel the energy of those individuals there. That's what I would say to that. Just a really expanding experience. I'll share this and then we can move on to something else if you like. Viola Davis, the incredible multi award-winning artist, actress, she's receiving an award and she says, go to the graveyard and dig up all of those stories. She said something else, but it was that part right... There are stories of people that we get to tell through our gift, through our craft. It just makes me want to visit some of these graveyards and say, what was your story? What was not said about you that we should say? That you wanted to say? I just wanted to share that.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, yeah. That's beautiful. I often ask my guests about their mentors and their inspirations because sometimes stories are brought to light that otherwise people don't know about as well. It's such an important part of history. So for yourself, for your history, could we go back to when you were 21 and you managed to get few months free rent to start your first business?
Destiny Muhammad:
Oh my gosh. Man, here we were. I was 21 years old, had my barber's license, had had my barber's license for about three years, and my mother and my sisters and I were living in the projects in San Pedro, California. And I had been on a bus quote unquote, looking for a job and the bus for four Saturdays straight, would take me past this barbershop that was closed on a Saturday. For any of you all who know a Saturday, if you don't make no money any other day of the week in a barbershop, Saturday is the day.
So that fourth Saturday, I said, you know what? Because I was trying to get a job in something else. It was a whole situation around my barbering where I had come out of barbering after a couple of years and said, well, maybe I better quote unquote, get this other type of work. Wasn't finding it. Went past this barbershop. That fourth Saturday, I said, you know what? I'm going to find out about that barbershop. Who owns it? And the barbershop, if any of you know San Pedro... San Pedro is considered the Port of Los Angeles. And this barbershop was literally just maybe four or five blocks from the Catalina terminal, the princess cruise lines and the longshoreman as well as the Merchant Marines area where they would come in and come into town. It was literally that close and that barbershop should not have been closed with all of that possible traffic.
Also was the 80s. There was other traffic too, but that's... I'll get into that later. So I said, I'm going to go and find out. This barbershop was located on ground floor next to an Australian little eatery called... Well, I'll be darned, but it was housed in this... A very large building that took up almost a portion of a block that Merchant Marines would come and stay when they would come to town. And around the corner was a longshoreman hall and a Merchant Marine hall and a liquor store and a little club called Godmothers.
And the entrance... So you had the barbershop, the Australian eatery, and then there was an entrance going into this hotel for Longshoreman's. So I went in and I inquired about the barbershop, and it was a woman sitting at the desk where you could rent a room in this hotel. I said, what's going on with hype? I introduced myself. I said, what's going on with that barbershop? She said, the barbershops closed. Are you interested in it? And I said, yes. She said, my husband's a longshoreman. He runs the entire building. He'll be back in a little while. I said, okay. She said, well, give me your phone number. This is way before cell, so I had to go home and get on my mobile. So he calls-
Destiny Muhammad:
I had to go home and get on my mobile. So he calls me, and I come back, and he looks at me, he said, "You are so cute. Are you really a barber?" I was like, "Yes, I am a barber. I went to school in Long Beach and got my barber's license." He said, "You are so cute. Well, let's go look at the barbershop." He opens the door, and it's this cute little two-seater. The barber pole was on the outside, he flips on the light, the pole goes around. He said, "This barbershop has been closed for years, there's a man who lives here in the building who's lived here for years. He used to cut hair in there." He said, "He doesn't do it anymore, he's just retired and chilling." He said, "Would you like to rent the barbershop?" I said, "I would."
He laughed again, "You are so cute, are you really a barber?" I said, "Yes." "How old are you?" I said, "I'm 21." He said, "Okay, I'll tell you what." He said, "You can have the barbershop the first three months for free, because you are just so cute." I think he just thought that I wasn't going to do it. But honey, the heart of the hustler was in here, because I was going to make this work.
Turn the lights on, the water worked. The chairs were beautiful, the chairs had been chairs that actually had come off of a ship, so they were very, very, extremely sturdy. This barbershop hadn't been used for years, so it was slightly dusty. I went in, cleaned it up, had the mirror and the backboard. I even have some pictures, I have a at least one picture of me in my barbershop days. And I turned on the light, I was like, "Shoot, I'm open for business." Pulled up the blinds, I locked it up, had my own key, I ran back to my house in the projects, I said, "Hey, Mom, I got a barbershop." She said, "No, you don't." I said, "Yes, ma'am, I do."
I opened my barbershop, I want to say 1984 I opened the doors, and this was just about the height of the crack cocaine pandemic in Los Angeles. I opened those doors and I was busy, I worked Monday through Saturday. Most barbers are usually closed on Monday, but I opened up on Mondays. And my mother, who was a beautician, cosmetologist, she came in and worked with me. She came in I want to say after about four months, and she came in and we started working together in my barbershop. Oh, the most incredible time, I feel like those years, because I worked probably... If I had a hundred customers, 98 of those customers were men, and 2% were women that would come in and get a haircut. I called them quote, unquote professional men to urban apothecarians.
I ran that gamut of people that I worked on. Some of the stories that people would share with me in the barbershop were just priceless. Good times, some crazy times. And sometime I would be so busy, Christmas Eve folks would be trying to get in and get their haircuts or some other wonderful service, and I would share with them. I said, "This is what I'm going to do." I said, "I'm just not going to work from... on Christmas Eve. I'm going to close at my regular time at five o'clock, be here tomorrow morning on Christmas Day at eight o'clock." And I would open from eight to noon. I said, "You ain't going to be doing nothing, no way. You going open some gifts, dinner ain't going to be ready until about two, three o'clock. You might as well come in here, get your hair did, so you can look good for dinner."
I would have about 10 people show up at eight o'clock on Christmas Day. I would be done by about one, clean up, my mom would cook dinner and have dinner about two o'clock, and maybe we would go to the movies. And I would do the same thing on Easter Eve, and New Year's Eve I would do the same thing too, but sometime I would close up on New Year's Day just in case.
But that was my life at the barbershop. I mean, I actually had a very thriving business. For you barbers out there, y'all already know, that is some good money. And you learn a lot, I learned a lot from the people that I worked on, and just working with my mother, and just being in an environment and learning business. And I feel like I apply some of those business ideals to being a musicpreneur as well. Proper handling of people, how to speak to people, how to get the most out of people. My services as a musician can run the gamut of playing full-time on a big stage in front of a full audience of people, to playing graveside for a funeral at the casket. And so I feel like my life as a barber helped in how I work with people, whether I'm working with other musicians or working with clients.
Leah Roseman:
What were some of the hardest lessons you learned in those years?
Destiny Muhammad:
There's an exchange of energy that happens, that I learned is a hard... I'm calling it a hard lesson, of the laying of hands on people, there's an exchange of energy. And sometime we feel things that we don't want to feel, that's why I speak of God as my understanding, that how imperative it is to have a prayer practice to cover yourself when you deal with people. Even now sometime that exchange of energy, maybe I'm not laying hands on people, but just being out in the public can be sometime daunting. And being able to put up one's own personal spiritual force field so that you can keep certain energies at bay. And they're some of the hardest lessons, I don't know if it was a lesson, but it is a lesson because I learned how much I had to really protect myself spiritually.
You get folks that are coming in and sick, and they may not even know how ill they are. And I remember a man had come in, and he was sick, but he didn't know how advanced his illness was. And I had given him a haircut and a shampoo, and he was having challenges with his voice, later on to find out that this man had throat cancer. And I had worked on him, and after he left I didn't feel very good. And I called my boyfriend up, I said, "I'm going to cancel all of my appointments today, I'm not feeling good." He said, "What's going on?" I said, "You just got to come and get me now." And he picked me up, and I could feel my stomach bubbling, and that I was going to have to vomit. I said, "We not going to make it for me to get home."
I said, "I need for you to pull over." And there was a bank, and I baptized that bank. And after I was able to let out all of my lunch and breakfast we got home, and I literally had to lay down for three days. This man expired maybe about a week or so after. Those are lessons to spiritually fortify oneself so that that energy doesn't get exchanged like that. I think that was probably one of the hardest lessons that I didn't need to learn again, and so I talk about prayer in a way that works for me. And I pray that folks find a prayer situation that works for them regardless of what their spiritual walk, religious walk may be. But in this work, either as a barber, or as a musician, or anyone in the arts, discipline's to spiritually protect yourself as you go out in the world with other people who may not understand your gift.
Leah Roseman:
So when you were growing up in the projects, there must have been a lot of violence and uncertainty. Do you think that sort of strengthened you in terms of dealing with being a young woman, running her own business, with all these men coming in? Did you have a bit of an edge or shell?
Destiny Muhammad:
I will say yes, and I will share with you that when we first moved to the projects, there wasn't a lot of violence. It was a community of folks that were used to working together, that community wasn't violent. Most of us were on welfare, we were getting assistance from the state. It wasn't violent, it wasn't. We could leave our doors open, the mothers would often share food and ideas with one another and try to help one another.
The violence came, that we really started to see, is when crack cocaine was planted in our communities, and guns. And I saw that happen in the eighties, and I really saw it happen I want to say about 83, 84, is when that started to happen. We didn't see the first drive-bys and the shooting, because we didn't have none of that. Folks prior to that were probably really smoking what's now very fashionable, it's cannabis. Now it's all the trend, when folks was going to jail for 10, 20 years, now it's the trend. Don't get me started. And that's when we started to see this violence. There were young men that I worked on that were tired of being poor, or not having work that they felt was sustainable for them or their families, and they chose, because crack was bringing in large dollars unfortunately. And this was the first time they had seen that kind of money.
Some were able to transition out of that life, and some of them went on to become longshoreman, which also brought in large dollars, but was sustainable. Some of them were taken out, thrown into the ancestor world by that violence that we just spoke of. In regards to the edge, I can honestly say yes. There are things that I had seen and been exposed to because of that life, that when I go into what's considered the professional world, or especially in the symphonic world, and I hear someone speak in this very profound, very exquisite language, and I know you cutting me down. You think I didn't hear you? Your language though, and your posturing says one thing, but your eyes and your vibes say something else. And so I feel like growing up in that environment has given me a level of discernment, that again, pushes the prayer. And like I said, I keep talking about prayer, don't get it twisted, I will cuss you out in all of the four letter languages that I've learned.
And I'm also deeply rooted in my relationship with the infinite. And I feel like God took me the long way, my mom used to say, "The long way around is the shortest way home." I didn't get my gift at nine, or 19, or 23, or 29, or at 30, because I needed all of those life experiences. So when I go into any environment, I know what I'm feeling and sensing, but I'm also fortified with a spiritual and an internal awareness, allows me to move with a level of confidence and creativity working together. And that power of improvisation going into some environments has also allowed me to move with an awareness, and allow folks to know, I see you and I heard you, just have my money.
Leah Roseman:
I heard you say in an interview before the pandemic that you were interested in writing a jazz piece for orchestra, and that you love listening to Quincy Jones. Have you been able to realize that project yet?
Destiny Muhammad:
I will say yes, in a sense. So I had the beautiful, blessed opportunity to have one of my works, it was... I'll use the word transcribed, I know there's another word for it for a full on orchestra, one of my compositions called Hope on the Horizon. And so it actually was done for a string ensemble of cello, violin, viola, and harp, and San Francisco Symphony called me and asked me would I be interested. Another one of those emails that I got during the pandemic that just took my breath away, if I'd be willing to curate for their SoundBox series during the height of the pandemic. And generally that would've been an in-person, what they chose to do was take their digital team, bring me and my ensemble, my trio, into the SoundBox. And in a very safe way to come in and to perform, to share music in that environment.
So Hope on the Horizon was arranged for a string ensemble, and then the... Yeah, string ensemble, I want to say it was another one of my compositions later on with the Santa Cruz Symphony, that was full symphony. My composition called We Are the Ones, was also arranged for full orchestra and rhythm section. So my cats came in, and they played with the Santa Cruz Symphony. And arrangement was done by beautiful young man who's having great success with Jon Batiste, his name is Matt Wong. Watch that name, because he's between here and New York.
Matt Wong did the arrangements, just stunning arrangements of We Are the Ones. And to hear my work when I'm playing it with my ensemble, was powerful, and how that expanded a version of it just took it to another level for me. Just loved that. And being able to sing with that as well was one of those dreams come true. And so I am looking forward to actually writing another composition where I'm probably partnered again with Matt, who writes beautifully, and arranges beautifully for Symphony, in that same style that my mentor... Who doesn't know he is my mentor, Quincy Jones has done as well.
Leah Roseman:
Great. Well, I was going to ask you if you would want to close with some more music, unless there were things we didn't get around to that you really wanted to talk about.
Destiny Muhammad:
I'm trying to think, what else would I... There is so much.
Leah Roseman:
Well, it is an hour and a half already, so we can...
Destiny Muhammad:
Oh, okay. (music).
Leah Roseman:
Thank you, all right. Well, thanks for this today, it was really, really interesting and inspiring to meet you and hear your stories.
Destiny Muhammad:
Thank you so much.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this week's episode, thanks for following the series on your favorite podcast player and sharing your favorite episodes with your friends, all of which help find new listeners. I have lots more episodes coming in this season 3, with a fascinating diversity of musicians and their stories and music. Have a great week.
