Value Centered Art To Expand in Boston

Value centered art is practiced by some, a lost concept by many, but something we can explicitly expect to see in the upcoming work of William C. Banfield: an educator, author, musician, composer, and a figure to know in the Boston community.

One of Banfield’s established claims pertaining to modern day music is that the value of words is being depleted as the commercialization of music expands, especially in mainstream hip-hop/rap. 

“Nowadays, the commercial rap is total trash. I’m not talking about underground hip hop I am talking about commercial mainstream rap and hip-hop. It’s total trash. It has no good message. Is it misuse? Is it cursing? Is it inappropriate use of sexuality? I think it’s all of that,” Banfield said.

As stated in Mayor Marty Walsh’s State of the City address, Banfield will soon be opening a Jazz Urbane Cafe. It will be located in the Bolling Building in Dudley Square.

Banfield got the idea to place the cafe in a neighborhood from Prince, because according to Banfield Prince had his bands work and live in Minneapolis, and was always around when Banfield was living there. The music “comes from the people in neighborhoods working and being there,” Banfield said. Artists and the community having a space in the neighborhoods that feels like home is what Banfield describes as the “magic formula.”

Among a number of accomplishments, Banfield is currently an Africana studies professor at Berklee College of Music; author of six books; and the founder of a contemporary jazz art recording label, Jazz Urbane. 

According to Banfield, the Jazz Urbane Cafe will be a place where people of different ages and backgrounds have an opportunity to commune together and hear great music and poetry, eat delicious food, and be encompassed in an overall positive vibe. 

The Jazz Urbane cafe will act as a restaurant and music venue, and will stand for a more expansive definition of jazz including hip-hop and poetry, rather than the assumed old school jazz of the 1940s and ‘50s.

“Artists are always looking for great venues but also great audiences, and people are always looking for place where those two things can happen and interact,” Banfield said. His vision stems from ongoing collaborations with artists, performance venues, and influence from his 25 years spent living in Boston.

Attending college in Boston was truly where Banfield began to develop connections and a whole understanding of the city, especially neighborhoods like Roxbury, where he was doing his music. These ideas and connections only continued to develop from then up until now. Banfield received a bachelor's degree from the New England Conservatory in Boston, and a masters in theology from Boston University; he also taught as a Boston public school teacher from 1980-1987. 

During his time at Boston University, Banfield went to study in Dekar, Senegal. Banfield concluded that African culture is the importance of the message that goes from the griot to the people. This means, he said, that contemporary artists must be aware and informed of the best kind of messages to send, because these messages are going straight to the general public. 

Banfield went further to explain the role of the griot, which is to serve the culture, including the history, values, and corrections of the culture. “It’s usually done through song and poetry and dance. That’s the role of the griot. It’s the most important cultural bearer in the tradition of West African griot tradition,” Banfield said. This conclusion is the main concept of his 2009 book, “Cultural Codes: Makings of a Black Music Philosophy.”

After learning about the role of the griot in traditional African art and music, Banfield came to conclusions about mainstream music today saying, “the battle is in the absence of moral and cultural compass, the absence of moral and cultural compass and consciousness.” Banfield said that misuse of words, cursing, inappropriate use of sexuality, promotion of violence and disrespect, and demeaning a certain group of people are all inappropriate uses of music.

Moreover, Banfield asserted that money and greed are the root of evil and are what big corporations practice. He said, “When the industry generates artistry, giving only space for profit, then it’s destructive to the people. We don’t want any art that’s bad for the people: that’s called poison and cancer, and when art is cancerous to the people you have to not support that kind of art.” 

The solution to an absence of value-centered art is education Banfield declares, “Young people being educated. Education. Education. Education. When young people hear bigger sounds and are able to put things together.” A form of education can come from the Jazz Urbane Cafe where people can gather to form conversation and community. 

“As long as hip-hop is keeping the community together, and that means dancing, talking about love, talking about good politics, talking about togetherness, and fun, all that is fine,” Banfield emphasized. 

Banfield explained that early hip-hop/rap artists such as Public Enemy, Arrested Development and even Kanye West, understood the value of the message, something that has since gotten disrupted. He praises the 2004 Kanye West album “The College Dropout” because this album, along with a lot of early hip-hop, was “about addressing the issues in the world, that’s what the rapper’s job is.” Banfield insists that contemporary rappers should strive to inform the community when they’re talking about important issues and critiquing problematic powers.

“We’re not talking about censorship; we’re talking about good sense,” Banfield said in regard to appropriating mainstream music.

Turahn Dorsey, a friend and colleague of Banfield, sees mainstream music differently. Dorsey said it’s in a good place because of the abundance of people making and putting out music. 

“What we consider mainstream I think is becoming a bigger cross section of music, so I think it’s kind of in a healthy place,” said Dorsey. 

Dorsey said, while what’s on the radio may be limited, there is still an exceptional diversity of voices and to find even more creative stuff you “need to get a little bit off of the beaten path.” He used rapper Kendrick Lamar as an example of a considerable figure in music today. “He’s one of the leading voices on the microphone, he’s really blurring a lot of the lines between musical styles,” said Dorsey, who also described Lamar as an incredible poet and writer. 

Dorsey also commended producers in the commercial rap realm such as Boi-1da and No ID, who have produced for A-list artists like Drake and Jay-Z.

“It’s a lot of creative stuff happening out there and one of the less noticeable things that is happening in both Hip-Hop and R&B: there is a lot of musicians who come from church and gospel backgrounds who are producing this music, it’s really sophisticated stuff,” said Dorsey. 

An example of an artist in the mainstream who came from a church background, which comes through in his music, is Chance the Rapper.

Dorsey is a producer and strategist for the Jazz Urbane label, but actually met Banfield while Dorsey was a student at the University of Michigan and Banfield was a professor. While Dorsey didn’t officially have Banfield as his professor, he did pop in a few of Banfield’s classes with his friend, and had interactions with him, being in the music composition curriculum. 

Years later in 2005, Banfield and his wife came to Boston and happened to go to the same church in Jamaica Plain, Bethel AME, where Dorsey's parents in law were the pastors. Dorsey and Banfield were at the same service and Dorsey went up to Banfield after recognizing him, said Dorsey.

Banfield asked Dorsey to stop by his house and play a few things he was working on, which led to him offering Dorsey the chance to co-produce an album with him, Dorsey's response to that was: “I’m not going to turn that down, that's kind of a life's dream right there and also to be working on it with somebody who is a master of his craft and is a luminary on many levels as a player, as a composer, and as an academic.” 

Since, Dorsey and Banfield have put about eight projects on the label, and have another album expected to release sometime in 2019, said Dorsey.

“The business of music is in a very exploratory and disruptive place and it's one of the things that really intrigues me about our work at the Jazz Urbane label,” said Dorsey whose been writing music since he was 14, “I’m not sure that I have an identity without music.”Dorsey and Banfield not only share a passion for music, but also happened to both be Detroit natives. 

Banfield describes Detroit as one of the most historically great musical cities in the world, with plenty of jazz, gospel, symphonies, and ballet, among Motown and artists affiliated including Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson. “Those were great artists, so that’s my roots,” Banfield expressed. He also holds a doctorate of musical arts in composition from the University of Michigan. 

Banfield’s inspiration not only comes from the places he’s lived, but also the people he’s encountered. 

Among a number of influences, Quincy Jones takes the lead. Banfield describes him as “the most impressive person in music ever,” even more impressive than distinguished artists such as Mozart. Quincy Jones—a composer, producer, and CEO—has done a number of things that Banfield finds incredibly impressive such as: discovering Oprah Winfrey; contributing to Michael Jackson’s success; producing a piece for Bill Clinton’s inauguration; and Jones’ musical work in general. Banfield describes Jones as a real mentor of his. 

“He’s probably my biggest live, all-time hero.”

Banfield adopts inspiration from places and people to further his own creative work, which has led him to great success. Last year Banfield got appointed as a research associate with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, a position he’d always dreamt would be in his career as an arts scholar. 

“It allows me to do many of the same things I was doing in Boston all my career, which is making the connections between artistry, and history, and cultural studies, producing concerts, and recordings in D.C, so it all connects,” Banfield said about holding a role at the Smithsonian.Banfield emphasized that getting to a point in his career where he has these professional crossroads and can achieve his longtime goals, all stems from craft. “You have to do your homework. You have to be clear, dedicated, and have skills. You know how [the current] generation says ‘he or she has mad skills,’ that’s craft,” Banfield wittily advised. 

In the future we can expect to see an expansive amount of art from Banfield. He is working on the production of his new opera, “Edmonia” about “a 19th century black woman who changed the face of contemporary art.”

Banfield said we can expect to see new recordings from Jazz Urbane coming out in 2019 and 2020, streaming on about 1000 sites worldwide from Turkey to China to Boston. 

People can build anticipation for new sounds by listening to the abundance of Banfield’s music already being streamed, including a song titled “People Make The World Go Round,” on which Banfield shreds the jazz guitar. The song holds the message of loving people, and people serving as drivers of society. “When you love people, that’s what makes the world go round,” Banfield said, claiming this might sound cliche, but his work truly speaks to this idea. People, the value of words, and embodying love, is not only what makes the world go around, but will be manifested in the Jazz Urbane Cafe, and in Banfield’s current and future work.