Introduction
For my interview I decided to interview Samuel Thomas, my brothers music instructor. Sam is a performer and ethnomusicologist and holds two Bachelor of Music degrees from Berklee College of Music (Composition and Performance), a Masters of Music (Ethnomusicology) from CUNY. He is also currently a Ph.D Candidate in Ethnomusicology at CUNY, Graduate Center. In addition Sam is currently also a professor at several CUNY schools, where he teaches many music classes as well as several IDC classes.
Interview
When and where were you born?
I was born in the San Francisco area, in 1976.
Did your parents expose you to music and the arts from a young age? How?
Well, my parents exposed me to the arts in the sense that we had a lot of different types of music growing up. I had older siblings, so I was also exposed to their music. So with my parents it was Moroccan music, Middle Eastern music, country and pop music, and with my siblings it was rock, and all that. I kind of found my way to classical and jazz on my own.
When did you move to New York? How did it influence you?
I moved to New York in 2001, 5 weeks before 9/11. I had already decided when I was coming to New York that I needed to do something more of a Jewish oriented project, one that could bring in more of the diversity of Jewish music into the world, because I have such diverse music background, both non-Jewish and Jewish … At that point, I was playing a lot more world music styles already, but it was also after the beginning of the second intifada and I felt very strongly from visiting Israel during that period, how much something else was needed to combat the prevailing feeling of violence and tension. I felt that one of the ways to do that was through the arts and through music. So after 9/11, that feeling was intensified very quickly, and that’s when I founded two different projects, one was my ensemble Asefa, which means the gathering. The idea was to gather all different kinds of musicians to create music that would be fresh and new and also drawing on the different Jewish traditions. The other project that I started was JAM, which stands for Jewish Awareness through Music. JAM is the workshops and programming’s educational stuff. The goal there was to take music and art as the launching point, but I want to go into different settings and talk about stuff on a more contextual level.
What are the different instruments do you currently play?
I play tenor, alto and soprano saxophone. Clarinet, piano, guitar, Oud, Ney and the Bendir. The Oud is the Arabic guitar, that’s the one that’s shaped like a pear, and you find in all of the Syrian music. The Ney is the middle eastern flute that’s made out of bamboo, of course I’m a wind player from background so that was a very important instrument for me. The Bendir is a framed drum from North Africa that you play up in the air, as opposed to on your lap.
What music or musician would you consider to be your inspiration in music?
I certainly had my bigger inspirations when I was younger. When I was coming out in jazz, it was Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and John Coltrane. Those were really my important figures. As I started to get into some other stuff, my horizons expanded. I would say that the most influential musicians to me include, Salim Halali, who’s a Moroccan Jewish performer. Also Farid al-Atrash, from Egypt. But then even outside of the music that I play, people like Ravi Shankar, who’s an incredible Indian musician, Bach, the great classical composer, he’s also an incredible inspiration to me. And on the more popular front I would say people like Jimmy Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Michael Jackson, but more important even his producer, Quincy Jones. So I would say inspirational kind of figures if I were to draw out certain ones. For me it’s more like, who’s doing music at a high level of quality, no matter what the genre.
You mentioned to me that you also teach in CUNY? What do you teach? How do you feel about teaching music to students?
I teach a range of subjects, because I’m an ethnomusicologist and a performer, I can teach performance oriented classes, which I have, but most of what I’ve taught is more interdisciplinary studies, teaching about either the history of music, or classes that are a little bit more seminar-like. I taught a class on music and gender, I taught a class on music and spirituality, which combined philosophy and music. So those are the kinds of things that I’ve been teaching over the years. I like to teach a lot because I feel like music is a fundamental aspect of human expression that, frankly, still needs to be cultivated a lot among the student population. I think that while people like you are exposed to a lot of music, you’re not exposed to enough music, nor are really trained on how to really listen and appreciate music, at a younger age. Music has been kind of deemphasized in a lot of schools. The music programs and the art programs in general, are the ones that usually get their funding slashed first. I think that’s detrimental, Its not good for society and its not good for education, because music is the fundamental human expression that’s been around for thousands of years. So I have a chance, in CUNY, to help address some of that, and help students learn at a young age.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years from now?
That’s a pretty good question. You can only plan so much and see what happens. But hopefully, I’ll contribute to teach college, perform and program. I mean the things that I’m doing now are the things that I want to be doing.
