Barrett Martin has a long musical history in the Northwest, mostly as a rock and roll drummer. However, in 2017 he brought his jazz fusion project, the Barrett Martin Group, to the KNKX studios. The rocking rhythms were thrilling, followed by a great conversation about his journey to jazz, and how his music is touched by his many travels around the world.
Martin is a drummer first, but more accurately, he's a multi-instrumentalist, composer, author, world traveler, musicologist and Grammy winning producer. His unique musical journey started with high school jazz band, took him through the grunge rock era and around the world, before coming back home to Olympia, Washington.
On where his interest in music began
"It was a player piano that had about 300 of those paper rolls that, and we, as little kids, we'd peddle it, and it would play all the old Ragtime and big band and show tunes. And so that actually was kind of what I grew up with, more than rock and roll. It was that and my grandparents 78 record collection of all the post World War II big band stuff."
On meeting some jazz legends in his youth
"I mean, I started as a jazz drummer at the Tumwater Thunderbird Jazz Ensemble, and I had this really formative experience when I was a senior in high school where we had the Count Basie Big Band with Cab Callaway, and I got to meet Freddie Green, the guitar player, and I met Cab Calloway."
On something jazz, rock and roll, and Seattle's grunge scene all share
"I really trace it to the blues, right? Because the blues is the foundation of all great American music, everything. Rock and roll, jazz, R&B, soul, hip-hop — you can all trace it to the blues. And something about playing the blues has really affected why I want to even keep playing music. It's so visceral, so earthy, so organic, and you can feel it in a lot of different ways. Rock and roll just seems to be the most, I don't know, like electric way that you can feel the blues. But I just remember that quote by Charles Mingus, where he said, 'If you don't know how to play the blues, can't play anything."
On how touring and traveling the world inspires his music
"As a drummer and a composer, that music has to kind of creep into the way I write music. And so like working with this gentleman right here, Thione Diop, who's a Senegalese master drummer. I studied with his dad in Senegal when Thione was only — I think you were 14 or 15, and now he's in his mid-30s — and so when we play together, it just inherently brings that into our band."
On how other cultures around the world are more connected to their traditional music
"They're compelled to do it as part of their cultural expression. You know, it's not a commodity that they're selling. It hasn't been capitalized the way we do it. They do it because it's part of their culture, part of their ceremonies, and it's what gives them meaning. And a lot of anthropologists and musicologists believe that it was a life saving mechanism, because it pulled people together and made them stay together.
It builds a community just like we did in Seattle through the decades. Starting in the early 20th century, with all the blues and jazz that was here, and then over time, it's just kept growing."
Martin has certainly established himself as a key voice in the long legacy of great music in the Pacific Northwest with jazz, rock, blues and well beyond. These days, he's still busy traveling and producing for musicians around the world or back at his home studio in Olympia.
