
Photo by Lindsay Beyerstein, courtesy of the artist.
Darcy James Argue’s 18-piece big band Secret Society graces The Jazz Gallery’s stage once again this Thursday and Friday evening. Amid rich textures and dramatic arcs, the band’s music opens a wider dialogue with political issues both past and present.
Amidst a busy rehearsal schedule after returning from his native Vancouver, we spoke with Argue over the phone about how the current socio-political climate impacts his new and previous works, how the history of the internet impacts the music world, and what we can expect from these special Secret Society performances.
The Jazz Gallery: It’s been a few years since the premiere of your project Real Enemies. How has your view of the piece changed as the band has played it more, and in light of the current political climate?
Darcy James Argue: Real Enemies premiered in November 2015 at BAM, and we recorded it in early 2016 before any of the primaries had taken place. And of course, all the writing and contextualization for it began about three years before the premiere, back in 2012 when Isaac Butler and I first had the idea for the piece. We sort of wondered, at the time, whether anyone would really be interested in a piece about conspiracy theories and weaponized paranoia! We knew we were interested, and it looked to us that these trends were in ascendance, but we had no idea how drastically our culture would shift, to the point that we (A) elected a conspiracy theorist as president, and (B) put conspiracy theories at the front and center of American politics for the past 4 to 5 years.
TJG: Interesting—yes the piece is relevant right now and extremely prescient at its inception. How does your recent commission “Ebonite” compare to Real Enemies?
DJA: “Ebonite” is probably the opposite of Real Enemies! It’s sunny and bright and a piece full of joy and life. It’s named after this sort of miracle substance that comes from the South American rubber tree. Hard rubber ebonite is used in things as diverse as saxophone and clarinet mouthpieces and hockey pucks. With the grimness of today’s world—that’s something I grapple with in my music and my day to day life—you also need to periodically remind yourself of the stuff that roots you and brings you joy in life.
Ironically, this was driven home for me last Thursday when the assassination of Soleimani was announced. I was at a hockey game in Vancouver—watching my home team, the Canucks, pull out a 7-5 victory, a really exciting and thrilling game with so many beautiful goals. You leave the stadium in great spirits and then check your phone for alerts and you’re like, wait… what? Having these wild emotional swings is very much part of our current culture. For better or worse, this is part of the connected world we live in.
I’m not trying to make light of the dire situation we currently find ourselves in, on the brink of a conflict that could make the Iraq War look like a cakewalk. It’s really important that we resist this latest attempt to thrust the world into violence and chaos. But in order to deal with this, a certain amount of self-care is necessary and for me that self-care is often music.