Donald Byrd
Donald Byrd
Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture "Donald" Byrd IIwas an American jazz and rhythm & blues trumpeter. A sideman for many other jazz musicians of his generation, Byrd was best known as one of the only bebop jazz musicians who successfully pioneered the funk and soul genres while simultaneously remaining a jazz artist. As a bandleader, Byrd is also notable for his influential role in the early career of keyboard player and composer Herbie Hancock...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTrumpet Player
Date of Birth9 December 1932
CountryUnited States of America
I discovered that you can actually do it in about seven minutes.
In some ways the piece is like pages of a notebook that I've written thoughts on. It's a choreographer's notebook.
They don't want to pay the additional price of the gas, but we don't have anything to do with regulating the price of it.
I skipped school one day to see Dizzy Gillespie, and that's where I met Coltrane. Coltrane and Jimmy Heath just joined the band, and I brought my trumpet, and he was sitting at the piano downstairs waiting to join Dizzy's band. He had his saxophone across his lap, and he looked at me and he said, 'You want to play?'
It's an incredible dilemma to be an artist of color and to always be in denial about that, saying, 'I'm a choreographer first and then I'm black,' when in fact, that's not the case. I'm black first and then I'm also a choreographer.
Here in Seattle, I'm the most productive I've ever been. I don't allow myself personal distractions. I'm extremely disciplined here.
I'm creative; I'm not re-creative.
I don't follow what everybody else does.
I can take any series of numbers and turn it into music, from Bach to bebop, Herbie Hancock to hip-hop,
My concerns have been about myself and not about giving something back and putting something in, even though that's been in the back of my head.
My work sometimes can be abstract and appear not to have a direct relationship to Afro-American concerns, but, in fact, it is based on that.
I thought that I would like to be affiliated with some school or institution. As time went on, I also decided on the subject that I wanted to get involved with in addition to music: it was Black Studies.
I was being ridiculed for going to school... But, you see, I had looked hard at the other musicians and the whole show-business scene... They were doing with jazz musicians what they usually reserved for rock n' roll cats: making them overnight successes, then overnight antiques.