TRICKSTER

Miles Okazaki
Miles Okazaki TRICKSTER

1 Kudzu 5:21
2 Mischief 3:24
3 Box in a Box 5:47
4 Eating Earth 6:43
5 Black Bolt 2:42
6 The West 3:46
7 The Calendar 9:16
8 Caduceus 6:41
9 Borderland 1:07

Miles Okazaki guitar

All compositions by Miles Okazaki
Craig Taborn piano 2017 Salish Sea Music, SESAC
Anthony Tidd bass pirecordings.com
milesokazaki.com
Sean Rickman drums
Produced by Miles Okazaki
Executive Producers: Seth Rosner, Yulun Wang, and M-Base Concepts, Inc.

Recorded January 14-15, 2016 by Joe Marciano and Max Ross;

and mastered by Michael Marciano at Systems Two Recording Studios, Brooklyn, NY
Mixed by Anthony Tidd at TidbiT Sonos, Philadelphia, PA
We constantly distinguish right and wrong, sacred and
profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young and
old, living and dead and in every case trickster will
cross the line and confuse the distinction.
Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth
and Art
The trickster figure is an ancient archetype in human
folklore. Tricksters are creative in nature, using mischief
and magic to disrupt the state of things, breaking taboos
and conventions, opening doorways. They exist outside of
the mainstream, working from the margins, creating
movement across the borders. They cause damage and
they heal. They are storytellers and improvisers. Because
these ideas resonate with my approach to music-making,
it occurred to me that the trickster could be a fertile source
for a new book of compositions. As I began my research, I
looked for themes that seemed musical in nature,
translating them into compositions for quartet. My main
concern was that the musicians focus on testing the limits
of each composition through improvisation, with the
sensibility of storytelling in mind. The listener can get a
sense of the trickster narratives by following the rhythms,
which have many twists and turns and are not always
what they seem to be.
About the music:
Kudzu is a type of rapidly growing vine that covers
structures and trees, creating the giant alien leaf sculptures
often seen on the side of the highway. This song is an
introduction, inviting the audience to follow a winding,
slippery path into the wilderness.
Mischief is inspired by the African deity Eshu (Elegu in
Cuba and Exu in Brazil, honored at the opening of
ceremonies, rituals, performances). In one story, he wears a
hat that is half red and half black, causing two neighbors to
argue about its true color. The confusion over this teaches
some lessons about context and ways of knowing. Different
people will hear the playful rhythm of this song differently:
none are wrong, but none are completely right, either.
Box in a Box considers the labors of Raven, a trickster from
the native peoples of the Salish Sea in the Pacific Northwest.
Raven disguises himself as a child to steal the light of the
world, which is hidden in the center of an infinite number of
nested boxes. The composition works at this feeling of
continual unboxing through a number of musical devices:
rotating all-interval tetrachords, their intersection with
symmetrical melodies, a perpetually shape-shifting bassline,
an illusory drum figure. This machinery all fits into a
conventional, square-shaped musical form.
Eating Earth comes from the Indian tale of Krishna, whose
mother asked to look in his mouth when he was accused of
eating dirt, only to see the entire universe inside. She even
sees herself looking into her sons mouth the whole
contained within the part. In this composition, each
instrument floats through time at different speeds, colliding
and combining into sonic constellations, never forming the
same shape twice. The melodic material comes from four
interlocking complementary hexachords. The piano
improvisation guides us through.
Black Bolt is a brief interlude, a fractured song where
twelve tones are separated into four triads, and the regular
drum groove is broken into a series of jagged phrases.
The West is a passing storm, featuring the drums. The Oglala This song is made from multiple melodies in counterpoint
Sioux holy man Black Elk received a vision from the thunder winding around a central axis, where the improvisational
beings of the West, which allowed him act as heyoka, a challenge involves navigating across the borders of intersecting
sacred clown. Depictions of heyokas often show them holding spaces.
sticks to beat out thunder on the drums. Black Elk describes
Borderland is the threshold, the doorway out, the liminal space
the heyoka ceremony where everything is backwards, and it
that we pass through before moving on. The composition is a
is planned that the people shall be made to feel jolly and
short rhythmic canon for solo guitar.
happy first, so that it may be easier for the power to come to
them. You have noticed that the truth comes into this world About the Artwork:
with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other
In origami, all models are made by folding a single uncut square
laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping.
of paper. The central challenge is to create new forms from this
[from John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks]
basic shape. When the paper is unfolded, the architecture for the
model is revealed in a pattern of creases that has a beauty of its
The Calendar is a song about celestial movements, and
own. All of the compositions on this album are contained within
comes from the story of the Egyptian god Thoth, a trickster
simple shapes - 12 or 16 bars of 4/4 or 3/4. But this fact is
who beat the Moon in a game of dice. The Moon owned 360
largely disguised by various rhythmic illusions and internal
days, and Thoth won 1/72 of them. He then added these five
folds within the form. Ive always believed in the idea that
days to the original 360 to make a 365 day calendar. The
working within constraints focuses creativity, sharpens technique,
Moon lost some of its light, and was forced to wax and wane.
and ultimately leads to greater freedom than having no
This composition draws on these numbers for its form, along
boundaries at all. I wanted to make an image with this concept
with the ancient Babylonian calendar, which is built on the
in mind, so I found instructions for the two trickster animals fox
conjunction of 235 lunar months and 19 solar years. In this
and raven and slowly learned how to make the required folds.
song, mutating harmonies wax and wane through all 19
They appear in conversation on the cover, and the back cover
configurations of three notes, moving by only one pitch at a
shows the unfolded figures with their internal geometry exposed.
time.
- Miles Okazaki
Caduceus is the staff carried by the Greek trickster Hermes.
As an infant, he created a lyre out of a tortoise and
Folding and cover photo by Miles Okazaki
hypnotized Apollo with his improvisations, convincing him to
Fox design by John Montroll
trade his caduceus for the instrument. To test the magical
Raven design by Quentin Trollip
power of the staff, Hermes threw it between two fighting
Package design by Miles Okazaki
serpents who then wound themselves around it in harmony
Band photo by Dimitri Louis
and balance.
Thanks to:

Craig Taborn, Sean Rickman, and Anthony Tidd for making it all
happen. Steve Coleman for encouraging and supporting this
project. Yulun Wang and Seth Rosner for giving it a home. Rio
Sakairi and Ed Gavitt at The Jazz Gallery for giving us the space
to work out in public. Nancy, Joe, and Mike Marciano and Max
Ross at Systems Two Recording Studios for capturing the sounds.
Dimitri Louis and Alex Levine for documenting the whole process.
Thomas Goodwin and Linda Okazaki for direction and inspiration
in research. Arthur Okazaki for guidance in the artwork. John
Montroll and Quentin Trollip for permission to use their origami
designs. Musical brothers and sisters Jonathan Finlayson, Dan
Weiss, Vijay Iyer, Ohad Talmor, Amir El Saffar, Mary Halvorson,
Matt Mitchell, John Zorn, Benny Green, Adam Rudolph, Anjna
and Rajna Swaminathan, Patrick Cornelius, Maria Grand, Alexis
Cuadrado, and Rodney Jones. Pavani, Anil, Sivaparvati and
Anjaneyulu Thagirisa for supporting and believing in my efforts
to make music.

For Izabella, Akash, and Arya