The following interview took place at Rocca AlMiledo Studios, Toscana, Italia.

Q: How has the move away from New York, which many would consider the center of the world, affected your work, your ideas? I hear you live a pretty isolated life on a mountain deep in Toscana.

Morgan Craft: Yeah, very isolated. The village we live in has a population of eight hundred people. It's been three years since we moved so I can definitely see results. It's true, most artists still insist on living in the city. And most cities now could be interchangeable anyway. I know there is the fantasy of going to a megalopolis to meet likeminded people, have all these experiences, etc. and on a certain level you can. I spent ten years in NY and I don't regret that. You can't buy the lessons of struggling for your art amidst eight million people, trying to find out who you are and what you believe in. I even think it's necessary, if you want to be pursuasive as an artist in the twenty first century, to know what the city life does to one. But then I'd turn around and say there is definitely a time to leave. All of the art I've loved was about change, trying something new. And to me, all art comes from the life you live. I'm very critical of the new technologies coming out now but one aspect that is very exciting is the reality of being able to do what you do no matter where you are. A laptop and a cell phone can keep you just as connected as you ever were. I can't believe more people are not taking advantage of this. Then again I can understand why. Art is not being developed along the lines of innovation but of business. Most people don't want to risk not being on the scene and missing that big break. But break into what? Into the establishment. But I look out there and don't see anything I want to waste my time breaking into. The relationship between art and nature shouldn't even have to be mentioned but I can't remember the last time I heard anyone say it. It's just not modern enough to talk about essential things like plants and trees and mountains and oceans. It seems like everybody is rushing to be cyborgs. And I can only speak for myself when I say that walking on concrete between buildings along a grid which never changes just doesn't fulfill me. I think for an artist, living within nature is the original well of inspiration. Our job is probably the closest to the way nature works than most other endeavors. I can't express how important it is for me to wake up in the country, with fresh air, space and time to really develop. I don't feel any contradiction in being concerned with a music of the future and living a very rustic life. I chop wood, take long walks through the forest, tend a garden, live simple, and then walk inside to a fully operational studio set up. That, to me, is the future. Building a connection with the earth and the body feeds directly into the creativity. Also, when you're isolated you can't run for the distractions like you used to, all you've got is the work you say you love to do, but do you really? You can't fool yourself. And I know that is a very scary place for people, that ledge, that reality away from the fashion, away from the friends. So to go back to your question I'll say that moving here has influenced every single aspect of my life in a beautiful way.

Q: Do you feel there is a relationship between spirituality and avant garde / experimental musics?

MC: Absolutely. For me, music / art is a spiritual quest, period. They are the same thing. When you start to ask where inspiration comes from then you are dealing with spirtual matters. The breath, flowing naturally, allowing that energy to work through you, these are matters of the spirit. You can see that most people these days refrain from talking about this, but there was a time when it was much more open. Something happened maybe around 1980 that we're still dealing with. I can't say what exactly or when exactly but something shifted. They tried to stop the progress of all these different musics. Jazz, rock, pop, all were rewarded for stopping their progression. Money got big, keeping it safe and marketable got big and the media kept up the pressure. People started talking about maintaining traditions. Music that always was about progress was now told to stop, no more forward motion. And when you stop you no longer are spiritual. Spirit doesn't stop, at least I can't see any evidence of spirit stopping. Where does nature come to a stop? All is morphing, pushing forward, shedding skin, eating one another. So when these people say "we'll pay you to stop", they are trying to keep us away from spirituality. It's about control. Technology also became the focus at around the same time. And the thing with electronics and computers is that they are actually in advance of the people using them. The machine is more powerful than the human at that point. It becomes very easy to let the machine do the playing because the sound is immediately gratifying. I'm not against technology, but it takes time to get inside of it, just like it takes time to get inside of any instrument. So the art moves away from the human and that in turn affects culture because people are listening to this new music and are being transformed away from spirituality, away from the human.

Q: So you're not a big fan of laptop music?

MC: I've heard plenty of great computer based music. I'm not critical of the computer in itself, I'm critical of laziness. It takes about twenty years to really start to find out what you and your instrument can do together, twenty years to get to a symbiosis, and right now this computer music is not that old. Obviously the pioneers get all of my respect, back when it was fresh. Now, since everyone in the first world can afford a Mac it's not very exciting. I've loved the sounds that I've heard and I let them influence me. It stretches out your ears, gets them away from habits, ruts. But now is the time when we'll see who the real artists are. Everybody has heard what these programs can do, now it's time to hear what the human can do through these programs. And this is where the work comes in. The time you have to put in if you really love something. I think you'll see a big shift in these next few years once the cat is out of the bag on how these things work. Right now it's just fashion, it's peer pressure and fashion. You read the magazines or go to the experimental festivals and they make you feel bad if you're not staring at a screen. I don't buy it.

Q: Even so, don't you think computers are the future instrument? I mean, you play the guitar which some might call a dinosaur. How do you reconcile wanting to play the music of the future on an old instrument?

MC: The future is right here in our mind. An instrument is only a tool to achieve the impossible. So you could play a stick and a stone and if your mind is facing toward the future then you're infinite. That's one thing you learn from getting past the steep learning curve of an instrument, that you have every single sound available to you no matter what you play. In the early stages you want to maybe get all this gear to make strange sounds or something but that's not really futuristic. In fact you'll see how dated these gadgets will sound any day now because the machines are not all of the future. The future is the soul. The human is still the future, still the center of our explorations in conjunction with the new technologies. But the first concern is to get the mind free, then everything else just opens up. You become much more dangerous and exciting when you carry the space travel and weapons and truths around in your head. For me, I love pushing a traditional instrument into new territory, because the guitar has a history, and I can really see myself in relation to greatness in the past. I'm always aware of how far they took it which keeps me on my toes to come with something new.

Q: Are you competetive?

MC: You know, obviously art cannot be measured in any terms of better or worse, but I like healthy competition. I like to be pushed and I like to push. I don't think it has to be a bad thing. See, I come from athletics first, I'm not one of these frail arty folks who never used their bodies. I learned alot from sports and I have a great deal of respect for athletes. The discipline it takes to learn your art is very closely related to the discipline needed to be an athlete. So in terms of competion I think we can take certain aspects from athletics and apply them to art practices in a healthy, positive way. I think it's good to have people who can push you, people that force you to get back in the lab. I'm just saying we can use it as one particular facet of this process called art. I wouldn't want to rely on it completely, I just want it as an option.

Q: You say you're an improvisor but your work doesn't really fall into the niche we have come to associate with improvised music. I mean, judging by your new work you obviously love structure, melody, harmony, rhythm, which free music tends to eschew altogether. How do you view your methods?

MC: Oh man, this is really what I want to discuss. OK, improvisation, as a word means one thing, as a style of music means something totally different. I'm not interested in styles. I'm an improvisor, which means every time I sit down I don't know what I'm going to do. I have no idea what it's going to sound like. I don't care one tiny bit about the style of music called improv, in fact I think most of the people who play 'improv' are liars at this point. They get up there and think they have to play like what 'improv' is supposed to sound like. They're liars. I have no interest whatsoever in playing an already established sound. I view improvisation as standing as near to the spark of creation as humanly possible. That's the goal, that's what I'm really trying to do. Total improvisation, pure improvisation, no heads no chord charts. I want to be free to go in any direction. If I want to set up a structure, or play a melody, I can, but I do it in real time. I feel like it's the next step after jazz to completely step out on the limb, no net. But I have to do it in a way that is honest to who I am. Everything I've ever heard is in me in some way or another and might appear in some guise or another. But there is also the possibility of playing something new because to play along with creation, in real time, is to play beyond yourself. You try and get beyond your own judgement so that things can happen. We always follow inspiration. Inspiration leads the way and we always follow. But if we can get right up to it, then anything can happen. To me, nothing is more exciting than playing something for the first time. That's the rush right there. So in analyzing that I realized that every form of music known to man was initially improvised. After that they remembered or wrote it down and it might have become a style or genre, but initially it was improvised.

I'm focused on finding something new. And I think the new cannot be thought into existence. It's somewhere beyond thought, out there. Not everything has not been discovered yet. The real breakthrough for me was getting to the point where I saw my life as improvisation. I went past just thinking about music or writing all the way down to my actual life, my whole person. I thought that for me to really find out what improvisation was I had to put myself in a position, physically, where improvisation was the only option. I bought a one way ticket to an island in the pacific with $500 in my pocket and ended up staying a year and leaving with $10,000. I think that was the frontier I needed to cross, mentally, spiritually, in order to truly understand what I wanted to do with music. I wanted to play within the flow of life. Every situation has a flow, an energy, and maybe the best we can do is ride with that. So now I live and it's like dipping into a stream for water the way I play or the way I write. I try not to think too hard or judge too harshly what comes out. I try and allow it to happen rather than forcing it. And I believe that if we can exist in that place we'll never run out of ideas, never run out of energy.

Q: Obviously the connection between jazz and improvisation must be an influence, how do you view your work in relation to jazz or blues?

MC: I'm a Bluesman. It took me a long time to reach that conclusion because I wanted to come up with a new term to better describe what I do, but at the same time I wanted to acknowledge an origin. The blues is arguably the original artform in the transition from the African to the black American. The blues as emotional zone, not the style it has become with the twelve bars or whatever, but the blues as emotional landscape. I want to feel that connection to the past and at the same time illustrate the evolution into a futurism. I want to connect and draw from the source. Jazz represented the advanced form of the black American musician. That's where I recognized the combination of mental, physical and spiritual brilliance. It was the domain of philosophers and intellectuals and arcane equations. It had the confidence and poise and elitism that inspires me to reach as deeply as I can. That's the beginning of my interest in improvisation. But maybe where I feel differently from other musicians who loved these musics is the fact that I never actually wanted to play them as a form. I didn't see the point in trying to go back in time. I related to the necessity of finding a way that was unique to my experience as a human and, obvioulsy, as a black American. And if I did that honestly then I knew I wouldn't be betraying the masters but, in fact, doing exactly what they would need me to do. I knew that I would be able to sit down with Braxton and the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Butch Morris and we'd be speaking the same language. Black genius is forever progressing. There is a line all the way through Robert Johnson to Charlie Parker to Grandmaster Flash to Goldie. So I had to listen to everything, read everything and then develop my own approach to sound as a logical progression from that essence. As Cecil Taylor said, each man is an academy. You have to create a language out of all the strands of genius that have come before, mixed with your own unique experience. So I just brought it all to the table and never looked back.

Q: What about Africa? Obviously the blues is not the beginning, it too evolved out of something.

MC: Absolutely, but for my intents and purposes I choose to concentrate on what I am. It's not to deny any connection to Africa or the connections we will make with Africa in the future, it's just that I want to make sure we have a clear, individual, original voice to bring to the summit as Americans. We can't come trying to be things that we're not. We do have a tradition, albeit a young one. We do have a pantheon of masters. America was and is a petri dish where all kinds of mutations occur. Africans who survived slavery and absorbed the European influences became a new species. Now, at this remove we are no longer Africans, we are Americans. It always amuses me to see these bohemian American blacks with the beads and kente cloth talking about kings and queens when they've never even been to Africa. The temptation is strong to want to identify with antiquity but I think it's much more important and exciting to not only come to grips with what we are, but to exacerbate and revel in this new opportunity. To turn our pain into genius, which is what the blues truly is.

Q: What about your feelings on issues of race? Do you feel any sense of responsibility to black culture?

MC: I do and I'll tell you why. In America, no matter where I go, I'm black, period. There is no discussion or acceptance of me as being Norwegian and German, that is not yet possible, even though they are as much a part of me as African. I'd rather not waste a bunch of time and energy trying to convince everyone I'm white too. When I look around and see who owns all of this stuff, I mean, who owns jazz, blues, hip hop, who owns the magazines, the books, the films, I realize that we do not control the means of communication. It's astonishing to see that even now, with all the tools we have at our disposal, we still don't have a black owned creative music magazine. And I'm talking creative music, not pop or hip hop. Of course that's just the tip of the iceberg. Someone has to be willing to say that shit is off, totally unbalanced and destructive. Someone has to ask the black creative sector what they plan on doing. I mean, it's great to have other people put up the money and put out your books and records but it's much bigger than the money. We have got to build. We have got to invest. We have to plant the seeds and be patient so that this next phase grows properly and strong. We have to allow for constructive criticism. We have to strive to make brilliant work. So I have to think about the future of a brilliant race. I see that I am part of the next generation of black people in America, being mixed and trying to amplify the strongest aspects of both cultures within myself. This has nothing to do with reverse racism or superior versus inferior or anything like that, I love my mom, you know. But I see what those who are in control choose to show. We're being represented by other cultures who may or may not care to see black Americans being progressive. Why would they want that? Why would they actively encourage us to own our means of communication? That would be taking a huge chunk out of their pockets. How much money do you think these people are making off of what we do? And not just money, but how much control are these people effecting? We have to be the ones showing that our lineage is one of the strongest on the planet, capable of infinite variety and depth. I feel very excited because the world hasn't seen what the black American can really do yet. It's coming and I have a role to play, absolutely.

Q: Are you a hip hop fan?

MC: I think alot about the producers, people like RZA, DJ Premier, and the Bomb Squad. I don't care about them not playing instruments or not knowing theory, they don't need it. I say stick with your MPC and Technics and go all the way deep to the point where you can do anything. We need them to be virtuosos. We also need them to not worry about this thing called hip hop. When they start breaking through that frontier you won't have to worry about is it hip hop, it will be great art which exists outside of any category. Here's the thing, I feel that hip hop, like jazz and blues, is done. It's a form now and as soon as you step outside of the parameters of that form then it's something else. I want the something else now. The world needs the something else now. I want the stuff you can't pin down. I want to be able to use anything and everything as an artist and not have to worry about whether it's authentic to any style. What really is difficult for me is looking out at my generation and seeing all of this referencing. So much of the art now is just taking the surface concerns of the past and putting a new face on it. I don't see anyone saying that we have to push into some new territory now, or that what we're doing isn't good enough. Where is that confidence and brashness that says we're gonna do something the world has never seen before? I'm so tired of this hero worship. You can't say that you want to make music with the same relevency and intensity as Miles, Monk, or Ellington, without people thinking you're an egomaniac. It's shameful. The world is changing so incredibly right now and we need the music and art to lead the way. We have to reach deep down to pull up some truths because the world desperately needs it. We need to accept the responsibility of being positive and dedicated to finding new methods.

Q: How can you remedy this situation, and if you can't, then how do you function?

MC: I've had to think long and hard about this, spent many years wishing for others to appear, wishing for some sort of community, wishing for some elder to come and annoint me. Then, I reached a point where there were only two options; I could keep going like I was, lamenting all of the things that were not there or I could embrace the situation and turn it to my advantage. I'd say this really hit me about a year ago. I began to see the positive aspects of going alone. I didn't have to wait around for people, rely on people who maybe didn't care as much as I did about something, and the most important part, I could move faster. I sometimes feel like I'm building a new machine now. I'm drawing in as much information as I can and keeping all the parts that resonate and discarding the rest. I'm a scavenger. I'm leaner, I'm not dragging around all sorts of unnecessary baggage. I used to go around being excited about something I was reading or hearing and try to turn others on to it. Now I just keep my mouth closed and let that energy circulate inside of me, I just let it simmer and boil and it drives me. I love seeing the connections between all these different elements and I love not having to convince anyone that they're there. I'm the proof whether something fits or not. How I move through the world is proof of what I'm feeling. I'm getting faster, clearer, stronger. My eyes are open and I'm trying to give everything a chance. It's funny though, the age I'm at, the age my peers are it, this is the transition. I'm seeing how other people are evolving and I'm not saying anything. I'm seeing the work they're making, seeing what they talk about. I've let everyone go, I've stopped trying to carry people.

Q: What are your views on academia? Do you think it's possible to learn creativity in a classroom?

MC: Well, firstly, I've not had the experience of attending a four year college so my opinions are based on my observation of others. I think we've seen a shift in thought relating to higher education. We've also seen a shift in thought about what art is and how you go about doing it. Having technique now is almost laughed at. Having ideas is the cutting edge. Duchamp kicked the door down and Warhol decorated the room. Now, I love both Duchamp and Warhol and Yoko Ono and Fluxus, but the fallout is that nobody knows what is actually good anymore. So if there is no standard and no technique, well, I guess anyone can do it. So the schools have become flooded with people who would obviously rather be sipping wine at their gallery opening than sitting behind a desk selling insurance. Fine, I understand that, but it doesn't mean that's really what they should be doing. So, at this moment, the work of the university is just muddying up the waters. They need the tuitions, the teachers need jobs, so nobody says anything. I wonder how many professors weed out 90% of their students because they can see that art is really not for them? I don't think it happens too often. Art is life. Art is the experience of being alive translated into another form. So how do you teach someone about life by sitting inside a classroom? You can't. The best you can do is tell the student that they won't be finding it within those four walls. But then enrollment drops, people start losing money and jobs etc. So my opinion is no, you cannot teach creativity in a classroom.

Q: So how does the information get handed down if there are no universities?

MC: It has to become less formal, less financial, more personal. It's not the concept of teacher and student that feels wrong but the system in place for the student and teacher to actually interact. The need is for elite instruction, think tanks, spaces where one can go to discuss and access information, getting people to be the best they can be. Black people have always had to use informal methods for instruction. During the heyday of jazz you just went down to 42nd street and all the masters were right there. If you wanted to sit in or learn you had to be ready to get your head cut. From what I've heard if you didn't have it together you'd get tossed out of the club. These days nobody is being honest because of the fear of not moving up the ladder of the grant world or the gig world or the press. Or maybe it was someone's living room over drinks and a smoke. Discussions were being had, there was some building going on. Now those spaces don't seem to exist, or at least I don't know where they are if they do. The masters are all spread out across the planet teaching at the universities. I don't think this is an accident. I happen to think it's very smart to keep the black geniuses from getting in the same room. Who knows what might happen if they got together? Maybe they'd figure out a way to get their own money and build a situation independent of present day schooling. Sounds quite dangerous indeed. So offer them decent wages and the prestige of being real university professors and split them up. That kind of situation they can just walk into, the structure is already in place. But to build something from the ground up takes time. And there may be a period of invisibilty, even derision. We have to be willing and able to forego the gratification of institutional accolades. We have to be willing to go underground for a time. Not only am I willing to do that, but I'm proposing it. For starters I say we get together some of the great black minds and just have dinner. It's that simple. Forget composing those impressive salvos and manifestoes and just have some dinner. No pressure, no agenda, just dinner and drinks.

Q: Dinner and drinks? That's it?

MC: That's all I ask. If we could have Cecil Taylor, Outtara Watts, Suzan Lori Parks, Butch Morris, bell hooks, the Bomb Squad, Samuel Delany, Kara Walker, Michael Jordan, RZA, Anthony Braxton, Kodwo Eshun, Tiger Woods, Adrian Piper, Tricky, Amiri Baraka, Venus Williams, Meshell Ndegeocello, George Lewis, Serena Williams, Wole Soyinka, Goldie, Zadie Smith, Rob Swift etc. get together with some of the younger generation for dinner, I think everything would naturally go to the next level. Let me make this clear, I'm not just conceptualizing, I'm serious. I'm putting the call out right here for this to actually happen, and I know just the spot. It's time for the standards to be set back up to the level of being able to change the planet. Standards that can inspire one to action. To show by example what it means to operate on that level. To illustrate the difference between greatness and fashion.

The time has come for a black methodology a black technology. Cecil talked about that in the seventies and I don't know of anyone who has picked up the thread. I'm very interested in the collaborations between black Americans, Africans, black Europeans, the Carribean. Pan-Africanism has fallen from our discussions and our actions and it needs to be back at the forefront. There are other ways of doing things and I think the future will be about the combined efforts of all African peoples worldwide to build Africa and explore space.