Conversation with the chameleon

Tarek Atia speaks to jazz legend Herbie Hancock, in Cairo this week for several very special performances
In most of his publicity photos, Herbie Hancock looks solemn and intimidating, a man who takes his work seriously. A brief look at his CV would easily confirm that. A musical prodigy who began playing the piano at seven, performed Mozart with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at 12, signed a major record contract with Blue Note at 20, accompanied the legendary Miles Davis for five years, and recorded the biggest-selling jazz album of all time -- just a few of the achievements of a four decade career -- is probably not someone who looks at the world lightly.
It was refreshing, then, when the 60-year old Herbie, looking at least twenty years younger, showed up at the tea room of the Four Seasons Hotel for the interview, all smiles and Mr Nice Guy, immediately breaking the icy, formal atmosphere of the hotel decor with his cool demeanor.
My first question to him was about his adopting, in the mid '70s, an African name, Mwandishi. What inspired him to do that?
For African Americans, Hancock says, "the African part of our history was pretty much taken away from us during slavery, so the '60s gave us a chance, because of the civil rights movement, to kind of re-examine and make some sort of formal connection to our African-ness." His whole band adopted Swahili names. "That was kind of my way -- actually the whole band's way -- of making that connection, that we're part of this civil rights movement."
He feels a special affinity for Egypt because, he says, he is aware that, in much the same way that African American heritage was taken away from his people, much of the "scientific discoveries and development that either began here or were centered around here in Egypt were lost, or stolen, or claimed," by other cultures.
When it comes to Middle Eastern music, Hancock says it reminds him a bit of that African-American staple, gospel. The same "melosmatic singing and ornamentation on the notes" in gospel is also what he hears in Middle Eastern sounds.
Hancock is in Egypt this week for a series of concerts sponsored by the United States embassy in what appears to be a continuing effort to provide a cultural balance to the kind of Americana -- McDonalds and Hollywood -- to which most Egyptians are exposed. Previous guests have included a theatre troupe and the first female African-American astronaut. Hancock performed at the Opera House to a sell-out crowd on Tuesday night, and will be conducting a master class in jazz, as well as a free concert, at the American University in Cairo today. He will also be performing in Alexandria on Friday night.
But Hancock is not in Egypt to promote his own music as much as to raise the profile of jazz worldwide, which is the main mission of the group he is accompanying, The Thelonious Monk Institute.
Hancock calls jazz "a music that translates the moment into a sense of inspiration not only for the musicians but for the listeners. Since time is a continuum, the moment is always different, so the music is always different. That's the nature of jazz. That to me is the purity of jazz. When you try to define a purity as being something that's closed and limited, you're not talking about the music that I play called jazz. I don't know what you're talking about, but it certainly isn't jazz."
Hancock has been criticised in the past for not sticking to one kind of jazz, gravitating over the decades across several different styles and always being one of the first to incorporate new technologies into the mix.
In fact, it is one of his synthesizer driven songs, 1983's number one hit, Rockit, considered the unofficial anthem of the break-dance craze, that is his most famous, especially amongst the young. Does that bother Hancock, considering how much else he had done in the years prior to Rockit's success?
"I'm happy if anything that I did takes the limelight. How can I complain? If people are pleased that there is a popular acceptance of anything that came from me, I'm thrilled, you know, and flattered."
Hancock's early '70s hit Chameleon, on the landmark album Headhunters, confirmed his constant desire to change and innovate.
"I think it's very important," he says, "in order not to have a boring life, to continue to have a sense of exploration, and the courage to take risks, in order to utilise and expand your sense of creativity. I consider that to be a God-like quality that humanity possesses."
Hancock just has time to impart this bit of wisdom before being whisked away by his handlers to a live taping of the show Good Evening Egypt.
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