Crafting a unique place in the jazz world
Jazz bassist Shane Cooper wants to collaborate with people who keep him on his toes musically, writes Gwen Ansell
AGLIMPSE through a shadowy window in Switzerland last year was all it took to capture jazzman Shane Cooper’s heart. When he got closer, attraction turned to love. But the object of the musician’s affections wasn’t a person —“It was an 80-year-old German bass,” he remembers, “in a bass boutique just outside Berne. The owner told me it was the instrument Larry Grenadier (bassist with Charles Lloyd and Pat Metheny, among others) usually rented. When I tried it, it was the most suited I have ever found to my style and what I look for in my sound: big and lyrical. And the shape and weight fitted my physique — which, for a bassist, is key.”
Cooper, this year’s Standard Bank Young Artist winner for jazz, still nurses a small obsession with owning that bass. For now, though, he’s staying faithful to his present instrumental partner. “It’s also not new and shiny. It’s a plywood Czech bass I bought second-hand in Port Elizabeth, for about R5,000, which is relatively cheap. It’s about 40 years old now, and over the years I’ve had work done on it to open up the sound; it sounds better year by year. Somehow, however good it might look, I worry a brand-new instrument might sound too generic. To replace my present one, I’d want to make a giant leap — and that German instrument was it.”
Those reflections illustrate the care Cooper devotes to crafting a unique personal sound on his instrument. But the Port Elizabeth-born player’s life in music started in a far more casual way. “When I was 14, I was playing guitar and I was offered a place in my highschool big band. I said yes — for fun really. My brother was a drummer, and we’d be jamming almost every day. I was playing a lot of rock, but out of the groove element in that, I found myself drawn towards the bass, and towards jazz.”
He credits his high-school music teachers with nurturing that interest and exposing him to the work of players such as Victor Wooten and Jaco Pastorius: “I got a bit obsessed with Jaco’s approach to virtuoso electric bass — the phenomenal writing; the sustained groove; his tone on fretless bass. It wasn’t just the chops, it was his musicality and lyricism too. That led me towards that whole musical approach associated with Weather Report.”
At 15, he became Graham Beyer’s bass student, and was challenged to tackle more advanced repertoire; by 16 he was playing live shows. “It was a massive learning curve, but I was still having fun.”
Cooper worked with various outfits in local clubs and restaurants, with a repertoire that covered everything from Carlos Santana to John Scofield to jazz funk. “And we did play shows where people asked for Bryan Adams covers too — we dealt with it.”
All the time, his listening and learning were expanding. He speaks with admiration of both local heroes — Beyer and Gerard O’Brien — and international ones: “Larry Grenadier, Jimmy Garrison, Christian McBride and of course, the father, Ray Brown”. Eventually, he persuaded his parents to homeschool him, so he could make more time for his music.
He managed to keep up academic standards and in 2008 graduated from the University of Cape Town with a degree in jazz performance. Since then, he has worked with diverse outfits and colleagues, from drummer Kesivan Naidoo in the South Asian-influenced Babu to experimental jazz/hip-hop group Closet Snare. He has shared stages with Louis MoholoMoholo, Marcus Wyatt and many others, and, as Card on Spokes, creates his own electronic compositions.
What unites these projects is not just the opportunities for bass improvisation they offer, but the quality of the music. “I don’t look for flash in music. I look for a good song and a good sound — in what I write, and in what I play with others.”
Cooper composes on a range of instruments: “writing on piano, for example, gets me out of my usual patterns, where groove and the bass tend to be foregrounded.”
I don’t look for flash in music. I look for a good song and a good sound — in what I write, and in what I play with others.
He is becoming more interested in the opportunities for expressing a distinctively African voice on his instrument. “Let’s face it, everything that’s technically possible on the bass has already been done by somebody. There have been people doing unique things — (Bill Evans’s bassist) Scott La Faro’s upper register voice, for example — but the real innovators these days are people exploring fresh traditions though the instrument, such as (Cameroonian) Richard Bona.”
In SA, Cooper feels there has been an interesting dialogue between electric and acoustic bass traditions. “You’ll find popular traditional sounds played with electric bass — in, for example, maskandi recordings — being explored on the double bass. The late Johnny Dyani did that, and so does Herbie Tsoaeli today. Those bass lines in Zulu music were very melodic, with a distinctive, much brighter tone and a unique sense of rhythmic placement born in how the bass voices were used in vocal traditions. So the bass line stands out with its melody, but still supports the groove. I think that’s a field for players here to explore much more.”
He thinks for a moment: “Pianist Kyle Shepherd is one of the few people who’s writing those kinds of bass lines today.”
Shepherd is one of the musicians Cooper will be working with at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, in a group with old Berne colleagues trombonist Andreas Schopp and saxophonist Marc Stuckl, and Naidoo: “We will be using compositions from everybody, and working in layers of bigger and smaller combinations of players.”
But despite the intriguing potential of a South African bass voice, Cooper believes the instrument has too low a profile and limited accessibility in South African music education.
“Overseas, kids are playing acoustic bass from eight years old. Here, kids aren’t exposed to it and, outside a few schools, there’s not much history.
“There’s a shortage of instruments: they are relatively costly and need care.
“The electric bass is far more accessible — but that guy stands at the back, and youngsters are more attracted to being in front, playing a horn or a guitar.”
Cooper feels this is “such a pity — you can play any style or genre on an acoustic bass, and do some really cool musical things.”
The bassist is quietly excited by the opportunities offered by the Standard Bank accolade, and particularly the chance to work on the kind of original music, his own and others’, that he enjoys.
As for the future, “I think you have to be realistic for each stage of your development. I like working with artists who are amazing, and keep me on my toes, but are more or less where I am.”
A collaboration with Swedish reedman and multimedia artist Nils Berg, he believes, could “speak to my lyrical side. After that I’ll look for my next project when I’m ready for it.”
Then, with a faraway look in his eyes: “But maybe … one day … Wayne Shorter?”