Transcript
Speaker: Hi everyone, my name is Emily J. Nacre.
Speaker: And I'm Adam Price.
Speaker: And you're listening to the Relative Rhythms Podcast.
Speaker: Today we are joined by a brilliant musician, body percussionist, composer, and tap dancer, Max Pollack.
Speaker: Originally from Vienna, Austria, Max's career spans continents and he has collaborated with some of the world's most respected musicians and dancers, including Heather Cornell's Manhattan Tap Company.
Speaker: Max infuses singing, body percussion, and Latin influences into his performances.
Speaker: He fronts his own band, Grupo Los Santos, and in 2015 released the groundbreaking album, Romba Tap.
Speaker: We discuss his early inspirations, which like many tap dancers include Fred Astaire films.
Speaker: Our conversation delves deeply into the role of his mentor, Carna Lyons, and the efforts Max has made to honor and preserve Lyons' legacy within the tap dance community.
Speaker: We also discuss Max's extensive study of classical music, his immersion in music theory, and his dedication to the art of improvisation.
Speaker: We hope you enjoy this episode and history lesson.
Speaker: Please welcome to the podcast, Max Pollack.
Speaker: All right, Max Pollack, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker: Thanks for coming on, Max.
Speaker: It's so good to talk to you.
Speaker: Nice to be here.
Speaker: Thanks for having me.
Speaker: We usually like to start our podcast off by asking our guests what kind of first got them into their art form.
Speaker: I mean, you know, the short, short origin story is, you know, at five years old, I saw Fred Astaire on television.
Speaker: The rest is history.
Speaker: And what got me into what I'm doing right now is...
Speaker: my diverse set of interests, um, I was always trying to follow everything that made me happy.
Speaker: And those things included from the beginning, making people laugh, entertaining, um, with, you know, whatever means possible, you know, as a kid, you figure those things out and then you're like, Oh, I'm good at this.
Speaker: You know, and this might come in handy someday.
Speaker: And then realizing like, oh, I think I can make money doing this.
Speaker: Oh, this is nice.
Speaker: And discovering musical inclination and musical talent and a real strong connection to rhythm.
Speaker: and how that makes me feel.
Speaker: And I had experiences as a teenager where I had my first percussion, hand percussion workshops with a Brazilian teacher where I realized, oh, I can pick up these techniques for these rhythm instruments really quickly.
Speaker: I'm not sure why, but it just comes natural to me.
Speaker: And it's easy for me to imitate any pattern that he does just by playing along and going like, oh,
Speaker: Yeah, that makes sense to me.
Speaker: So that was one of the early impressions that, first of all, hand percussion spoke to me and was kind of easy for me to learn.
Speaker: And roughly at the same time, I started getting really into tap dance.
Speaker: And I connected with my first mentor, Carnell Lyons, who I am really trying to focus on in the next couple of years to make sure that his legacy doesn't get lost or forgotten, because he's a very important elder ancestor of ours who is very, very, very much overlooked in the United States.
Speaker: because he didn't really live in the United States.
Speaker: He lived in Europe and he started the European tap scene, basically.
Speaker: He's one huge reason why there is so much tap dancing going on now in Europe.
Speaker: So that was an early impact in about the same time, 13, 14.
Speaker: When I was about that age, I met Carnell, who was in his 70s already.
Speaker: And then my drum set playing, my interest in jazz.
Speaker: Also, as a teenager, I started teaching myself how to play drums, listening to records.
Speaker: And I started a band when I was about 16 with friends from high school to play New Orleans jazz, second line New Orleans jazz in Vienna, which had never been done before.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: We were the first second line marching band in Vienna.
Speaker: the capital brass band and uh i played percussion in that drumming i sang and i tap danced and that was my first uh professional or semi-professional at that point uh but only because i was only still in school at the same time but we were making pretty pretty good bread at that you know we were traveling we were playing festivals we were playing uh parades we were playing jazz clubs you know um because the players in the band were very very good
Speaker: uh and you know like some of the sort of um very highly reputable uh uh representatives of the dixieland jazz band scene in new in not in new york in vienna um and uh and then us you know the young upstarts who were just trying to learn and it was a little bit of the similar situation uh as it was then later when i came to new york
Speaker: with the tap dance mentors, you know, just this was with jazz musicians in, um, in Vienna.
Speaker: And half the group was, you know, 16, 17, 18 years old.
Speaker: The other half was 58 and up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: you know so it was we had a good time and these guys were loving it and we were loving it and we were learning a load and we had just a blast performing and traveling together and then that same thing kind of happened when i came to new york and i started connecting with buster brown jimmy slide chuck green lon chaney uh and uh heather cornell
Speaker: who brought me to New York and you know this whole mentor mentee situation kind of continued and I'm very glad that I was able to feel all that you know from the musicians at first from Carnell Lyons you know which was very direct because I was like the only person
Speaker: in a large, large area of Europe who was interested in this.
Speaker: And he realized that.
Speaker: So he like just pulled me in close and he gave me a lot of his personal, um, experiences.
Speaker: He told me about what it was like to be a, um,
Speaker: black man in the 1930s in the you know the united states traveling hoboing on a freight train from kansas city to chicago under threat of death you know and it was important for me as a teenager to hear all these things firsthand from a person who was living jazz history yeah carnell lyons grew up in kansas city missouri on the same street as charlie parker
Speaker: and he was childhood friends with Charlie Parker.
Speaker: He performed with Charlie Parker on the street in Kansas City busking when they were teenagers.
Speaker: And he danced with the original, original Count Basie band with Joe Jones on the drum set and, you know, that whole thing with Lester Young on the sax and all these like amazing, amazing original Count Basie musicians.
Speaker: And then he traveled to Chicago and he knew everybody.
Speaker: You know, and I was a jazz geek in my teens reading all the books I could find, all the biographies of Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie.
Speaker: I was inhaling all this stuff.
Speaker: Charles Mingus, you know, and then every time I would hang out with Carnell, I would mention a name of one of the books that I was reading.
Speaker: And he's like, yeah, yeah, I used to hang out with Charlie Mingus and this and that and this and that.
Speaker: He had stories about everybody, of course, because, you know, that was his those were his friends, literally.
Speaker: you know, and he performed with all of them.
Speaker: So that was hugely important for me to have this point of view this early in my career as a teenager, you know, because I started understanding jazz, tap dancing and all sort of African based art forms from a different perspective because I had a little bit of the black perspective from Carnell.
Speaker: And just it gave me a little bit more of a realistic view of what happened or what must have happened.
Speaker: The things that I couldn't, you know, that I couldn't relive or that he didn't tell me about.
Speaker: But, you know, it all started making more sense.
Speaker: And every word on every jazz record and every note meant something more to me than if I had not met Carnell specifically.
Speaker: And then eventually all of those people, you know.
Speaker: That must have been such a gift to get those stories firsthand.
Speaker: How do you feel like you are able to share those stories then with your mentees?
Speaker: Is that something that you feel like you can do?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: How do you share that information?
Speaker: I try to pass it on in a social context because I don't want it to feel too preachy, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The key to all this, I think, is that we have to try to be as community oriented as possible to pass this on in the right kind of way with the right kind of energy.
Speaker: you know because when i had these personal experiences with these mentors they were friends of mine or they had accepted me as friends of theirs you know and they opened up their hearts and their brains and their memories to me and those who were with me or around me uh
Speaker: because of the social necessity of passing on their legacy.
Speaker: And also the need to share the positive energy and the things that they learned about being positive and being supportive of each other, rather than being against each other.
Speaker: That is something that I will definitely, definitely have taken with me.
Speaker: And that's what I want to pass on.
Speaker: You know, the really great people,
Speaker: are not assholes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They treat you well and they treat you with respect and they treat everybody with respect because they don't need to act like this.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, and they want you to know that the best art comes from the strongest community, not from one person who locked themselves up in a ivory tower and became a super genius.
Speaker: Yeah, that's not how it works.
Speaker: All these art forms are based on the energy that happens when you send energy out and it bounces back and forth all over the room between the entire community and then something bigger than the sum of its parts will arise and will rain down all the positive energy out.
Speaker: that would otherwise not really have happened.
Speaker: And that's something that comes from the African wisdom and from folkloric wisdom.
Speaker: I don't want to limit it just to Africa.
Speaker: In Irish folklore, in Greek folklore, in Moroccan folklore, there's a very similar concept.
Speaker: Folklore is community and tap dance is community and jazz is community.
Speaker: at its source, at its root, at its essence.
Speaker: If you don't understand that, I'm sorry, you have misunderstood and you have missed the train.
Speaker: That's really important.
Speaker: Yes, it gets very sophisticated and yes, it gets very evolved and complex.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: But if you forget the connection to we are all in this together, and if we are aware of that, we can make more positive things happen and it'll lift all of us.
Speaker: If you don't realize that, then there's something wrong with you.
Speaker: And unfortunately, there are people out there who really go at it from a really strange perspective that is very egocentric.
Speaker: And that doesn't help anybody.
Speaker: So I believe more in this thing that I learned from the mentors, that there is no color barrier.
Speaker: It doesn't matter where you're from.
Speaker: It doesn't matter which gender you are, what color your skin is, or what language you speak.
Speaker: Even if you don't understand a word I'm saying, you are standing in front of me because you want to learn what I do.
Speaker: And there's a reason why you're here.
Speaker: It's because you love that, not because you're taking, you're trying to take money from me or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This ridiculous concept that some people hold that people from the outside come, then they want to take something away from you and deprive you.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: of your livelihood.
Speaker: That is an ancient American concept.
Speaker: Yeah, that's very much alive in this country, sadly, still.
Speaker: But most people who come from the outside, especially from Europe, are not that way.
Speaker: Because we don't grow up with that thing in the back of our head.
Speaker: We appreciate the art form.
Speaker: We love it.
Speaker: And we want to help it.
Speaker: And we want to help it grow.
Speaker: That's why we're there.
Speaker: Not to rip you off.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: That's a very, very important thing that many people here in the States don't understand.
Speaker: But because they didn't grow up in another place, they grew up here with a
Speaker: a lot of baggage on their shoulders.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That has been put there by people with a lot of baggage on their shoulders.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So if you grow up, I mean, not that I don't have baggage on my shoulders.
Speaker: Don't misunderstand.
Speaker: I have plenty, but it's different kind.
Speaker: It's a different kind.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, um, the love and appreciation that we brought when we came to embrace this art form is often misunderstood.
Speaker: That's the core of what I'm trying to say.
Speaker: Do you feel like that's because, sorry, we are on a totally different train now track here, but do you feel like that's because there's some sort of like ownership?
Speaker: Like, oh, this was created here, so it's ours, so we don't want you to take it, whereas you wouldn't have that perspective because it wasn't, I mean, I don't believe that, but that perspective, is that what you think is?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, there's a sense of entitlement and a certain sense of entitlement is justified, but there's a limit.
Speaker: And, you know, when I get this fake limit shoved in my face, as in, you know, you're not from here, you don't look like us, so you don't have a right to do any of this.
Speaker: Then I'm like, you know, I'm sorry, but I don't deal with people like you.
Speaker: You know, I'm going to just cross the street and lead my life.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Um, because you know, that's happened to me plenty.
Speaker: And, um, uh, I just decide to be with people who appreciate the community sense and the aspect that we do this out of love, not out of greed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Capitalism makes everyone sick.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: That's exactly it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We went off on a tangent, but let's... We did.
Speaker: Let's bring it... So, when did you come to New York?
Speaker: And you started with Heather at the... Manhattan Tap.
Speaker: Yeah, I came to New York in 91 for the first time just as a tourist, basically, just visiting on the invitation of a friend of mine who I'd worked with in theater, in musical theater in Germany.
Speaker: I went to an audition that Heather was holding.
Speaker: Oh, cool.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: And she liked what I was doing and she said, hey, you want to work with us?
Speaker: And I said, well, I can't really.
Speaker: I'm just a tourist here.
Speaker: I saw this audition notice and I wanted to just kind of like see what that's like.
Speaker: I didn't expect that I'd be right for what you had planned, you know, but it seems that I am.
Speaker: I'm sorry I can't stay, but I have to go back.
Speaker: And I was under contract at a big theater in Vienna.
Speaker: And I said, I have still four months on my contract.
Speaker: I can't really be here.
Speaker: And she said, oh, that's too bad.
Speaker: This was in like May, May 1991.
Speaker: That's too bad because in the winter, in like November, December, we're going to do this project with Ray Brown and he's writing music for us and we're going to perform it with him and his band.
Speaker: And I said, come again?
Speaker: Was that you said?
Speaker: Did you say Ray Brown?
Speaker: Which Ray Brown?
Speaker: And she said, the Ray Brown.
Speaker: The bass player, Ray Brown, is writing music for us.
Speaker: And we're going to choreograph his music and then perform with him and his band.
Speaker: At Lincoln Center.
Speaker: And I said, okay, I'll be here.
Speaker: I finished the contract, but I started investigating how to get over to the United States.
Speaker: I wrote grants to the Austrian government, to the Ministry of Culture to get support, which I did.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: And so I sort of got a setup to be able to move to New York and do this because I realized that an opportunity like this will never, ever happen again in my life.
Speaker: To me, this is clearly a thing that was put on my doorstep.
Speaker: for me to realize like, this is your path, my son, go this way or repent for the rest of your life.
Speaker: So I said, no, no, no, I'm coming.
Speaker: This is a very clear, very clear message.
Speaker: And then, yeah, after I finished that contract, I moved to New York in the fall, like October, November, 1991, and started working with Heather.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: and started learning traditional choreography, a lot of Cookie Cook because Cookie was Heather's mentor and a lot of Eddie Brown because Eddie Brown was also Heather's mentor.
Speaker: And we put together youth shows for schools.
Speaker: which we started performing after a couple of weeks of rehearsal, like not really even that long.
Speaker: And Heather had a great organization.
Speaker: We did a lot of school shows.
Speaker: Like we had three, sometimes four days of school shows every week.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: And sometimes, sometimes two or three shows a day.
Speaker: You know, you'd be on stage tap dancing at eight o'clock AM.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: you know, and sometimes do, yeah, I mean, if you do three, you'd be done at like one o'clock or two o'clock and you'd be wasted.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You'd be tired.
Speaker: Um, but it was great to, to sort of cement the technical challenge, you know, cause I was still, you know, I, I was not bad and I could improvise, but I didn't know much traditional material beyond what I'd learned from
Speaker: Carnell, you know, and that was great.
Speaker: That was great.
Speaker: But it was also Carnell's version of things, you know, the way he did them.
Speaker: And they were different here in New York.
Speaker: For instance, Carnell did the Shim Sham starting on one.
Speaker: And I came to New York and, you know, somebody called the Shim Sham and I started on one and they started on four.
Speaker: And I'm like, what?
Speaker: Why are you starting on four?
Speaker: Like, that's how we do it here.
Speaker: Like, oh, interesting.
Speaker: Okay, well, let me just switch that whole thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: So I learned to sort of adjust some of the things that I learned from Carnell and go like, ah, that's this step.
Speaker: But here they do it this way.
Speaker: And this is just his sort of idiosyncratic style of moving.
Speaker: You know, that's very, very interesting and different and very specifically Carnell.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: And that's what I'm also trying to share now when I talk about him and when I teach.
Speaker: I show the video footage of Carnell so people see what kind of super high octane act they had.
Speaker: Jesse James and Carnell
Speaker: uh, later called the three businessmen of rhythm with spinning the waiter trays and doing incredible acrobatics and incredible tap dancing at the same time as spinning waiter trays.
Speaker: So they were doing like the Nicholas brothers plus juggling essentially at the same time.
Speaker: And they were, they were on the level with the Nicholas brothers.
Speaker: As far as popularity, they were working just as much.
Speaker: They were everywhere.
Speaker: They were the top,
Speaker: The cream of the crop of the tap dance totem pole.
Speaker: They're just not remembered because Carnell went to Europe in the 60s and never came back.
Speaker: Never came back because he was so disenchanted and depressed about the racial realities in this country.
Speaker: That's why he never came back.
Speaker: He felt like he was treated like a human being in Germany and he could make a living being an artist and he could be respected as an artist, which he felt he couldn't do in the US.
Speaker: But I can't overstate how big his act was, you know, in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker: He was one of the top flash acts with the Berry brothers and the Nicholas brothers and Tip Tap and Toe.
Speaker: He was right up there.
Speaker: And they were everywhere.
Speaker: They were everywhere.
Speaker: And then, you know, he started teaching in Germany, which was the first example of somebody developing a method to teach African-American jazz tap or rhythm tap or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker: Carnell Lyon style in Europe.
Speaker: And this was in the 80s, in the early 80s.
Speaker: And at that point, there was no methodology for actual real rhythm tap.
Speaker: The only methodology in existence was this ridiculous thing they do in England.
Speaker: I don't even want to talk about it any further.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So there was nothing else.
Speaker: And then all of a sudden, Carnell started teaching and he started realizing, oh, okay, I can't just show them my steps.
Speaker: They won't be able to do it.
Speaker: I have to like start them on the flat.
Speaker: This is how you do a flat.
Speaker: And he developed a couple of very simple exercises that helped you gain those technical skills.
Speaker: And then you could go from routine to routine to routine.
Speaker: He didn't have as many as Leon Collins, but he was very tight with Leon.
Speaker: He was very good friends with Leon and with Buster Brown.
Speaker: And both Leon and Buster came to Europe several times to perform with Carnell.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: And there's video of those shows and that stuff is fire.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Fire.
Speaker: Because Carnell comes up to his old level because he's, you know, he's with his buddies and all of a sudden this fire is back in him.
Speaker: It's really cool.
Speaker: And Kurt Albert and Klaus Bleich are very, very important people in this entire conversation because they are,
Speaker: They're my peers.
Speaker: They're my best, some of my best friends, closest friends with Carnell.
Speaker: They were Carnell's proteges and they have done more research than anybody alive.
Speaker: Hands down.
Speaker: They have done more research than anybody.
Speaker: about the history of tap dance.
Speaker: And they have traveled to literally every little podunk town that Carnell mentioned ever having performed in.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: They would constantly talk to him and interview him and record it.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: With his approval.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they would write down everything he said
Speaker: They would write down every town he ever remembered having performed at.
Speaker: And then they ended up traveling to the United States and zigzagging all over the entire country, including Canada, hitting those places where he had visited.
Speaker: And this is already a while ago.
Speaker: This was kind of before computers really were that happening.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they went to the libraries and to the, uh, where they keep all the records, you know, and they would go and they would find Carnell's name in every newspaper that would ever have printed his name.
Speaker: They found notices about him performing in the local vaudeville house or in a jazz club or da da da.
Speaker: And they searched all this stuff by hand.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: In person.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: And then eventually by a cross-reference via computer, but they started doing this when that was not really even possible.
Speaker: They just went and they traveled and they spent a lot of their time and energy and money on this research.
Speaker: So they have incredible amounts of information about Carnell.
Speaker: They have posters, critiques, reviews, photos of him with everybody.
Speaker: Stuff from books that you don't even know it's Carnell.
Speaker: They found it.
Speaker: Wow, that's cool.
Speaker: So it's really important that they also come here more often and that they be listened to.
Speaker: But it's our mission to really make sure that Carnell is not forgotten and people recognize how important he was in the contribution to also tap technique, talking about the paddle and roll.
Speaker: Lon Chaney was not the only person doing paddle and roll.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, Carnell is very important in that whole conversation.
Speaker: Uh, so, and all these things I tell the students when I'm talking about him, I tell them about my personal experience, what it was like to be a teenager in Vienna, um,
Speaker: who became instantaneously became his translator and his assistant tap dance teaching because I was the only person who spoke enough English and could handle his American accent and his black street accent in addition to that.
Speaker: because I've been listening to jazz records and reading books in original language and all this stuff.
Speaker: So I was able to handle his communication and translate it to the other people in the room.
Speaker: That was my first in.
Speaker: And then the second in was that I was the only person who could pick up his steps.
Speaker: immediately.
Speaker: And he said, look, man, I'm going to sit down because my legs hurt.
Speaker: Because when you see him do the acrobatics he used to do, you're not surprised that his legs hurt.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And these guys didn't know what warmup meant, you know, for them, for him, a warmup was like a glass of vodka.
Speaker: So, you know, he said, I'm going to sit down because my legs hurt.
Speaker: I'm going to show you the steps from the chair.
Speaker: You get up on that board.
Speaker: You show me the step.
Speaker: I want to make sure that you got it.
Speaker: And then you slow it down and tell the people how to do it.
Speaker: And that was in the first lesson and I was 14 years old.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I was christened by fire.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that was really intense, but it was immediate and he immediately connected with me like this and he said, okay, young man,
Speaker: we need to talk, you know, and he took me under his wing and we would, we would talk and he would just get me his life story, boom, boom, boom, you know, and he would make me copies, VHS tapes, which back then, this is 1986, yeah, 85, 86, yeah,
Speaker: That was gold.
Speaker: I had never even seen a black tap dancer.
Speaker: I had barely even seen a black person when I met Carnell.
Speaker: I mean, I had seen a few, but Vienna is not exactly the center of diversity or wasn't back then.
Speaker: I should change that.
Speaker: Now it is.
Speaker: It's very diverse.
Speaker: Vienna is.
Speaker: But back then in the 80s, it really wasn't.
Speaker: So he was one of the first black people I ever saw.
Speaker: And then when I saw him dance the first time, at first I thought he was going to fall down because his, his hips and his knees were a mess.
Speaker: He was constantly in pain and he was walking in like he was like about to fall down.
Speaker: But then he gets up on the board and he goes, did you get it?
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: And I was just like, huh?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: And that moment also basically was the first time I really saw swing with my own eyes right in front of me.
Speaker: And I realized, oh, this is the real thing.
Speaker: So, um, yeah, he would just, uh, um, share with me as much as he could possibly share.
Speaker: Cause he realized I was serious, you know, even at 14, 15, he could tell that I was not going to let that go.
Speaker: You know, like for me, this was life.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And without these videos, I wouldn't have seen Ralph Brown, Gregory Hines, you know, Jimmy Slide, Steve Condos, Buster Brown.
Speaker: Like that was the first time I ever saw any of these people.
Speaker: Chuck Green, you know, he had put some of Brenda's films on.
Speaker: like parts of them onto this video for me to see Cookie Cook, you know, um, Bubba Gaines, all these people, Honey Coles.
Speaker: And I was just like, huh, who are these people?
Speaker: Like, wow, what they're doing is so different from what I'm seeing in the movies.
Speaker: Not that the movies were bad.
Speaker: It was just a different thing, you know?
Speaker: And they were telling stories in two minutes, um, without jumping onto the couch, you know?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: It was just, it was a different thing, but it was really, really interesting.
Speaker: And that really piqued my interest.
Speaker: And I said, okay, this is what I want to do with my life.
Speaker: This, because this is jazz, I could tell.
Speaker: These cats are improvising.
Speaker: They know exactly what the music is.
Speaker: They know how much time they have.
Speaker: They know the hits to do, you know, especially also watching Gregory.
Speaker: clearly improvising on film, you know?
Speaker: And I'm like, holy cow, you got to be really good to be able to do something like this.
Speaker: And I said, that's the level I want to be at eventually.
Speaker: You know, it's going to take me a long time, but that's what I want to do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, it's cool then is then then you came to New York and you met them in real life, which is awesome.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: You knew who they were.
Speaker: You had that context.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And it blew my mind completely, you know, that I was now standing in the presence, you know, like the first time I shook hands with Gregory Hines, I almost had a heart attack.
Speaker: you know yeah i'm like that's the guy from white knights you know uh it was unbelievable to me and then buster brown you know to me those guys were on the level with duke ellington and charlie parker sure you know yeah and i was like ah this is like it was so intense you know coming to the us and then meeting ray brown for the first time i also almost died you know because these people were gods to me you should have seen my my room at home in vienna
Speaker: I had only black jazz musicians and tap dancers in the entire room.
Speaker: Plus Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, you know, there was not a white face on my wall.
Speaker: Not a one.
Speaker: Chambeles, chambeles, chambeles, chambeles.
Speaker: La rumba es lo más humilde para el alma divertir.
Speaker: Se debiera de morir tiempo buena no destir.
Speaker: This is the Relative Rhythms Podcast, and you're listening to our conversation with Max Pollack.
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Speaker: It was really a huge impact to move here.
Speaker: and to really start settling in and realizing like, I am, I'm living in the middle of this now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, and what a gift, what a gift, you know, and let me catch up.
Speaker: And that was eventually also the reason why I started studying music.
Speaker: Cause I realized, okay, I'm here now in order to be that person that I want to be,
Speaker: I better really know what I'm talking about when I talk about music.
Speaker: I can't be like guessing.
Speaker: I need to be knowing what it is.
Speaker: So that's why I decided to go to music school, you know, because in Vienna, I hadn't really done any formal training.
Speaker: I had taken some piano lessons that my parents got me, but the teachers weren't great and I didn't get into it really.
Speaker: I only got into it when I started playing jazz and I realized, oh, if I know how to read and I know how to read these harmony symbols, then I can really like figure shit out much quicker.
Speaker: You know, so I started studying some jazz on the side, some private lessons with like a jazz piano player.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Who gave me the basics of like, oh, this is what this means.
Speaker: And you can find the chords on the piano yourself.
Speaker: You don't need to read the whole chart.
Speaker: This is the chord.
Speaker: Boom.
Speaker: You know, this is what the extensions mean, like sharp 11, flat nine, sharp five, da, da, da, da.
Speaker: And like, oh, oh, it's not that hard.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then you can figure stuff out on your own.
Speaker: And then, you know, from playing, I already had a practical experience as a musician, basically, from playing in Vienna.
Speaker: And I didn't only play in that one band.
Speaker: I started playing all over the place with different groups and started having to read some music and stuff.
Speaker: So when I wanted to start going to music school, I went to the new school here that had a jazz program inside the Maness College of Music on the Upper West Side.
Speaker: And Maness College is is still one of the top classical conservatories in New York.
Speaker: like top top shelf classical training and while the jazz department was in that school they insisted that every jazz student also takes classical theory harmony voice train voice leading uh and ear training you know so i had to study all the classical stuff which i'm very happy i did because that's why i can do classical music now and i've been doing classical music for over 20 years
Speaker: So that made a lot of sense to me and gave me a whole new appreciation for music period.
Speaker: To be able to read scores and interpret what's going on and to understand the forms, you know, the sonata form, the fugue and all this.
Speaker: It just helped me open up my brain.
Speaker: And I also met a lot of great musicians who are now Grammy winning stars.
Speaker: You know, they were in school with me.
Speaker: So that made a huge difference in the way I approach everything.
Speaker: How?
Speaker: Specifically, like in relation to your percussion and your tap dancing, how would knowing what an upper extension is inform your tap?
Speaker: Well, because I started making my own arrangements and I started performing with higher level musicians as a soloist, as a tap soloist.
Speaker: And like one of my good friends, Alexis Quadrado, who's a great bass player originally from Barcelona, who now also lives here and plays in my band all the time.
Speaker: But we met.
Speaker: basically 30 years ago in Barcelona.
Speaker: I was on the gig with a couple of, with a pianist and a drummer and a bass player, and we were rehearsing and we had finished a tune.
Speaker: And I said to the piano player, after he finished the tune, I said, on that last chord, can you play the sharp 11 instead of the sharp five?
Speaker: And all three of them went, what?
Speaker: You know, he heard that?
Speaker: And I'm like, yeah, can you just play the other one?
Speaker: I like that better on the end of this tune.
Speaker: And then they all started like... And from then on, I had their respect in a completely different way.
Speaker: And this just started happening because I could read, I could...
Speaker: keep grooves, I knew what the terminology, I knew the vocabulary, I knew the forms of the tunes, I knew the tunes, and we could talk music.
Speaker: And the musicians immediately realized that.
Speaker: And that changes the vibe.
Speaker: As soon as they know, okay, we're talking to a musician, the whole situation is so much easier.
Speaker: And we could put shows together like this, with not one screaming match.
Speaker: Because you had a shared language?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, yeah, there was no miscommunication because we spoke the same vocabulary.
Speaker: And that also then became my calling card as an artist, you know, like let Max talk to the musicians.
Speaker: It'll be very quick.
Speaker: And then everything will be perfect.
Speaker: Like, yeah.
Speaker: I'm the translator between the dancers and the musician.
Speaker: And that was that was my intent because I had seen so many misunderstandings that were completely unnecessary, starting in musical theater.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: And I was already a musician when I was doing that.
Speaker: So I saw choreographers and directors standing on stage screaming at musical directors just because they didn't know what their music they had no idea about music.
Speaker: So they didn't know how to ask for what they needed.
Speaker: And I could have, I could, could have said two sentences and everything would have been fine, but no, Mr. Know-it-all has to yell and say stupid things that have absolutely nothing to do with anything.
Speaker: And the whole thing takes an hour and a half before they realize, Oh, they counted four instead of eight, like stuff like that, you know?
Speaker: And I was standing there at like 18, 19 years old going,
Speaker: I gotta get out of here.
Speaker: I gotta get to people where everybody understands this language.
Speaker: This is ridiculous.
Speaker: So for me, I enjoy that process.
Speaker: I enjoy this communication because I enjoy problems being solved and conflicts being resolved without any fighting.
Speaker: You know, you can argue, that's fine.
Speaker: But if you don't know what you're talking about, I'm sorry, you're not arguing.
Speaker: You know, you're just flinging mud.
Speaker: Let's just talk.
Speaker: How do you then, because Adam and I talk about this a lot, like, right, as the musician, he's like, everybody should, you know, I look at tap dancers as musicians, but that means that they should also train like musicians.
Speaker: That means they should know and understand, know the tunes they're calling, you know, all of this stuff.
Speaker: And so we've had, I mean, hundreds of conversations about this.
Speaker: And how do you then encourage the people that you teach?
Speaker: Do you encourage them to go to music school or do you just?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: That's exactly what I do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I say, you know, especially to the kids who are just out of high school and about to choose a college.
Speaker: If I know they're really talented and they're very serious about becoming a real tap artist, I say, if you really want to become a tap artist, what you need to do at your level of information, technical prowess and intelligence, you need to go to music school.
Speaker: Don't waste your time doing anything else.
Speaker: Go to music school.
Speaker: Then you'll learn the skills that you will realize you always needed.
Speaker: and then you can create the kind of thing that you want to create.
Speaker: Business school would also be a good idea on the side, but music school for communication and for just opening up your mind to what's possible, definitely.
Speaker: And if they can't do that, or they're just not that much, that passionate about becoming a professional.
Speaker: And I say, at least learn to play a musical instrument.
Speaker: If you don't play one already, uh, focus on that a little more.
Speaker: So you become a little bit more of an actual musician on an actual instrument.
Speaker: Even if you're just singing in a choir, by the way, singing in a choir, I think is a fantastic way to become musically more aware.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that you, um,
Speaker: you are always enveloped by music.
Speaker: I think that's a really important thing that a lot of tap dancers have never had this experience and that's what's lacking.
Speaker: You need to feel what it's like to create a musical...
Speaker: a musical puzzle piece in a larger scheme of music.
Speaker: And you need to know what that feels like.
Speaker: If you're doing this little thing that adds to this big thing, and what does that really feel like?
Speaker: That's making music.
Speaker: As a tap dancer, if you've only been trained as a soloist tap dancer or as a whatever chorus dancer, your only experience with music is that the music is in the background and I'm standing up front here doing whatever.
Speaker: Whatever I do won't change what's happening behind me because that's a track anyway.
Speaker: Or this orchestra is just going to play the same thing whether I am this way or that way.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: That's the difference.
Speaker: If you've never sung in a choir, you have never had that experience.
Speaker: And if you've never played in a band, you have not had this experience.
Speaker: Being a tap dancer surrounded by a bunch of tap dancers in a jam is not the same experience.
Speaker: And that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker: or singing solo in church also something like that that requires taking musical responsibility i talk about that a lot musical responsibility is something that should be taught to every tap dancer from the get-go and that means that you are responsible for your musical actions
Speaker: Meaning you also should be able to support somebody else's musical interaction or action by your musical action.
Speaker: So it's not, I can completely ignore what they're doing because that won't change.
Speaker: yes, if you're in the right context, it will change if you don't do what you're supposed to do.
Speaker: Because then it'll be like this, it'll be off kilter, and it won't sound right.
Speaker: You know, you have to have the ability to also pull the cart sometimes, you know.
Speaker: And that's why I say if you learn how to play drum set, and then you actually play in a band, that's when you start feeling
Speaker: the pressure of oh whoa everybody's listening to my time and if i mess it up it messes up the band you know just yesterday in my tap jam at terraza in queens which i love that's a really fun place we had a friend of mine was uh for the first time ever she had taken drum lessons actually with me drum set and studied and practiced but never actually played in public
Speaker: in a sort of like a performance situation on the drum set.
Speaker: And she decided to sit down, actually right behind me.
Speaker: I was sort of doing the hosting tap dancing thing.
Speaker: And there was a vibraphone player, a pianist and a bass player.
Speaker: And she started playing the drum set.
Speaker: And I turned around, I'm like, yeah, there you go.
Speaker: Just play that, you know?
Speaker: And she said, oh, it feels so cool.
Speaker: I'm like, yeah, well, you know, and just don't change it up.
Speaker: Just stay on that groove.
Speaker: It's a feeling like no other.
Speaker: It's a great feeling when all of a sudden you become part of this.
Speaker: And that experience is key to making you understand what your function can be.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: If you're a tap dancer, it can, but it can only be that if you know how to handle it and you approach it the right way, because then the musicians will listen to you in that way.
Speaker: Like, oh, this person is another musician.
Speaker: This person is plugging in like this and not like this or like that.
Speaker: It's this is a totally different thing.
Speaker: Every time I've watched or listened to you, I'm always blown away by how integrated you are in the music.
Speaker: Not only your taps, but also you do a lot of butter percussion and you also sing.
Speaker: You can tell you think of yourself as a musician playing music with the rest of the musicians.
Speaker: How do you make that mindset shift between...
Speaker: Between being like a front and center soloist to a part of the band to a musician.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: To me, it's one of the same.
Speaker: I have certain idols, you know, that I look up to who are part of my role model because there isn't really a role model for exactly what I do.
Speaker: So I kind of fashion myself a little bit after this person, a little bit after this person, a little bit after this person.
Speaker: And I try to put those things together.
Speaker: For me, the front man thing only starts happening when I feel like I have the musician thing 100% covered and all the energy of the whole band is flowing through me.
Speaker: So that's how I approach.
Speaker: I try to, I want to be that sort of funnel of energy or that channel.
Speaker: of energy that takes all the musical information and the musical attention and focus of all the people and sort of like let it stream out through me at the audience you know and i try to get out of the way as much as i can and just let the music speak and i try to just react as a musician because i know if i let if i let go enough
Speaker: It will bring an energy out that I couldn't bring if I was only focused on just performing for the audience.
Speaker: That's a different thing.
Speaker: I have to sort of like unlock this side door to let the energy from the music really flow in and really sort of erase my ego.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: And then I feel like I'm just a mouthpiece to everybody at the same time.
Speaker: I mean, of course, when it's time to hit like a tap solo, solo, solo.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Of course, I mean, I focus on expressing myself that way, but it will always, like the launch into the solo will always come from that perspective.
Speaker: You know, that I am the leader of the band.
Speaker: And I just check in with everybody.
Speaker: Where are we?
Speaker: Am I hearing everything?
Speaker: And then I just like jump on that trampoline and boom.
Speaker: And I try to forget everything and just be in the moment.
Speaker: Then I know...
Speaker: the energy will be right for people to understand that I am now the front man and I now am leading or I'm doing a solo or whatever, you know?
Speaker: Uh, and I also, when I perform with my group and I'm in charge of the performance, I never stop working.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: know, I sit down and I listen, but I never stop working.
Speaker: I'm always listening.
Speaker: I'm seeing what's happening in the case of a jam session.
Speaker: I keep track of who has danced, how long they've gone, where their energy level is, if they need some support or if the thing is getting a little bit stale and they just need a little more, a new impetus, you know, or a little inspiration or something.
Speaker: And then I'll, I'm maybe I'll say something to the vibraphone player, or I'll, I'll shout something over to the bass player, or I say something to the tap dancer.
Speaker: How about this?
Speaker: Boom.
Speaker: And then, you know, everything can change on a dime and, and the energy's back.
Speaker: But yeah, I never, I'm never 100% shut off during things like this, you know, when my name's on it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: um and uh i mean even if i'm i'm a side man i pay attention all the time but then it's not my responsibility to lead the band sure you know so i let somebody else whoever is in charge do that but yeah i mean i i see the the soloist function as a natural extension of the being being an accompanist being a musician in the group and and sort of steering where the band is going you know
Speaker: And I can't turn the musician thing off.
Speaker: That's at this point, that's impossible.
Speaker: You know, so that's also when I when I do a tap solo, that doesn't mean I'm only going to be tap dancing.
Speaker: Hardly ever.
Speaker: You know, like the hands and the voice are
Speaker: in my way of expression are so integrated that I don't think of them as separate things.
Speaker: They happen because that's how I practice and that's how I express myself.
Speaker: And that's part of my technique.
Speaker: You know, that's part of the things I shed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: to to sort of like blur the lines between this instrument this instrument and the feet yeah i don't want there to be a distinction or a separation i mean i can do a solo just with my feet of course i can sure but that's not really me at this point you know to like leave my hands out completely i have to really concentrate yeah because my natural thing is this you know this whole instrument is my instrument
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons I enjoy your performances so much is because it seems so holistic in its approach.
Speaker: I don't know if that's the right word.
Speaker: How much of that is intentional versus just that's how you approach music?
Speaker: Well, it's intentional in that...
Speaker: my evolution was intentional in that direction.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So from, from years ago, when I saw certain people do performances that impressed me,
Speaker: I made conscious decisions that I wanted to train myself to be able to do this kind of thing.
Speaker: You know, let me give you one example.
Speaker: Nana Vasconcelos, a person, a Brazilian percussionist that everybody should know from Canabuco, from the Northeast of Brazil.
Speaker: I saw him perform live once in my life, sadly, because he passed away shortly thereafter.
Speaker: I saw him at Symphony Space doing a solo set
Speaker: almost 45 minutes by himself, completely by himself.
Speaker: Then after that, Jack Dejonette doing a solo set, completely by himself, just drums.
Speaker: And then the two of them duo a set together.
Speaker: That was some of the greatest stuff I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker: And to see Nana Vasconcelos perform by himself to me was a huge deal, a huge revelation.
Speaker: Because this man, first of all, he could just make music by breathing and speaking.
Speaker: He would make up rhythms.
Speaker: Yeah, stuff like this.
Speaker: And then he would loop himself with a loop pedal and then start playing the birimbao on top of it or whatever.
Speaker: That was his thing.
Speaker: He didn't separate anything.
Speaker: Everything was his instrument.
Speaker: You know, he would...
Speaker: Stuff like this.
Speaker: The simplest things became ingenious musical devices.
Speaker: And he used the audience as a musical instrument.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: And that was the first time I really saw that done in that way.
Speaker: And he also did it in an incredible narrative way.
Speaker: He folded it into a story that was so beautiful and so impressive.
Speaker: And just, it still gives me chills when I think about that experience.
Speaker: And that made me want to be a person who plays the audience as an instrument.
Speaker: I always admired that.
Speaker: People who do that naturally without it being forced is the greatest thing.
Speaker: So Bobby McFerrin, you know, Jacob Collier, those are people who really have my full attention, you know, and I'm inspired and I steal their stuff.
Speaker: You know, I'm very, very, very inspired by that kind of thing because I think it gives people an experience that transcends the normal concert experience.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: Because they're transported into a consciousness that makes you become part of the musical, the event.
Speaker: It makes you part of the musical experience, not just the bystander.
Speaker: And to me, that's central.
Speaker: for people to really get the full impact of what we're doing.
Speaker: Because once they've experienced that, they are in.
Speaker: And they kind of can feel what I feel a little bit.
Speaker: And they will experience everything that I do thereafter even more intensely because they've kind of been there.
Speaker: They've entered this room with me and now they're there.
Speaker: Now they're part of your community.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Ayrton Moreira is another one.
Speaker: I saw him perform with the Dizzy Gillespie United Nations Orchestra.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Ayrton Moreira did a solo in one of these concerts with Dizzy that was just him with two sticks going all over a
Speaker: big table of percussion instruments.
Speaker: It was like coconuts, cowbells, pieces of animal feet.
Speaker: I don't know what.
Speaker: It was just... And things that looked like trash, gongs, cymbals, whatever.
Speaker: And he started playing this groove on all these random things.
Speaker: That was just so... It was just bestiality.
Speaker: It was so heavy.
Speaker: The groove was so cool.
Speaker: And then he had a little bass drum under the table and it was like...
Speaker: And then he started singing on top of that.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And my brain exploded.
Speaker: I'm like, this guy looks, he sounds like he's 12 people at the same time and he's singing.
Speaker: That's what I want to do.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: So these people,
Speaker: to me have been more impactful even than the tap dancers because of concept, because they made me understand what my strength is.
Speaker: And while I'm not a bad tap dancer, but that's not my strength.
Speaker: My strength is I'm a musician and I'm a community person.
Speaker: That's my strength.
Speaker: I can mobilize a room no matter what size.
Speaker: And I've done this with many thousands of people too.
Speaker: And I can make them sing with me at the drop of a hat without straining.
Speaker: That's just something I'm good at.
Speaker: And I will always do it in a way where everybody's enjoying it too.
Speaker: I don't know how that works, but that's my strength.
Speaker: And tap dancing, I just happen to be able to do that.
Speaker: It's just your instrument.
Speaker: It's my instrument, yeah.
Speaker: It's my trumpet or whatever, the saxophone.
Speaker: But really, I'm a band leader.
Speaker: I'm a band leader, composer, arranger.
Speaker: That's what I do.
Speaker: And tap dance is my instrument, but one of many instruments.
Speaker: For me, being able to really be myself means that I don't give myself any boundaries in how I perform.
Speaker: I try everything.
Speaker: I've performed with, in so many different contexts, in so many things that made me so uncomfortable.
Speaker: I can't even begin to tell you.
Speaker: I've done so many ridiculous things, but they were not ridiculous.
Speaker: They all taught me something, you know?
Speaker: And they taught me how to make something that on the surface might look ridiculous or feel ridiculous, isn't ridiculous at all.
Speaker: You just need to get into it.
Speaker: You need to understand it and accept this is what I'm doing right now and commit.
Speaker: Boom.
Speaker: And then nothing is ridiculous.
Speaker: And that's how I try to live my life.
Speaker: Like every, every moment is a moment to be jumped into like a swimming pool, try to understand it and live with it and embrace it and give it positive energy and lift the room.
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: Thanks for coming on.
Speaker: Thank you, everybody.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: This is the Relative Rhythms podcast and you've been listening to our conversation with Max Pollack.
Speaker: You can find Max on the socials at Max1Paul.
Speaker: If you liked our conversation today, please follow and leave a rating or review wherever you are listening.
Speaker: If you'd like to support our work, you can join us at patreon.com slash relative rhythms, where you can gain access to all of our uncut episodes and extra content.
Speaker: Our theme song is For the Love of It by the Adam Price Group.
Speaker: Featuring Emily Jane Acree on foot percussion.
Speaker: Our mid-roll music was Rumba Tap Standard, and our outro music is Bomba Sham, Coming At Ya, both off of Max's Rumba Tap album.
Speaker: Don't forget to follow us on all the socials at Relative Rhythms and feel free to send us a message.
Speaker: Check out our merch on our website, RelativeRhythms.com.
Speaker: Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next episode.
Speaker: I'm sad, every day I'm suffering more.
Speaker: Oh God, what will it be if I dance?
Speaker: If I dance, I'll get me.
Speaker: Puerto Rico, pa' que se sepa mademoiselle.
