”I can always do better” – these are your words that I came across in your Conundrum Diary. Taking into account the level of your brilliance on your instrument, do you feel there’s still much room left for perfection and do you still get the feeling of discovery when you play or write?

Yes to both levels. Perfection will never be achieved by me. That’s like achieving Nirvana. It’s something you shoot for and maybe you might brush against it once in your lifetime but there’s always some imperfection there.

You are tireless in your teaching activities; do you also learn about yourself by teaching?

Sure. I consider myself not a teacher but a student and I share my information as a student with the students. Some, who haven’t achieved what I’ve achieved, which is not from a competitive standpoint, but from a composition of experiences so, I just come up on a bandstand or on a stage and I say to people, – “OK, this is what I’ve been able to find out of late. Maybe this will be of help to some of you, if not for all of you…” I don’t know… But I come up with the idea that I’ve been employed to share my ideas and my knowledge and my experiences with those in the audience who are interested in this and if one of them walk away with something positive, then I’ve done my job.

What is the biggest challenge for young musicians who want to play with Billy Cobham?

I don’t know, you have to ask them. It depends what they are looking for because it’s difficult for me to say. I do know what I’m looking for, – I’m looking for someone who has convinced me that they are willing to take my lead and take my direction and try to turn my request into reality and in return they gain many things, – they gain my respect, which is not necessarily number one, they get the chance to express themselves through their music, because they share the podium with me and the music we write together, they get a chance to express themselves to many, many people around the world that they would otherwise not have access to so easily, and of course they get paid, which is not the last thing but quite important too.

The act of listening is about letting the artist talk to you but does the listener have to analyze or shall he/she just get charged?

It depends on an individual. Jazz is music of the intelligentsia. You’ll find very few people who listen to jazz, who really try to analyze what is being played because, generally speaking, the non-musician who listens to jazz minds a relationship with the frequencies that are performed or presented on a recording, because it’s soothing to them, it’s something very positive to them… But on the other hand, there are some, very small percentage, who want to analyze how music is played, who played what, the sound of the drums, sax, guitar, etc. My main thing is to make jazz, or my music in jazz, as accessible as possible to as larger public as possible. It has to do with being physically exposed to everybody, to as many people as possible… The record only is a snapshot of where we were, it’s not where we are; it’s always the history, the record represents history… The band represents the present, we are always growing, we never play where we were before, we only represent where we were before in what we do now. We’re always pressing to move forward into the future, we are always looking forward to play something that’s brand new, even in the old things, we are always looking over the horizon, always trying to grasp something we can get out; the record is always representing something we’ve done. So, therefore, I want to present to people something that they can always relate to at all times; they want to feel good all the time. They have enough problems, they come and sit down and listen to me, and they pay money to hear me make them feel good, to make them move, the body language has to be there; I have to lay something down and give them security so they can tap their foot. In jazz that’s not the rarity, but it doesn’t happen often enough because most jazz musicians are very, very intelligent breed, and they tend to want to make people going their own direction, to show them that they are smart, that they are geniuses, and so, they make things a lot more complicated that they need to… And some people will go for it but most people won’t, because most people are followers, not leaders.

“Jazz is dead”, “Jazz is stuck”, “Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny”, etc. What’s wrong with it? Does it really smell funny?

/Laughter/ That was Frank Zappa who said it and who was not a jazz musician… People will say certain things but on the other hand “jazz is dead” can never be because we are jazz people and jazz was given a label that no one still has been able to define. Duke Ellington said: “I don’t know what jazz is. What is jazz?” but someone called it jazz and for some unforgivable reasons it’s been dubbed jazz. Now, as soon as jazz, like in the song called “This Masquerade”, it’s played by a jazz musician and the masses go on, – “He’s no longer a jazz musician; he’s now a pop musician”. And pop only means that he is popular, which means that this is the music of the masses. We are jazz musicians and to prove it we’re gonna make another jazz record…

James Moody once said: “Sometimes I have a feeling that I’m married to a saxophone.” I wonder how you define the level of intimacy with the instrument you play?

I am it, it is me… It never lies to me and I can never lie to it and it’s more married to me then I would be to any wife I would ever have and I had few, trust me…

Rock journalism has a long standing tradition of mocking the drum solos but I’m sure it has totally different implication in improvised music. What, to you, is a relevant and good drum solo?

When you communicate to the people, but you feel inside yourself by way of the medium of the drum solo.

Another quote, this time Cecil Taylor’s: “Part of what music is about is not to be delineated exactly. It’s about magic and capturing spirits.” Do you agree?

Yes, I do absolutely, unequivocally, because music is about life, and if you know what you’re doing you can communicate in a manner unlike any other manner. I mean, in spoken word there’s no chance… The only other way that may come close to communication in a way that you will hear sonically is what you see visually in painting by Picasso or the movements of dance interpreters or even any ballet if they are good… and when you see it you just go, wow… and it is all there to see; there are no words…

Mixing cultures is an ability to absorb a multitude of styles and traditions and influences but can it also put young musicians face to face with a risk of losing their identity?

You never loose your identity if you are talented. If you can play, there’s always someone to listen and if you play with other musicians your personality will only add to the format of the foundation in which you are working; it is a springboard for everybody to come together and jump off as a unit if you so choose. If you feel that you want to compete with everybody else and go”I’m the greatest…” then we are talking sports, this is not music. Say, you want to play your Georgian patterns and you are on a bandstand… But if you don’t fit what’s going on the bandstand it’s gonna sound like you playing your Georgian patterns and everybody else doing whatever they do and unfortunately the public will absorb this, they will naturally go, – “ Why I’m here? I need to go home.” And that’s the ultimate judgment. Or, it can be, – “Wow, that drummer, he played some fantastic patterns! Georgian drummer was fantastic!” But when you ask, – “What about the band?” the answer is: “Oh, I didn’t like the band.” Why? Because it didn’t present itself as a unit. Because the Georgian drummer didn’t allow the band to present itself as a unit or it could be because the Georgian drummer was the only element in the band that was of any essence. It could be for many different reasons but the main thing is that the band didn’t make a unified presentation that said who we are, based on where we are from and based on where we would like to go…

Is it necessary for a musician to be aware of the current state of society to retain the freshness of his/her music?

Yes, the more you know about your instrument the more you know about what is going on in your public surroundings, you play from these. You can’t play from a book; you can read the book and learn the patterns…. But they come from some place and you have to find out where they come from… That’s why when you have Seiji Ozava or Boulez or somebody like this, they studied it, they studied Mozart, they studied Korsakov, they become specialists because, when you say study an individual, it’s like how many young ladies this guy have, what was going on at that time, why did he meet her and what happened, what was going on, was Napoleon here, was Napoleon gone… All of these things come into music, because you say, – “Why did he write what he wrote? He wrote it like this but what was going on at that time? What instruments were actually used at that time?” You learn about the instruments and you go, – “It couldn’t be played in this particular way, because this instrument doesn’t articulate in this particular manner so it has to be like this… So, now, this is the way we conduct it because those instruments don’t function that way …” You must know the history.

And my last question, – what’s going to happen this evening?

We are going to have a good time!