1 00:00:08,220 --> 00:00:12,460 [Stan Douglas: Channeling Miles Davis] 2 00:00:13,700 --> 00:00:15,780 My first job after high school was as an usher 3 00:00:15,780 --> 00:00:17,160 at the theater. 4 00:00:17,900 --> 00:00:20,460 My second job after high school was as a DJ. 5 00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:23,800 I worked at a club called Faces for about two years. 6 00:00:24,540 --> 00:00:25,940 Back then, DJing was kind of anonymous. 7 00:00:26,660 --> 00:00:28,020 You're in a booth in the back. 8 00:00:30,400 --> 00:00:32,680 People come up and ask you to play Michael Jackson. 9 00:00:33,820 --> 00:00:36,360 And I would go down to a place called Tacoma, 10 00:00:36,360 --> 00:00:38,640 across the border-- which had a nearby base. 11 00:00:38,640 --> 00:00:40,820 So a lot of Black people were at the Army base. 12 00:00:40,820 --> 00:00:43,490 And they had record stores that would have funk and hip hop music 13 00:00:43,490 --> 00:00:44,690 that you couldn't get in Vancouver. 14 00:00:44,690 --> 00:00:47,620 So I would make my pilgrimages down there to get my records. 15 00:00:49,020 --> 00:00:52,600 I was doing tape pause-button remakes on my cassette machine. 16 00:00:53,260 --> 00:00:55,720 And I learned how to do Grandmixer DST's bit, 17 00:00:55,720 --> 00:00:59,860 remixing "The Wildstyle" and "Rockit" by Herbie Hancock. 18 00:01:00,500 --> 00:01:02,420 Nobody knew the music I was remixing, 19 00:01:02,420 --> 00:01:04,140 so they couldn't tell I was doing a remix. 20 00:01:05,380 --> 00:01:07,200 Mixtapes is a loophole to allow people to 21 00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:10,020 go back to what feels like the right thing to do, 22 00:01:10,030 --> 00:01:13,140 which is to use existing cultural media 23 00:01:13,140 --> 00:01:15,000 as raw material for making new work. 24 00:01:31,240 --> 00:01:32,960 "Luanda-Kinshasa" is a video 25 00:01:32,960 --> 00:01:36,140 inspired by what I saw in Miles Davis's work from the 1970s. 26 00:01:37,020 --> 00:01:40,100 One of my favorite records of all time is "On the Corner" by Miles Davis. 27 00:01:40,110 --> 00:01:43,460 He'd already integrated funk and rock into jazz music, 28 00:01:43,460 --> 00:01:45,680 but he was trying to bring in Indian classical music. 29 00:01:47,180 --> 00:01:49,380 And somehow thought this would be a real hit with the kids. 30 00:01:49,380 --> 00:01:51,820 But, of course, it was his worst-selling ever. 31 00:01:51,820 --> 00:01:53,140 But it's a pretty amazing piece of music. 32 00:01:59,540 --> 00:02:00,960 Around the time he made that record, 33 00:02:00,960 --> 00:02:03,780 a song called "Soul Makossa" by Manu Dibango 34 00:02:03,780 --> 00:02:06,560 was a huge hit in the disco underground in New York City. 35 00:02:08,040 --> 00:02:10,039 What if you brought in Afrobeat 36 00:02:10,039 --> 00:02:11,750 as part of that mix he was doing? 37 00:02:11,750 --> 00:02:14,720 And that's what we tried to realize in "Luanda-Kinshasa". 38 00:02:18,970 --> 00:02:21,180 This is a very tenuous connection between two things, 39 00:02:21,180 --> 00:02:23,560 which is really more an aesthetic feeling than anything else. 40 00:02:30,140 --> 00:02:32,110 Selfish reason for "Luanda-Kinshasa" 41 00:02:32,110 --> 00:02:33,880 is that I love this record "On the Corner" 42 00:02:33,880 --> 00:02:35,060 and I wanted to hear more. 43 00:02:36,290 --> 00:02:37,940 The more general reason for it is that 44 00:02:37,940 --> 00:02:39,400 Miles Davis could have made more, 45 00:02:39,400 --> 00:02:41,780 but this was his last studio record in the 1970s. 46 00:02:45,260 --> 00:02:47,740 In my work, I want to go back to these possibilities of 47 00:02:47,740 --> 00:02:50,680 "What if there's another way of considering history?" 48 00:02:56,780 --> 00:02:58,220 But the whole thing, in a way, 49 00:02:58,220 --> 00:03:00,860 is a constructed idea of a utopia. 50 00:03:05,040 --> 00:03:06,560 Utopia means "no place." 51 00:03:06,880 --> 00:03:09,040 It's a place that you may strive to get to, 52 00:03:09,040 --> 00:03:10,700 but you can't necessarily get there. 53 00:03:11,100 --> 00:03:14,020 This utopian moment of all these people from different cultures 54 00:03:14,020 --> 00:03:17,500 is realized out of all these diverse influences. 55 00:03:23,300 --> 00:03:24,460 It looks spontaneous. 56 00:03:24,460 --> 00:03:25,460 It looks live. 57 00:03:25,460 --> 00:03:27,880 It looks like people are looking across the space at each other. 58 00:03:27,880 --> 00:03:30,600 But this only exists in the form of this edit. 59 00:03:32,660 --> 00:03:34,510 "Luanda-Kinshasa" is six hours long, 60 00:03:34,510 --> 00:03:36,640 but if you watch it over time, you'll realize that, 61 00:03:36,640 --> 00:03:38,140 "Oh, I've heard that motif before." 62 00:03:40,060 --> 00:03:41,880 "I've seen exactly that shot before." 63 00:03:44,100 --> 00:03:45,900 Often, musical forms appear in my work, 64 00:03:45,900 --> 00:03:48,140 and this idea of polyphony appears again and again. 65 00:03:48,940 --> 00:03:52,520 Polyphony is like when a DJ plays two records simultaneously. 66 00:03:53,020 --> 00:03:54,640 You have "Song A" and "Song B". 67 00:03:54,640 --> 00:03:56,200 When they play together, they make a third song. 68 00:03:58,240 --> 00:04:00,180 Everyone gets inspiration from somewhere. 69 00:04:00,180 --> 00:04:01,720 Nothing comes out of a void. 70 00:04:02,360 --> 00:04:04,020 Everything comes out of my experience of the world-- 71 00:04:04,030 --> 00:04:05,030 what I've read, 72 00:04:05,030 --> 00:04:06,030 where I've gone, 73 00:04:06,030 --> 00:04:07,240 what I've seen, who I've met. 74 00:04:08,120 --> 00:04:10,260 We're always basing it on something. 75 00:04:11,580 --> 00:04:13,380 I'm just being honest of where it came from.