Abby Lincoln

Danny O'Bryan

D.O. In recent years you have finally been getting the recognition you deserve. Why did take so long?

A.L. Sometimes it's a compliment. If you are a lttle different people don't hear it.

D.O. I consider you a lot more than a singer, your a poet and a philosopher and lots of other things that come across in your music.

A.L. Yes I'm an actress and a dramatist. That's what makes me different from anyone else in this music. I write a lot of my songs. Billie Holiday wrote some of her songs so did Bessie Smith. But most singers don't write.

D.O. You have a message in your music. What is your main message?

A.L. It's just that I live in this time. I'm a human being who lives in 1993. And it was the same in 1977 and 1965. In this form that they call jazz, your expected to be unique and an individual. When I came to the states the women were singing mostly about unrequited love. I find that really boring to sing about a man as if your life begins and ends with the man. There are more things in life then romantic love. There is a whole world and I try to sing about the world. Like my song ìDown Here Below.î It's not easy to live here.

D.O. And also your song ìYou Gotta Pay the Band.î

A.L. Yes, what goes around comes around.

D.O. I thought that was one of your most gorgeoous recordings.

A.L. Thank you, I do too. I recorded that with Stan Getz.

D.O. That was such a poignant time. It was one of   Getz's very last recordings.

A.L. We finally got together. It was my first hit album. My first popular album. I sang some of my songs and some of Johnny Mandels But most of the things I sing are really my own. Tunes like ìDevil's Got Your Tongue.î

D.O. When you first started in this businees they tried to make you into a sexual stereotype.

A.L. I think everybody is a stereotype. I jazz they don't pay much attention to the way people look. Billie Holiday was a very beautiful woman physically but they didn't talk about it. And back then the emphasis was on my physical attributes and I had chosen an insincere approach to the arts only because I didn't know anything about the arts. I didn't know anything about music I was just singing. And when your young your easily led. So, I had attained some fame. Even internationally. The people who represent the music the writers who guard the doors said ìwell this woman's no singer. She's not anybody and it took me a while. But I don't do this for someone else to tell me what it is. I don't care. I really do care because the more encouragement you get to live the easier it is to live. But whether anyone is encouraging me or not this is what I do. So, I've had the chance over the years to express myself in all these different ways. I try my best to speak for a woman of my years and my experience. And to say something to the people and the youngsters to about the life we are   living here. Like the song by Oscar Brown Jr. ìLong As You're Living.î The lyrics go ìAlways remember that time is for   spending but there is an ending.î (laughter) Yeah!

     There is a lot to talk about I think in these days. We are living through a very dramatic time.

D.O There seems to be so much violence and evil in the world now.

A.L. Yes there is.

D.O. Is it worse now then in the 1950s?

A.L. I know it is worse now. Television made a difference in our lives. Television and the movies You don't respect anybody's life, you say what you are going to say, do anything you want to do, be anything you want to be and make money. The people respect money. They seem too. A lot of people work for money. Before it became possible to make a pile of money in jazz we had a lot more creditablity as artists, black people did. We're not the only ones the whole country white, black. This is sick and the end of something and it makes me angry. And it makes me wish that eveything was over here. We'd all be better off dead than living this stupd life where children kill their parents and parents kill the children and the state kills the babies. It's a drag! So when I'm on stage I touch on some of these things.

D.O. It's in every note of your music.

A.L. It's a painful time to be alive. When you have no   self respect you might as well kill yourself.. And that's what the people have lost a sense of self respect. They don't understand the function of sex anymore. As long as we have been on the planet as many children that have been born. They distort and abuse every gift that is given. Television could be a wonderful thing for the people but all it brings is discouragement and hatred. If the most popular thing in drama is murder, you can't expect the children will not become murderers. They glorify murder and sex for the sake of sex. They've taken our lives really and stolen the innocence of the children. And they use the children to sell things. And I find myself more and more angry. I'm going to have to do something to get rid of this because it's not healthy. You can't be angry all the time but I do feel it.

D.O. But your are doing something in your music each time you perform. Your fighting against it, that's all we can do as individuals.

A.L Thank you. I have a bunch of relatives, neices and nephews and they are not any better than anybody else's neices or nephews. Even though everything is not to our liking I had a happy childhood and I was innocent all my childhood and into young adulthood I had that benefit. Not having to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders as a child.

D.O. But sense then you have seen what can happen to innocence..

A.L. What can happen to a child. How they can drop the weight on this baby. A little girl wears lip stick. I was out of the country in the southern part of France and I saw black leotards and costumes for little girls three and four years old. It's sick.

D.O. Even sense the woman's movement?

A.L. It didn't help us none. It wasn't the men after all they weren't really the heavies the women came and added whatever they had. Women asked for the life of the unborn child. And I think we have been in trouble ever since. I know a   lot of people think they have the right to do this.A woman does have the right to choose she can choose to stay to herself and leave a   man alone. But men and women bring children and that's the only reason that we have that fire and that energy that is given to us for sex is to bring babies. And to lay around and then kill the children is really sick. Nothing has gotten better. The woman haven't caused the world to be a better place. They have more freedom.They are free now to work and be like the men but it hasn't helped us as a people.

D.O. What can we do?

A.L. I think that the women and the men and black and the whites all of us are going to have to finally turn the finger in and remember our own faults. To talk about things that we are gulty of and not always point the finger at other people. You have to accomodate the victimizer in order to be a victim. And their is not that much difference between the victim and the victimizer. There in something together. I don't know I think that whatever made us is going to have to   fix it because we are not doing well. All the world is in trouble. We don't know how to be together on this planet. We worry about the environment, which is good we should be concerned about what we do to the house but this planet will be here when we're gone. We are going to have to learn how to treat one another and it starts with how we treat the children. How the women treat the men and how the men treat the women and how the Nations treat each other.

D.O. And it seems now that all we're doing is exploiting one another for money.

A.L. That's right, that's the big god on the planet. And it's written that the love of money is the root of all evil and that is a great truth. That is what the people suffer from the love of money.

What happened to the love of self.

D.O. What is the song you did a number of years ago ìI've Got Some People in Me?î

A.L. Yeah I wrote that song when I went to Africa. I discovered that I was a pure blooded human being after all. Because we used to think that our people had been bastardized. We weren't pure anymore. But there is no such thing as an impure human being. We are all one. The same blood, the same nose, the same eyes, the same mouth, the same everything that is what a human being is.

D.O. We are all inteconnected. But most people don't realize this.

A.L. Oh yes, but it's time we knew it, don't you think?

D.O. Oh yes, but how are we going too because of that big eye in our living room that constantly teaches us lies.

A.L. Yes, and it's one thing to say just turn it off but it's not that   simple.as that.

D.O. Then you have to contend with the billboards and the magazines.

A.L. It's the spiriti that's set loose here in the world. And I guess it won't be here forever.

D.O. The only thing that we can do is love one another.

A.L. I think that is true.

D.O. And that's what you do in your music, you touch other people with love.

A.L. Thank you