By Matt McDermott

This interview is with Waseem Jafar, the central figure within the collective called the 5% Sessions. The group hopes to carry on the tradition of the New York loft jazz sessions which provided a platform for the creation of brilliant music by offering a unique atmosphere in which both the audience and the musicians felt part of the same energy.

What are the roots of your passion for jazz?

Well, I moved here twenty-eight years ago and I didn’t have much exposure to jazz before I moved here because growing up in Karachi [Pakistan], it wasn’t like there was a huge selection of vinyl I could go check out. I didn’t have a lot of access. My elder brother turned me on to some of this music: Miles Davis and Coltrane, people like that, when I was pretty young, and I liked it at the time but I think I was too young and didn’t have enough context to it to really digest it.

Then I moved here and I started going to listen to jazz concerts and going to Symphony Center when Solti was the conductor. Jazz was the music that really resonated with me. It was one of those immediate things when I started listening to it; I’m not saying there isn’t other great music in the world, but I knew this is the music I am most connected to. Over time that feeling’s just grown with me. In part, because I think for me jazz is music that is wise and intelligent and I don’t find too many things on this planet that are both. It appeals to the intellect and it appeals to the soul. If it didn’t appeal to my soul first, even if it appealed to my intellect, I don’t know if I’d have as much interest in it as I do.

So how did the 5% Sessions begin?

That’s kind of how it started, from my explorations when I found out about the AACM [Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians] and a lot of brilliant musicians. And then I started noticing that, over time, having lived here in Chicago almost 30 years now, that people [musicians] I would go and see, I wouldn’t see them anymore, and then, when I did see them I asked them what was up and they would say: “Oh, I live in New York now. I live in Paris. I live in Tokyo.” People like Henry Threadgill and Anthony Braxton, and more, people came from out of here and then they just leave.

That’s how the thought came to me much later in my life about starting the 5% Sessions. Just from going to see these people over and over again, some of them just started recognizing my face and then I did a [photographic] book on jazz. And when I started talking to these musicians about the book, initially they didn’t really know me from Adam, but I basically tried to say that I really wanted to do something that records the history of this city and jazz and I don’t blame them for being skeptical, there was no way for them to know whether to take me seriously but then once I started working on the project and they started seeing what I was doing, then I got to know a bunch of them.

And then I started talking with and asking: “What happened to you?” And most of them don’t make their living in the city anymore, which really made me sad. And I think the city does an abysmal job of promoting one of the strongest things this city has to offer to the world. Music is huge from this city: the influence that it has, everything that it’s spawned. The Art Ensemble of Chicago to me is a legendary band. If nothing else they’ve had a huge influence on Hip Hop that people don’t really recognize or connect.

Why decide to produce concerts?

I just thought it was a shame that places I used to go to hear music don’t exist anymore. When I go to existing clubs, there aren’t that many people there. And I decided that maybe we could do something that would allow these brilliant musicians come and do whatever they feel like doing and not feel like they’ve got to play “Girl from Ipanema” or whatever, but just come in do what they do and find an audience that connects with them. And create a synergy there between the audience and the musicians. That’s kind of where it started and whole 5% concept began: basically my feeling was that 95% of the stuff out there, regardless of jazz, is bogus. It’s a rip-off, somebody repackaging something, or whatever, and 5% Sessions, the idea behind it, was to showcase that top 5%. And that’s basically, in my opinion, what every show we’ve done has been, in terms of the quality of the musicians; I think they’re all 5% people.

Who are some of the musicians who have played?

Hamiet Bluiett, Kahil El-Zabar, Hamid Drake, Fareed Haque, we’re getting Greg Osby now. The first show that I did, Ornette Coleman show up and that was the start of it. Ornette was playing his first show in Chicago in a dozen years at Symphony Center and that’s when I bougt my own office space. I built my office space so I could do these shows there. So then Kahil called me and said: “Well, to kick it off what do you think of Ornette showing up?”

There were about fifteen AACM people there that night who came in and jammed and Kahil was conducting them. Then Ornette showed up after the Symphony Center concert with his whole band.

I unfortunately didn’t see anything because all I did was stand downstairs from my office and control the crowd, there were that many people. I was scared out of my mind there would be a fire. I had no idea what would happen. So I’ve only heard from people it was a fantastic show. I was very encouraged by the crowd but I was also scared out of my mind by the crowd. I did not expect … I’m guessing there were about 450 people there. After about 10:30-11:30 all I did was stand downstairs and keep people from getting in.

It scared the hell out of me so I didn’t do anything again for a couple of years. The next 5% Session I did was with Kahil, with the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble: so Ernest Dawkins has played there and Harrison Bankhead. I’m a big AACM fan. And it took me that long to bring up the courage to say, OK, I should do something. But lately the challenge is consistently bringing in an audience.

The goal from the beginning has been to bring in people who aren't familiar with this music. Everyone involved in organizing the 5% Sessions has a day job. We're not doing this for the money. We want to expose new people to what we see as the 5% in jazz.

In terms of audience, what would be your ideal size plus number of shows per year?

Ideally for me would be an audience that hovers around a hundred. Frequency-wise, the ideal would be four to six shows per year.

Tell me about the upcoming March 22nd show.

The upcoming show is with Greg Osby. This is the first we’ve had a musician, Greg Osby, compose music to premiere at a 5% Session. He has, to a degree, collaborated with Fareed Haque. I’m sure how much. So Osby is composing music that has some Indian Classical flavor, but it also may have some elements playing off of Fareed’s capabilities, maybe some South American flavor to it too.

So the musicians will be Greg Osby and Fareed Haque, Jim Feist on tabla, and the drummer Jason Smart. That is our next show, which is on March 22nd.

Will you document the show?

We will record the show. We will photograph the show. Eventually the use of this documentation is to put it out there with all the musicians’ permission. One of the things I have in my head is I’d like to do a huge 5% event, where we get a bunch of the musicians who have played for us, release the CDs, have the musicians all there, have them all play: have two or three different settings in which they’re all playing and have a big crowd. That’s something that I think would be great to do every couple of years or so.