Theo Croker, a Grammy-nominated trumpeter, composer, and bandleader, may come from jazz royalty, but he’s also defying any attempts to define what the genre means. On his latest offering, Dream Manifest, he pushes the boundaries with tracks that draw from hip-hop, cosmic soul, and four-to-the-floor dance music, to make for a sonic journey that feels like a vivid, lucid dream.
He spoke to Tshego Letsoalo ahead of his performance at SF Jazz in San Francisco on Saturday, November 29.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
To kind of start at the beginning, you have a very famous grandfather [Doc Cheatham] and I was wondering what you saw and experienced from him that made you decide, “this is also something that I want to do.”
Well. You know, I really got into it 'cause my older brother did it. You know when you're a little kid, you wanna do whatever your older sibling does. And then when my grandfather died, I had just started playing and we did a lot of memorials. And there would always be concerts with people like Benny Powell and Ronnie Mathews and Clark Terry and Nicholas Payton and things like that.
And I saw all these different, really unique personalities and musicians and really started to understand that it was like a community of people. And I thought it was super cool how everybody was so different yet impactful to audiences. And I was like, “Whoa, I want to do that with music.”
And so, why the trumpet?
I think the trumpet is the coolest. Actually, you know, it's also the easiest one to sound bad on, next to the saxophone–there's lots of terrible saxophone players. But had I known how challenging the trumpet was, I would've picked a piano.
That's funny. You’ve spent a significant amount of time in Shanghai and China. I was wondering about what jazz is and the perception of jazz in China was, and how your time there influenced your creativity, and also how you thought about jazz music and you making it.
Well, in China, jazz meant Black music. It just literally meant anything Black. So, you know, the audiences were expecting to hear John Coltrane and Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. You know, they wanted everything. Which is interesting because that's what a lot of the Black artists in America are trying to advocate for–we're trying to say that all of this is jazz. So it's interesting to be in a place where that's just jazz, where it just means Black music.
That was really cool actually, and it kind of opened up my mindset to include more in the music than just swing.
Can you talk more about what that expansion meant for you and even within this idea of jazz is just Black music?
There wasn't this industry, you know, whitewashing jazz over there. It was Black music and they wanted Black people playing it. For me, it just kind of opened me up creatively to feel more confident about incorporating R&B and hip-hop, and I don't just mean rapping, but just rhythmically.
All the advancements that had gone past the 1930s and incorporating fusion and all those kinds of styles and not feeling judged by it. Where in the States, you always feel judged. I mean, even now in my career, there's places or promoters or gatekeepers that would assume that I'm not playing jazz, 'cause I'm not “ting ting, ta-ting ting” all the time. You know what I mean? Or I haven't proven to them that I'm a jazz musician, whatever the sense, because I like grooves and stuff like that. So it was nice to be in a situation where that judgment was gone and it really helped me grow thick skin and shed any kind of inhibitions about putting any kind of requirements or limitations on what my creativity wanted to do.
Yeah, because I was going to ask, on Dream Manifest there's pure dance tracks and stuff that's definitely not what a lot of people would consider to be jazz. But you're saying this can technically all be jazz.
It's a group improvisational. I mean, so what? “Jazz” and “dance music” or it's only dance music when it's “ting, tang, dang.” It's just so limiting–it's just stupid to me, that whole thing. What it's really about is about reaching a very high level on your instrument in a very high level of musicality that really thrives off of the present moment, thrives off of the situation, thrives off the other members of the ensemble to where you can be creative. And in that moment now you can't limit that with a type of rhythm.
When you listen to the Louis Armstrong Hot Fives & Sevens recordings, they're not playing “ting ting, ta-ting” at all. They're playing so many different types of grooves and rhythms and exotic things.
I really like what you said about the idea of jazz being like you’re present and the ways that you're feeding off the energy of the people around you. Usually jazz musicians have this very spiritual, ethereal, other level kind of connection to their creativity. Can you speak more to the idea of jazz and spirituality?
I think that all that just goes back to the traditions of Africa. Of a village and tribal setting where it is improvisation, where everybody participates, where you're dealing with polyrhythms and interactions. It really just kind of touches on the fact that in the tradition of Africans and African descendants of Africans in the diaspora, all music is spiritual. Oh, even if it's in the club. Even when you’re in the club listening to Burner Boy, that s— is spiritual. I'm sorry, it's spiritual.
I also read that you said Dreams Manifest was like a dream journal and I was curious, do you keep a dream journal? What is your relationship to dreams and dreaming?
Speaking of spiritual, I mean, I'm a lucid dreamer and I manifest things within my dreams. I use my dreams to expand my knowledge and understanding and connection in this realm. So sleeping and dreaming for me is very peaceful, very healing, very revealing always.
I love that. Do you have any tips? Sometimes I have songs that I make up in my dreams and I wish that I could record them. How do you save the things in your dreams?
You have to wake yourself up. Duke Ellington always said this. You have to wake yourself up and turn on the light and write it down. It might be three in the morning. Because you know, you can recognize it when you're in the dream. You recognize, you're like, “wait a minute, I'm writing this song. Oh, this melody's good.” You gotta wake yourself up, write it down immediately.
Have a little tape recorded next to the bed and record it. I've got hundreds of voice notes of the little ideas that just come to me. I don't wake up from my sleep and write things anymore 'cause I have a really crazy memory and I can remember melodies and things like that.
Once I learn them and know them, they don't ever leave my head or the idea of them. So, you know, I can nurture it more and more as I get up, but I also don't get attached to it. Sometimes things come and go. Sometimes you write seven melodies to get to the eighth melody. You know what I mean? And those sevens, they're burner melodies.
That’s great.
