NEIL:

There’s a purity of experience when you’re not trying to sell something, you’re just trying to play something that’s really artistic. And I just find you’re driven to play from a more pure state of expression, rather than trying to play something that you think will please an audience, we really do whatever the hell we want, and we can get as weird as we want, and that’s what the people want! And so we find it’s this great symbiosis.

– – –

STUART:

Let’s start this way.

So, hey, Allie, close your eyes and imagine that you’re in Black Rock City.

ALLIE:

Okay. I’m there.

STUART:

What do you hear?

ALLIE:

A lot of electronic music. A lot of boots-and-cats and boots-and-cats and ugh, ugh, ugh.

STUART:

Untz. Untz. Untz… Untz!

ALLIE:

And wah, wah, wah, wah…

STUART:

I love that song.

ALLIE:

Yeah, it’s mostly electronic music.

STUART:

It’s a very common perception of Burning Man out there in the world that we only have one kind of music. We have electronic dance music and lots of it. And like most mythic structures, it’s true and not true. It’s so… Myths are infuriating because as much as you can contest there’s a kernel of truth inside of them. YES for the last 20 plus years, Black Rock City has turned into kind of one of the world capitals, really, of Electronic Dance Music where big celebrity DJs fly in from Ibiza and play sets to huge adoring crowds on multi-million dollar sound systems. That is all true.

It is also true that Black Rock City is home to every kind of music that you can possibly imagine, and some of you probably haven’t heard yet. When I think about Black Rock City, I hear it sort of as spinning the late night FM radio dial really fast, when you have those jarring transitions from, Oh, my God, is that a second line? No, that’s emo power punk. No, that’s WHAT? That’s Ranchera. That to me, that cacophony of music, if I may use that term, is my experience of Burning Man. But they’re all valid. Burning Man is so many things to so many people.

The dance music gets so much attention. But it’s also true that Black Rock City is a cornucopia, a smorgasbord, of other musical styles, and always has been, right? every style under the sun, from alt pop to zydeco.

ALLIE:

Yeah!

STUART:

I’ve been going to Burning Man a long time — maybe too long — and I remember when rave music was new. Before that, you know, the first music I remember hearing at Burning Man was… was yelling at Christmas Camp to turn off their goddamn Christmas carols because they were blasting them through a bad sound system all night and all day. So there’s everything under the sun.

Now, Allie, I know you have been doing a little bit of research on some of that other not EDM music for a Journal post that’s coming up. What did you encounter out there?

ALLIE:

Yeah, it turns out there is other music in addition to all the untz untz and boots-and-cats. And the live music embodies a lot of Burning Man principles. There’s a lot of different live music that really invites collaboration and participation and immediacy and all of that playa serendipity and magic that we all love so much out there.

STUART:

Well, I want to talk about jazz a little bit.

First I am going to dive into the world of electronic dance music. But I gotta be honest with you, here. I really don’t know that much about all the styles. Honestly, I don’t know my Dubstep from my Psytrance. But luckily I have a friend who does.

Our good friend Dom — Dominique Debucquoy-Dodley — is in fact, in addition to everything else he does at Burning Man, he is a DJ of some repute. So I talked with Dom to give me just a little bit of a primer on how to talk to a big name DJ.

– – –

STUART:

I’m talking to my good friend Dom — Dominique Debucquoy-Dodley — because I don’t know really thing one about electronic music. So let’s start with the top. Dom, can I call it EDM? Is it all electronic dance music? Is that a category or is that a genre?

DOM:

You can call it electronic dance music, I would say out in the world, if you’re with people who are in the know or in the scene. Generically calling it EDM may be like nails on a chalkboard to them, though. You gotta get a little more specific. There’s House Heads, there’s Techno, there’s Progressive House, there’s Trance, there’s Psytrance, there’s Hip Hop, there’s Dubstep, there’s Bass music, there’s Trap music, there’s subgenres within those, so.

STUART:

Okay, slow down.

DOM:

I’ve got a very deep library of how to show you the difference between House and then even within House, there’s Deep House, there’s Chicago House, there’s all sorts of different styles of House music, but that’s maybe two or three layers deeper into the Inferno than you want to go.

STUART:

Slow down, slow down!

DOM:

Yeah. Let’s help clarify.

STUART:

I know Techno kind of came out of the post disco European scene. A lot of people listen to a lot of Kraftwerk records and started mixing that stuff, right? Techno, as the name implies, is very technical, instrumental, and not vocal heavy at all. Right?

DOM:

I think that’s true.

STUART:

And how many beats per second is it? Beats per minute.

DOM:

Man! Beats per second is when you talk to the Psy-Trance people. Um. Beats per minute…

STUART:

Okay. What is Psy…?

DOM:

I think you’re right about some of that characterization. Nowadays, I think the sweet spot for Techno is 130 to 134.

And then you hear House music, and particularly Deep House, that’s slowed down. House music came out of Chicago also in kind of the post disco era, Chicago, New York, Detroit. Detroit is really a Techno city. So if you talk about the origins of Techno, people refer to Detroit. Of course, it went over to Europe and it’s popular in a bunch of places. But Detroit, home of Techno. Chicago, home of House.

House, it’s a little slower. Disco records were in that 110 to 120 BPM, even 100 for really slowed down ones. So House music is just a little faster than that. Yeah.

STUART:

And Trance is even faster than that. Trance, from what I’ve heard, came out of like, hippie expats in India, in Goa, having beach parties and playing dance music?

DOM:

Yeah. I think one of the key differences between Trance and Techno… This is very general. Things have changed because now there are things called melodic Techno, there is deep Trance, there’s darker Trance, but generally speaking, Techno tends to be a little bit of a darker genre, and Trance tends to be more of an uplifting genre. Lots of vocals and Trance music, lots of kinda ethereal, big, open sounds and really big moments.

Techno is a lot more kinda repetitive and grungy and made for a dark room with a little red light in the corner.

Trance is made for sunrises, Goa, with everybody hugging and kissing each other. That’s Trance.

STUART:

And Psytrance. You put the ‘psy’ on the beginning of it, it seems kind of obvious that that’s psychedelically influenced Trance music.

DOM:

Yeah, and Psy-Trance really also comes out of that Goa scene as well. And Psytrance is, I would say of all these genres, the fastest. Psytrance is probably in the 140s, probably 150-something BPM. Psytrance, my body can’t dance to it. It’s just a little too fast for me, but people certainly try. And if you’re out at Burning Man, you will find the Psytrance gyrators out there. They exist.

And yeah, Psytrance, kind of similar to Trance. It’s kind of a mix. There’s a lot of electronic bleep and slurpy sounds in it, but also vocals, lots of big open pads and like washes of sounds that are uplifting. But the core of Psytrance is that continuous sort of hypnotic beat that’s faster than Techno.

STUART:

And let’s not leave out everyone’s favorite: Dubstep. The ‘dub’ in the beginning of that makes me think that maybe that came out of the Jamaican DJ scene to some extent. Is that true?

DOM:

Oh, you know, that’s a good question. I’m not so informed on the root of the name. Dubstep is kind of a unique electronic category from the ones we’ve been talking about.

You know, people on the West Coast, especially, people are familiar with breaks. Breaks were huge in the 2000s and into the early 2010s. There’s still a lot of breaks music, especially on the West Coast where the beat’s kind of, not everybody would agree, but to me it’s more in the direction of like a Hip Hop beat with some electronic elements, and dancey.

Dubstep is like a bass heavy instrumentation that makes speakers really wobble and has like break elements to it, chopped up beat elements to it, huge bass drops and high end audio effects. If you go to a Dubstep show or you hear Dubstep DJs, the dancing is much slower. It’s a lot of head bobbing, and you’ll sometimes hear really cool samples of old Hip Hop songs or other pop songs kind of mixed in.

STUART:

Outstanding. I feel much better equipped.

DOM:

So technically it’s all EDM, Stuart. If you were to go out there and say, “I love EDM,” it’s kind of like wearing an I heart ❤ NY t-shirt; people will know you’re a tourist, but if you get a little more specific, then people will know that you’re onto some real stuff.

STUART:

Okay. Thanks.

DOM:

Very good. Yeah. It’s fun to talk about.

– – –

STUART:

Now, Allie, what are some of the more obscure or interesting types of music camps that you’ve run into in Black Rock City?

ALLIE:

There’s a lot more to Black Rock City to stuff that comes off the DJ deck. I’ve talked to a lot of different camps that offer different things, including live band karaoke, Afro diaspora pop, and believe it or not, there is punk rock and metal on playa.

STUART:

There’s always been punk.

ALLIE:

Burning Man always has been punk.

STUART:

You know, that’s the other myth that I hate is that Burning Man is a hippie thing. Come on, it’s a punk thing or it has been. Okay, we’re going to talk about all of that music that’s not dance music, but we’re going to talk about dance music, too, just to take both sides on this musical tussle. I try to pick out some common threads. How has the musical landscape evolved over time? And, what influence might it even be having out in the wider world?

So I’m going to kick off this conversation with one of those big time DJs talking about the evolution of dance music in Black Rock City.

– – –

STUART:

My guest today is someone from the world of, let’s just say, EDM, for lack of a better acronym of, dance music. And, if you are the sort of person who follows DJs at the Burning Man events, he may be one of the people that you follow. He spent 13 years out there, spinning and grinning. He is Jesse Houk, aka The ScumFrog, calling in from Brooklyn, New York. Hey, Jesse.

JESSE:

Hello. Thank you for having me, Stuart.

STUART:

Hello, sir.

JESSE:

Wonderful to be here.

STUART:

Scumfrog, let’s start at the beginning. How on earth did you get the name Scumfrog?

JESSE:

A buddy of mine that I started making music with back in the day. This is in the Netherlands, where I grew up. He is dyslexic, and he read the word scumfrog and something that didn’t say Scumfrog at all. It was very funny at the time. And we used to blow through tons of aliases because we just started out making music. We had no idea how to make anything sound good. So even if we did get a record signed on a small label somewhere, it never sold any more than like five copies. So we always had to change our name in rapid progression because we couldn’t stay with the same name that we just had a big flop with. So we blew through all these aliases.

And then once I did a record by myself, I’m like, okay, what do I name it? I’ll just name it Scumfrog because this record is never going to do anything just like the previous ones. And that became my first big record. So then I guess I was like, okay, I got to stick with this name. This name is something.

STUART:

It sounds like you started pretty early. I’m just curious at what point in your life you woke up and said, I am going to be a successful professional disc jockey.

JESSE:

As soon as my mother suggested I go to law school, that’s when I was like, yeah, no, I’m going to be a rock star. I played guitar and bass, and I was in bands in high school. And then I discovered DJs in the late 80s in England and the Netherlands and walked into my first rave. And that impression of my first rave stuck with me and catapulted me into my entire career, basically.

STUART:

That’s when the music scene was just really coming together, wasn’t it, back in that period of time? It seems to me historically it was in parallel with the Hip Hop evolution, right?

JESSE:

For sure. Yeah, they had a lot in common.

STUART:

But in various ways in different parts of the world.

JESSE:

Yeah. Both genres came up because technology democratized who could make music. You suddenly didn’t need a giant studio anymore to make music. Like Hip Hop used samples from other records, and Techno just used like 2 or 3 little boxes that Roland made and created a beat. So you had it both in Hip Hop and in electronic music. It was just a result of emerging technology that was suddenly affordable.

STUART:

And coincidentally, that was also the period of time that Burning Man was starting to become a thing, particularly in the early 90s when rave culture was really taking off in the US. So not super surprising that the two ended up in confluence out in the playa, the Black Rock Desert. We’ll come back to that.

I want to hear about how you first got out there, because it was in the early 2000s, right? You already had a pretty successful career DJing.

JESSE:

Correct.

STUART:

And somebody persuaded you to go out to the middle of nowhere for no money and do your thing out there.

JESSE:

Yeah, it was Syd Gris from Opulent Temple and he asked me to come out in 2004.

SYD GRIS: 

Check, check. Hey, what’s up, Burning Man? How you doing out there? Welcome to sacred dance, Opulent Temple.

JESSE:

He or somebody else might already have asked me the year before, but that was just, like, violently overruled by my manager at the time because the last week of August is like the week that as a DJ, especially in Europe and all the festivals, you make a lot of money. So as soon as my manager heard, like, “You’re going to do what, you’re going to go away for ten days and not generate any income during the one week of the year where you’re making the most money? Absolutely not.”

But then it was… From 2003 it was a seed in my head and I was like, okay, I need to hear about what this thing Burning Man is. And at that point, people in New York started to talk about Burning Man. It was not a thing. It was not a scene. People were talking about it. And that made me very curious. So that when 2004 rolled around and I had the invitation again, I was like, okay, this time I’m just going to do it, pack up my stuff, and go for it. And I was hooked ever since.

STUART:

So I’m curious what the expectations versus the reality were for you. Not just for your personal experience, but for your art as well.

JESSE:

Well, the funny story, and Syd has become, Syd Gris from Opulent Temple, has become a very good friend, but we didn’t start out as great friends. He had seen me perform in San Francisco and he was like, this DJ needs to play at Opulent Temple. But he very respectfully went through my manager. So I had no direct contact with anyone from Opulent Temple or Burning Man whatsoever. And a lot of the stuff got lost in translation.

So what I knew was that they had a space in an RV for my friend and I to stay there, and that we had to pay our own way, and that I would not get paid, which was fine.

What got lost in translation was the following. So we get there at three in the morning on a Wednesday, I think. This is 2004, so you could just roll up at Will Call, which is what I did. And I go up to the girl behind the counter and go like “Hi, I’m Scumfrog,” expecting her to go like, “Oh, so good to see you, Scumfrog,” you know, “Here’s your wristband and there is the VIP tent.” Um. I think I’m checking into a festival where I’m headlining.

She’s like, “Hi, Scumfrog.” I’m like, okay, I should maybe clarify. I was like, “I’m DJing here tomorrow.” And she’s like, “Good for you… Great. Awesome. How many people are you?”

I’m like, “Well, it’s me and my friend.”

She’s like, “Okay, that’s $700.”

I’m like, “Wait, what?”

So you can imagine, like my frustration when I didn’t know Burning Man culture. And it’s three in the morning. I’m in the middle of nowhere. So, you know, I gave her my credit card and we went in.

And 15 minutes later, we meet Syd Gris, and I’m like, “Dude, what’s up with the ‘you got to buy a ticket’?” And that’s when I gradually started exploring what the event is all about and the mindset and the culture and the people. And we had an amazing couple of days. And of course, the next year we came back and the next year and the next year and next year.

STUART:

What was… if you can characterize what your music was like around that time, what kind of styles you were playing, and how that might have changed over the next 13 years. And was Burning Man a factor in that? Did that help you evolve your appreciation of music?

JESSE:

Yeah, that’s a great question, for sure. What I loved most about Burning Man was the absence of DJ culture at the event. When you compare it to a music festival or a nightclub on the circuit, you’re booked because you play a certain sound, and you’re expected to play either your hits or the hits of the moment, or back in the day, like the barometer of what was hot and what was not was kind of determined by this website Beatport. So you’re supposed to adhere to that. So, there were all these measures that you have to live up to Burning Man had none of those.

So even though I was asked to play because of my sound, which I did, I quickly discovered that I could detour from my sound in various ways. I could experiment with other things. Also because the expectations from people about what a DJ set should be were completely different than at a festival.

You have people who never go to music festivals who do go to Burning Man, so you have a completely different crowd, very different expectations, and that quickly took hold with me also because I knew I wasn’t risking anything because it would never get out into the real world, quote unquote. Like people would not say like, “Oh, Scumfrog did such a weird set. I can’t believe this is now his sound.” You wouldn’t risk diluting your brand by doing something crazy at Burning Man, which I really, really loved.

So I did a lot of stuff which resulted in everything that worked, I could see, like, okay, maybe this can work outside of Burning Man too and then implement it outside of Burning Man and bring a little bit of that playfulness in my sound in the default world. So that definitely happened.

And there was also just a lot of wackiness that would have never worked outside of Burning Man.

Yeah, I started taking a lot more risks because Burning Man allowed me to just leave my brand behind and leave expectations behind and all that kind of stuff.

STUART:

I’m just curious what an example might be of something that you would never have done in Ibiza that you did out in the Black Rock Desert?

JESSE:

It’s just about the way that you curate a set, especially when you play in deep playa where there is no interference from other sound camps or other stages or anything, and you tend to have a lot more attention span from Burners than from clubbers.

If you play in a club, you would have a really amazing moment, like a breakdown with one violin, most people in the club will just continue their conversations. They’re not really going to listen to it. But at Burning Man, people pay attention to it like, oh, what’s happening now? So you have a lot more attention. You have a lot less bleed from other stages or other rooms. So you have a lot bigger dynamic range to try things. That’s the kind of pause and coloring you can give to a set at Burning Man that you wouldn’t really do anywhere else in the world.

STUART:

Super interesting. Yeah, I was curious about the environment. That’s got to be radically different from anywhere else. And like all forms of art, you know, the interaction with the environment is a big thing. The sunrise set is maybe a good example of that. Tell me about your first sunrise set and how that colored your approach.

JESSE:

I think the sunrise set, especially in deep playa on a massive sound system, is kind of like the ultimate canvas for any DJ or musician, because at the time of day you have everybody’s undivided attention. You’re in the middle of nowhere, there is no bleed from anything. So you can bring your music down to like a subtle tone or wind playing, or a spoken word interlude or something like that, and have people’s attention, rather than a beat coming in from the next stage next to you. So that became really alluring quickly.

I think my first sunrise set at Robot Heart was 2012. And that really changed my perspective of like, okay, this is the ultimate thing. It spoils you for the rest of your DJ gigs because festivals don’t compare to that and clubs don’t compare to that. And then you become that cliche DJ who says “Burning Man” every time they get asked like, “What’s your favorite place to play?” But it’s true. And for those reasons, because it’s a setting that you don’t get anywhere else in the world.

STUART:

Yeah. It’s interesting.

JESSE:

I think there’s the DJs that come through because they’re curious, and they’re asked by a big sound camp. They might be really famous DJs that come through. And then they kind of like check it off their list. Maybe they come back once. And then you have the type of DJ who’s just like hooked immediately and says, I want to elaborate on this.

Most DJs, when they come to Burning Man the first time — you can’t blame them for that. I did the same thing —they don’t know any better, and it’s more after the fact, when you’re done with your set and you walk around, you’re like, oh, I could have done something very different.

And then if you have the bug in your head, which I did. It’s like, okay, next year I’m going to come back and I’m going to do this and I’m gonna do that and do that…

So there have been some interesting conversations about “What is DJ culture in the context of Burning Man?” And that has changed so much and evolved so much over the years.

One of the main things that changed was the emergence of SoundCloud, which was a blessing for DJs and sound camps who wanted the rest of the world to hear what had gone on at Burning Man. And it’s good for exposure too. But the bad thing about it is that the camps that are really good at promoting their SoundCloud page, you get the realization as a DJ like, okay, when I play my set at Burning Man, there are at most 5,000 people in front of me. When that set gets uploaded to SoundCloud, it will have 500,000 people listening to it. If you’re approaching that from a business mind, you wouldn’t take as many risks, so you wouldn’t do things that are uniquely catering to that moment because you’re like, okay, 5,000 people here, but half a million people there. I’m going to cater to the half a million people.

And of course, people who listen to SoundCloud are in a completely different environment. They’re at work or at home working, and they have it playing in the background. So the more eclectic you make your set, the more that will hurt your appeal on a platform like SoundCloud.

So that changed a lot of behaviors from DJs. And they started to take less risks because they knew like, oh shit is being recorded and now is being branded, and now I’m going to be judged on that. So, you know, let me just play it safe.

STUART:

Eclectic is a good word.

I started going in ‘93 and I remember my first encounters with rave music. And obviously there were a couple of strong trends. Rave music of that time was very much Drum and Bass and Jungle influenced sort of stuff. But then there was this other thing that I’d never heard before, that the Trance side of things, Goa Gil and that Goa sound. Those two from somebody who really doesn’t know anything about this music scene by two threads.

What were the others and what does that turn into? And is there such a thing as a playa sound, a Playa Tech sound, or whatever you want to know, that’s a result of that kind of fusion?

JESSE:

I’m laughing because I came up with the term “Playa Tech,” and I wish I had never I had never uttered that word. I tried to come up with a term that would cover a genre that is not necessarily a genre, like a genre that has room to include an eclectic kind of thing rooted in Tech House and Techno, but it’s for the playa. So I just called it Playa Tech. I uploaded that on the Robot Heart site on the SoundCloud page, and this was at a time where they would also upload mixes by their DJs that were not recorded at Burning Man. This was early on. So it had the tag on SoundCloud as like “Playa Tech.”

And then other DJs for a long time was like, oh, that’s a cool name. We’re going to just tag all the other mixes as Playa Tech. And then DJs were like, oh, now we need to do that sound because that’s what they’re doing. So, the irony is that the word that I came up with to mean absolutely nothing started to become a word that meant something. And then, of course, as soon as people are starting to get really tired and sick of it, they’re like, “Oh, Playa Tech sucks!” And I’m like, “Yeah, I agree!”

So yeah, maybe I should not have called it “Playa Tech,” I should have called it nothing.

STUART:

That’s a Zen name. Its name is nothing. My name is nobody.

JESSE:

Yeah.

So how was the DJ scene at Burning Man in the 90s? When I came, I think it was tempos first or second year. And I think Space Cowboys were kind of the kings of the playa at that time. But I hear that, you know, punk rock was a big thing. Drum and Bass was a big thing. So, tell me a little bit about how it was in the 90s and how prevalent the sound camps were in the 90s.

STUART:

Well, gather ‘round… My good friend Caveat Magister wrote a great essay in the Burning Man Journal a few years ago called Who Ruined Burning Man? And it’s a succession of every time that the community had to confront others. Right?

JESSE:

Yeah.

STUART:

And I got to say that, the ravers created a pretty contentious scene because, prior to that incursion, there was a huge punk rock influence. A lot of those people categorized rave music as being a new flavor of disco music, which, you know, the age-old animosity between punk and disco. It was interesting.

You know, the big thing about sound levels, that controversy, which went on for years and years and years and years, and still goes on today, had its origins back then, too. People were just like, “Point that shit away from me. I need to sleep. I need to go do my shift,” or whatever it is. So it led to a very, very, in retrospect, idiotic design decision for Black Rock City. This is in the very earliest years of actually having a city layout.

In 1996, at least, they placed “Rave Camp” a full mile away from the rest of the camp, downwind a mile. And that led very directly to some serious automobile incidents. People driving high. Some folks got run over in a tent. It was just a terrible, terrible, terrible decision that basically launched a whole new era of civic design. So we got that to be thankful for.

But I would say it was not so much the taste in music as it was sound issues. And particularly as the city got more compact, it became more and more of a thing. I don’t think we came up with the rules in effect today of playa music zones, and the deep playa, and putting all the camps out at 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock, and all that. That’s within the last, I think, six or seven years which seems to have hit a pretty good thing. But it was a big source of controversy within the community. But the funny thing is after 1 o’clock, with the right frame of mind, everybody wants to go dance. So, there you go.

JESSE:

Of course, I’m very familiar with the tragedies of 1996, and how it changed so many things about the festival. I had no idea that the ravers were to blame for all of this, so.

STUART:

Well, the city designers were, I would say that it was the city layout. So I would blame the noise controversy more than I would blame any particular individuals. It’s a good example of a bunch of people who know nothing about urban design struggling to try to actually make a city out of nothing, out of a camp.

JESSE:

You have been here through all the incarnations and who still have the motivation to say like, okay, yeah, this is a very different beast right now than it ever was, but I’m still super inspired to keep it going. So I would love to hear from you: Despite all the changes, given all the evolution of the event, what is the biggest motivator for you to go back this year?

STUART:

Well, I just saw it the other day. I saw a TikTok video of two gals opening up their notice, receiving notice, that they had scored Burning Man tickets, and dancing around squealing with excitement. That squeal of excitement is why I keep going back. It changes people’s lives. You know, as cynical as I get and as crabby as I get, and as easy it is to be a crusty old Burner, I see it every year. I tell people it’s not for everyone. But for a few people, it’s something really, really big and really profound. Being able to provide that experience and being in service to that experience, is what gets me up in the morning.

JESSE:

Okay.

STUART:

But let’s go back to you, Scumfrog, because speaking of leaving, I understand you graduated from Burning Man in 2018?

JESSE:

Yeah.

STUART:

What led to that decision? And, is it reversible like mine was?

JESSE:

The DJ thing, I did it for 13 years and it was amazing and I… Looking back, I can see a real story arc of like, okay, I started as this person and then I went through this whole evolution. And then at the end I was that person.

It becomes routine. And I didn’t want it to be routine. And, I think when you contribute anything related to art, especially to Burning Man, it should never feel like routine. And as soon as I felt that feeling of routine, I was like, I’m not supposed to be in this spot. Let somebody else do this who is mesmerized by all of this the way I was ten years ago. So that’s kind of why I let go of it because I didn’t want to hold on to that spot and block other people’s opportunity to do that sunrise, just because I still was given the opportunity.

I never say never. I have no reason to say I’ll never go to Burning Man. But it would have to entail a project that is not just DJing. And it would have to be a project that is either too large in scope or too illegal in nature to do outside of Burning Man. And it would have to be a collaborative effort.

STUART:

So I’m still curious about the evolution of the sound. Is it still an innovation space?

JESSE:

It’s difficult for me to pinpoint what the innovative musical stuff is. I mean, the Black Rock Philharmonic, I think, is a great undertaking.

STUART:

Aren’t they amazing? Yeah.

JESSE:

It’s absolutely fantastic. And I know how difficult it is to put something together with that many people operating on that many cylinders. So that’s super impressive. I wouldn’t call it innovative. I would just call it something gorgeous and awe inspiring.

STUART:

You gotta ask yourself, after all this time, does it matter to anyone? What’s the value of Burning Man to the world?

JESSE:

I think it matters to everyone, and everyone has their own story arc. My story arc, too, is like, I started going, I’m like, wow, this is life changing. Where has this been all my life? How can I be a part of that? And 13 years later, I’m like, this was amazing. It’s not for me anymore. But I will always recommend it to anyone who hasn’t been, because I know that that first time you step out on the Esplanade at night, you will have that same feeling. No matter if it’s 1995 or 2025, it will be that holy shit moment. Whether you only go once or whether you’re a Burner for life, that’s an experience that I will always recommend to anyone.

And that is completely unrelated to what Burning Man culture stands for these days. Whether it’s anarchy or whether it’s the Tuluminati, it’s a completely different thing to anyone and everyone. And it all depends on where you hook into the culture. Your first time is amazing. And then you have some sort of story arc for yourself. And whether that story arc is one week or 20 years, that’s up to you.

STUART:

I am so glad that you were able to join us. Jesse Houk, aka Scumfrog.

JESSE:

My pleasure, Stuart. Great to talk to you.

– – –

STUART:

We’re going to transition over into the opposite end of the spectrum.

ALLIE:

It’s a big city out there in the Black Rock Desert with all kinds of sounds. There’s actually a lot of jazz representation on playa. And playing jazz is a lot like what you have to do at Burning Man. It’s kind of a larger metaphor for being there. All the improvisation that has to happen and troubleshooting and unexpected, wonderful surprises that come out of things.

STUART:

Well, a good jam requires Communal Effort and probably requires some Gifting, too, some generosity I think is important in a musical relationship.

Who are we going to talk with, Allie?

ALLIE:

We’re going to talk with The Professor, more commonly known as Neil Kelly, of that esteemed establishment Playa Jazz Cafe.

STUART:

And now it’s jazz! And not just any old jazz. It’s The Professor from Jazz Cafe.

NEIL:

Yeah. So I am The Professor out there, aka Neal Kelly. And I’ve been a hack jazz musician for a long time. You know, I’ve been playing in the style for like 25 years. But, you know, I grew up playing rock and other things, and eventually turned to a career in music, teaching students, group classes, guitar. I went to school for music and got a degree in jazz studies and all of that stuff. And so I sort of had the knowledge.

And when we founded the camp it started out with me and two close friends, Terrell Tomlin, who is Sugar Tits, and Patrick North, who’s been gone for a long time. But we were originally a rock band, and we had started playing trio jazz. Me and Patrick had been out in ‘96 when it was still pretty freestyle deep in the desert. And we had this vision. Hey, let’s bring a band out.

And so then we got our friend Terrell, and we went back in 2002. And we’re out there in Hushville with our own generator, which everyone hated us for, and we had a shade structure. We brought our band in a budget rent-a-van, and we just set up.

And we’re playing our jazz trio music, and this saxophone player just stumbled along and was like, “Oh, let’s play Autumn Leaves.” And all of a sudden we had this idea. We were like, yeah, you know, we could, w e could have a real camp and just, you know, say we’re a jazz thing and have open jam sessions, you know, for people who came in.

And we got another person who was working with Terrell at a sound studio, Bill Frank, who was our original camp lead. And he sort of took the reins of spearheading the communications, applying for a camp and doing all the things.

I was just the musical coordinator.

And Terrell, he was the original drummer, but he’s the chief engineer and he’s just this talented, crazy, unique type of genius who can build anything with anything. And those are very valuable skills out there on the playa. He kind of had the knowhow of how to actually build stuff and survive and run sound and do anything you could ever want to know engineering style.

And Patrick was our bass player, so it was basically just the four of us and a few friends when we started. Wwe got placed in Center Camp in 2003 as the Playa Jazz Cafe, and yeah.

ALLIE:

Did you find any jazz out there already or were you the first jazz pioneers?

NEIL:

No, we did not see any jazz out there. It’s very electronic music centered. And there’s always the jam bands and the loud rock stuff and people just going crazy with their instruments. There was some of that in the early days as well. But jazz as a theme, that was sort of our niche, I think.

ALLIE:

How would you describe the niche that you fill on playa? We’re a full city. We need everything, including a jazz cafe. So like, what is it that feels like the special thing that’s created by you guys being there?

NEIL:

Yeah, people on the outside might not realize, but as a city, there’s all types of people out there and Burning Man, it isn’t just people raving out and doing their electronic music and light shows — although there’s plenty of that, we know. But the art of playing live instruments and live human beings in sort of a small jazz club kind of vibe, people were super appreciative from the first year because it was such an anomaly.

Back then, people would come and discover us, and they were like, “Oh my God, there’s live musicians. This is so different than what we’re seeing out there.”

It just provided a different energy that a lot of people were seeking who were out there, and maybe the EDM wasn’t their thing. And some people, EDM was their thing, but it’s two in the morning and you’ve had enough and you just want to chill out and hear some great tunes. There we were.

And also when you have a city of 60 to 80,000 people, a certain percentage of them play jazz. And having a place where people can just show up with their horn or singers who could stop by and just be like, “Oh, I’m going to go to a session and get to play.” Providing that was very unique as well.

ALLIE:

Jazz is kind of its own whole world to itself. And so I’m realizing just calling it jazz is really unspecified. What kind of music do people hear or play when they come to the Playa Jazz Cafe?

NEIL:

Yeah. These days it can be a mixed bag. But when we founded the camp, I was trying to just d8o straight ahead jazz, meaning we’re playing actual tunes. We were trying to uphold the theme, because you can go a lot of places at Burning Man and just go into the one chord jam, you know, the psychedelic one chord jam. And that’s great and all. And we end up doing some of that too, these days at the Jazz Cafe. But the idea was we were playing classic jazz from the bebop, you know, through the modern era, late 1940s to present, old American songbook standards or tunes by famous jazz musicians like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

You know, kind of this standard thing that you will get at a straight ahead jam session where you get people who know tunes or can read charts enough to get through tunes, and there’s an order of events that we follow. And so, yeah, we call the straight ahead jazz. And that was sort of what the theme was based on that we were going to actually play tunes, and ‘you had to actually know how to play jazz, or you don’t get more than one song’ type of thing.

ALLIE:

When one thing that feels like Jazz and Burning Man have in common is serendipity and, like, unexpected alchemy. And so it seems like a really good place for jazz, even if that’s not what people think of first when they think of Burning Man. Who’s walked through the door and what kind of collaborations has it birthed?

NEIL:

Yeah. Well, I can’t rant off that any famous people have rolled through. But from very early on, we ended up having people come in who were literally from all over the world. One year we had this flamenco jazz player who was a professor at NYU showed up and played with us. We had this guy EWEL.

ALLIE:

Oh, yeah, I’ve talked to him.

NEIL:

Yeah. He’s amazing. He showed up on piano a couple of years ago, and then I saw, you know, him live at Smalls in New York, and I’m like, oh my God, this guy’s huge, and we played with him, you know.

ALLIE:

He’s recording a Sting album right now.

NEIL:

Yeah. He’s played with all the famous cats.

So like, if you’re out there at Burning Man, there’s been a lot of people who have come in and really blown our minds. Then, like Santa shows up every year and we just have these strange, you know, that maybe aren’t the most high musical experience, but they’re amazing, like you said, serendipitous experiences of random people showing up, surprising us, surprising the audience, and we end up making music on the fly.

And that’s the interactive element of what Burning Man does. A jazz jam session is sort of the perfect manifestation of that. We’re providing this background band, this music, and people can come in and they add their energy to the music, and it changes it, and you kind of go through the evening with all these magical surprises happening.

We got this contingent of musicians from all over the world, you know. And we’ve become this sort of family that somehow keeps it going.

ALLIE:

Important follow up question: What instrument does Santa play?

NEIL:

He’s a sax player.

ALLIE:

I knew it!

NEIL:

Yeah. You’ve seen him out there. He walks around blowing sax on the playa. He always comes in and it’s always pretty hilarious.

ALLIE:

Does he play Christmas jazz or other things too?

NEIL:

He, uh… You know, I don’t know what he plays. I’m going to keep it real. We love Santa, but I don’t know if he’s a trained jazz musician. Christmas songs have happened!

ALLIE:

Yeah. Christmas and jazz goes together.

NEIL:

Yeah. Our crazy keyboard player kind of spurred him on and went into a whole Christmas medley at some point, I believe last year. It’s bound to happen.

ALLIE:

So what are you guys’ offerings? I know you said jam sessions, people can walk up. I saw on your Instagram you have Mingus & Mimosas. Tell me about what you guys have done over the years.

NEIL:

Originally we just played every night and tried to go all night long. But a few years in, our old camp leader, Bill Frank, was like, “You think you could teach some workshops or something?” And so I started teaching jazz history workshops and jazz theory workshops in the afternoon. And that’s how I got my name, The Professor. This Brazilian who was camping with us would see me in there ranting and going off on all this stuff and just started to call me El Professor.

I try to take a very broad stroke philosophical approach that someone who isn’t even a musician can learn about what they’re hearing, you know, or can learn about the music and kind of be educated on what you’re listening for. So that’s become a big part of our day thing.

NEIL AT BRC: 

Okay, so yeah, you’re at Jazz Cafe. If you’re new to this place, man, we teach jazz during the week. We do this concert on Saturday and we have jam sessions every night. So we’re trying to spread the love and knowledge of jazz to the playa world and to the world at large. 

NEIL:

The Mingus & Mimosas is our daytime concert on Saturday. And that’s where the house band performs music. We were doing all Charles Mingus tunes just because that sounded like a great alliteration.

NEIL AT BRC: 

Charles Mingus wrote this tune.

NEIL:

But now I sort of turned it into more of a composer’s workshop. We perform original music or arrangements as sort of like our original art contribution to the playa.

ALLIE:

It’s crazy to bring any kind of equipment out there, yet we do. But these instruments in the alkali dust, how do you keep everything in playing shape?

NEIL:

Yeah, it’s bad. It’s true.

So for the most part the horn players are going to bring their beater horn, or not their most important $8,000 instrument.

For the guitar, solid body instruments, if you take care of them and keep them in the shade during the day. I bring my Schofield Ibanez. Just, when I come home, I take it apart and do the fine tuning, polishing and maintenance, and it’s made it.

But acoustic instruments, like the acoustic upright basses, people who’ve been out there with a bass, it’s usually been, yeah, a cheap beater base, except for our crazy new bass player Irike last year brought a real upright and I don’t know how it fared. There’s a lot of dust involved.

The sound equipment. We’ve had to change out speakers and get a new mixer and all of this stuff. All of the electronics do have a hard time. But, it is what it is. We’ve been able to keep sound happening out there.

That’s part of the Playa Jazz, you’re not always going to get that professional studio level sound, you know, but when you’re out there and experiencing it, it’s amazing. We’ve tried to make recordings and, you know, way back we used to make a CD every year. And when you listen to it off playa, you’re like, whoa, that’s a little rough at the edges, but if you’re there experiencing it, it has its own thing.

ALLIE:

Playing jazz with playing jazz. You have to figure it out.

NEIL:

Exactly. It’s not meant to be captured, you know, it’s meant to happen out there. And if you experience it out there, you understand. But yeah, it doesn’t necessarily translate if you try to capture it and bring it back home.

ALLIE:

So what else keeps you coming back? You’ve been doing this 20 years and bringing this offering. There’s nothing like the immediacy of it; playing together and meeting people, and the communal effort. It’s a lot of principles at once. What else? I wanted to hear what else it is that’s gratifying for you.

NEIL:

I’m a little bit reclusive normally which has not really furthered my musical career. And so there’s just this magic out there on the playa that I sort of have this alter ego, and it’s created this amazing artistic experience that’s like a week long tour where because you’re not trying to get someone else to give you money for it, or you’re not trying to get a million likes or whatever, you can just create real art without any of the baggage.

I was always really drawn to art for art’s sake. And I know that’s hard to achieve if you’re trying to do art as a living. There’s always compromises you have to make. So there’s a purity of experience when you’re not trying to sell something, you’re just trying to play something that’s really artistic. And I just find you’re driven to play from a more pure state of expression, rather than trying to play something that you think will please an audience. We really do whatever the hell we want, and we can get as weird as we want, and that’s what the people want! And so we find it’s this great symbiosis in that the audience, their minds are wide open and receptive, even if they’ve never heard jazz in their life. They sometimes leave the playa, “I’m going to go see some jazz. I think I like jazz now.”

It just seems like a very pure old school spiritual experience of music. There’s not tickets and seating, and audience as separate, and you have to be quiet in a theater, and all of that. We’re doing pure music. The audience is right there screaming along and that kind of pure artistic expression with no strings attached is rare to find out in the real world.

ALLIE:

Well said. You did mention having an alter ego out there, and that it feels like you kind of get to have some expansiveness. But I’m curious, has doing this for over two decades changed anything about how you operate or how you play in the rest of the year and in the rest of your life?

NEIL:

Definitely. There’s been an influence on our life at large just because we generally do a few Playa Jazz events a year, off playa, and that has created this entity, the Playa Jazz Collective. And we actually had a subset of us play in New York City last year at the City of Gods event. So definitely connections have happened from Playa Jazz that wouldn’t have happened otherwise in life.

In terms of how I play, I’ve always been coming from the same place in my approach to jazz, whether it’s in the outside world or on the playa.

ALLIE:

You were so wonderfully thoughtful and said so much that resonated about bringing any creative expression out there. I was nodding along with you. What that opens up, it’s really powerful. And that’s why this thing is so special.

NEIL:

Yeah, that’s what it’s about.

STUART:

Great. I’m just reminiscing, actually, here. We were neighbors a few years back when I was running Campo Mysterioso. We had the Time Travel Tavern. And I learned the hard way that acoustic stand up pianos might make it out for one season, but the second and third seasons…

NEIL:

They don’t come back. Yeah. You can’t get more than a season out of anything acoustic. The pianos, they look good for show, but they’re always out of tune by the end of the week and ruined.

ALLIE:

Well, thank you so much Neil, it was really fun to talk and I’m excited to come to Playa Jazz this year. It’s so fun to talk to people and learn about new things on playa. I have a long rap sheet of places I have to go this year, including you guys.

NEIL:

Come say hello.

ALLIE:

Thanks for your time.

STUART:

Yeah, Thanks.

NEIL:

All right, guys. Have a great day.

ALLIE:

See you out there.

Bye. Thanks, Vav.

STUART:

What do you think, Vav?

VAV:

I think it’s solid.

STUART:

Alright. Thanks, Vav.

– – –

VAV:

This has been another episode of Burning Man LIVE, a proud production of the Philosophical Center of the nonprofit Burning Man Project.

It’s a labor of love. And yet love does not pay the bills. So please consider donating at donate.burningman.org.

Thanks to Neil Kelly (The Professor).

Thanks to Jesse Houk (The Scumfrog).

Thanks to Dominique Debucquoy-Dodley.

Thanks to Allie Wollner (Lotus Position).

Thanks to Stuart Mangrum (mockingbird).

And thanks to the rest of our Burning Man LIVE team: Andie Grace (Actiongirl), DJ Toil, kbot, Martin.

I’m Michael Vav, and thanks, Larry.

 

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