Rahsaan Roland Kirk Is the Blind Jazz Great You've Never Heard Of

From Esquire

The most memorable image of Rahsaan Roland Kirk is with at least three woodwind instruments hanging around his neck, if not in his mouth, at the same time. It gave the impression that the blind jazz musician relied on gimmickry, and though he was an iconoclast-he literally used bells and whistles, and the harmonica, kazoos, the saxello, tambourines, and, gasp, the nose flute-he was, at the same time, a traditionalist, something Adam Kahan makes clear in his stirring documentary of Kirk, The Case of the Three Sided Dream, available this week on iTunes and other streaming services, with a DVD release scheduled for the fall. After all, who else in the early 1970s could dress as a revolutionary while playing ragtime? Or be daring enough to do a medley of Ellington's "Sentimental Journey" and Dvorak's "New World Symphony"? Or promise The Ed Sullivan Show to play "My Cherie Amour"-only to play "The Inflated Tear," his own opus, and Charles Mingus's "Haitian Fight Song" instead?

The documentary, which has traveled the festival circuit, including stops at SXSW, The Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, and Soundtrack Cologne, seamlessly weaves Super 8 home movies, animation, archival footage (both black-and-white and color) from WNET, BBC, and the 1972 Montreux Jazz Festival, past interviews with Kirk (who died in 1977 at age 42 of a stroke, his second), and recent interviews with his friends, collaborators, and family members. Kirk, in Kahan's lens, is many things: a musical archaeologist, combing music stores, antique shops, and any place else he could get his hands on rare instruments; a practitioner of the technique known as circular breathing; an adopter of spoken word; advocate of jazz as a fine art (even if he didn't like that word); denouncer of "businessmen" who kept musicians in boxes; and, maybe above all else, a connoisseur of sound. "Sound is eyesight to me," Kirk says in one clip.

How jazz has been portrayed in cinema is an oft-debated topic, with some observers maintaining that the music, and its rich history, is best treated in documentary form, pointing to such memorable works as Straight, No Chaser (on Thelonious Monk), Triumph of the Underdog (on Charles Mingus), A Great Day in Harlem (on Art Kane's Esquire photograph), Last Date (on Eric Dolphy), Let's Get Lost (on Chet Baker) and Ornette: Made in America (on Ornette Coleman). We can now add The Case of the Three Sided Dream to that esteemed list of non-fiction works.

The Brooklyn-based Adam Kahan took some time recently to answer questions from Esquire about his film and Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

The Case of the Three Sided Dream is your first full-length documentary, though you've done shorter portraits of the visual artists Andres Serrano, Fred Tomaselli, and Urs Fischer. What attracted you to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, first as a musician and then as the subject of a film?

I first discovered Rahsaan Roland Kirk when I picked up a record of his at a garage sale in San Francisco in 1989. All I knew about jazz was that I wanted to know more. That day I bought three records: one by Louis Armstrong, one by Count Basie, and the Best of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. The cover of the Rahsaan album was just a head shot, there were no visual cues to let me know what I was getting myself into, no three saxophones jammed into his mouth, no flute coming out of his nose, nothing to tip me off as to the daring innovation I was about to experience. I put that record on, and from the first note I was hooked.

As I bought and listened to more of Rahsaan's music, I read more about him-specifically, the liner notes written by legendary music producer Joel Dorn. Joel made what are unquestionably Rahsaan's most important records. He understood Rahsaan and his music on a level beyond most anyone. The more I listened to and read about this one-of-a-kind, deeply emotive artist, the more I learned about his life and the obstacles he faced-blindness, lack of recognition, dismissal of his innovation and virtuosity as a gimmick, his political agenda, the stroke, the paralysis, dialysis, his recovery, all of it. When I moved back to New York years later, I was describing Rahsaan to a friend, and saying, "someone should make a movie about this guy." My friend replied, "You should make a movie about this guy!" That's when I looked up Joel Dorn and told him what I wanted to do. "Come on over," he said. That's how it all started.

What surprised you most about Kirk in your research and in the various interviews you conducted?

We conducted a lot of interviews. Many of the early ones, regrettably, were not of good enough quality to use in the film. There were so many more stories I wish I could have included. Though [Rahsaan was] presumed to be avant-garde-and, sure, some of what he did was avant-garde-at the core, he was really a blues musician, and everything he did came from tradition and history of the music. So though he might take that history and tradition and spin it on its head, deep down he was really exactly as Jimi Hendrix described him: "a stone cold blues musician."

I hadn't known that Kirk led a movement to get more jazz musicians on television and was even part of a group that disrupted The Dick Cavett Show. What do you think he'd make of the music's visibility today?

Well, he was never shy about speaking his mind. I think he'd recognize that not a lot has changed for the world of jazz, unfortunately. If anything, I think it has moved further, in popularity, away from the pop music it once was in the 1940s and before. He was also very against pigeonholing the music and the artists. I'm sure if he was still with us, he would be breaking out of the "jazz" category and going in all sorts of unconventional directions. After all, fearless innovation was a trademark of his. He was about breaking boundaries. He was also sort of a crossover artist. He played on bills with Zappa, Led Zeppelin, The Grateful Dead, and groups like Jethro Tull recorded his music. But the Tull example really made him angry, because they made ten times the money from his song then he ever would. It was just another illustration of the economic disparity between rock music and jazz.

As your film makes clear, it was Kirk who thought of jazz as Black Classical Music and was the first person to coin that term. Are you surprised that phrase hasn't stuck?

He was not the first to dislike the term "jazz," and that is a whole other question. He thought Black Classical Music was much more accurate because the music is a contribution that comes from black people, and it does have-or should have-the importance of European classical music. But it's born here, hence Black Classical Music. I'm not surprised it hasn't stuck, even though it seems more relevant today than ever. When you look at things like Jazz at Lincoln Center, jazz musicians playing at the White House, jazz museums, the homes of jazz greats becoming historical landmarks... In some ways, jazz is getting the recognition it deserves, as a major national historical and cultural contribution, and that was really important to him.

Kirk was really distinctive, in his approach and his sound, but perhaps he was closest in spirit to Charles Mingus (and appears on one of his great albums, Oh Yeah). You included a clip of Charles Mingus as a sideman to Kirk on The Ed Sullivan Show. Did you consider delving more into their relationship?

I would have loved to for sure. And don't forget, we also include Rahsaan playing "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," another Mingus composition. They were truly a pair those two, close in spirit as you say, and a lot came out in interviews about Rahsaan and Mingus. But to your question, really I think it is about what kind of film did I want to make. I didn't want the expected documentary format. It wouldn't have made sense for Rahsaan, who was a perpetual destroyer of the expected. I wanted a more impressionistic and organic film. There are no experts, no Stanley Crouch or Nat Hentoff or Wynton Marsalis, telling us about his life or his musical approach (not that those guys aren't great at what they do). My purpose was really to celebrate Rahsaan Roland Kirk and his legacy, which is largely as a musician and performer. He was a presence, and I wanted his presence to be on screen, above and beyond anyone else, playing his music and telling his story in his own words.

You mentioned in another interview that this project was hard to get funding for. (Don Cheadle said the same about his recent Miles Davis biopic.) Why do you think that is? I know for me, and so many people around the world, Roland Kirk is a perfect way to spend a couple of hours in a movie theater.

You've got multiple things working against you for funding a project like this. First off, they-not just funders, but pretty much everyone, marketing, film festivals, etc.-they put you in a box. The film is immediately reduced to being called a "music doc." For example, we applied to the Sundance Film Festival. They were super nice, they looked at the film, gave me great feedback, they were wonderful. But the programmer told me flat-out, "We generally only program about two music docs a year." It's the same for funders; they put you in a box and then your chances for consideration are reduced X-fold because they only have money for so many widgets in that box. This is what Rahsaan fought against all his life. Then you also have the fact that jazz is just a tough sell. I hate to say it, but it's true. I'm sure that is what Don Cheadle was up against with Miles, as well. He made a great movie, and it is fantastic that he got it done. But I do wonder about the story line of his film, creatively. Is it that story he wanted to tell, or is that the story/film he knew the studio would agree to make? These are the realities we in which we live.

You and the Kirk Estate are exploring a possible biopic, is that right? Which actor, in your mind, would make a great Rahsaan Roland Kirk?

We need a guardian angel to make this happen and I hope he or she is reading. Please get in touch! To answer your question, Dave Chappelle is my number one choice. I'm sure he would kill in a dramatic role. So many great comics have done deep dramatic work, Richard Pryor and Robin Williams to name a few. But if Chappelle isn't available, we'll certainly settle for someone else. There is no shortage of talent, and it would be great to have a juicy leading role to give to one of those great actors out there.