Jazz vocalist Milton Suggs on organized chaos and listening

Suggs believes authenticity in music lies in self-reflection, as well as listening to his fellow musicians and the audiences they play for, large or small. As for the chaos — if it’s organized, it becomes great jazz, he says.

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When he was young, jazz vocalist Milton Suggs fell in love with poetry. “There’s a rhythm to it, a kind of free verse, just an open melody that flows,” he says. “It’s just a natural pairing with jazz music.”

Suggs will be one of the jazz pros performing in the Rialto Center for the Arts’ New Orleans Songbook – a Jazz at Lincoln Center Presents Production on March 8. The concert will celebrate Mardi Gras with a full band, including pianist Luther S. Allison and vocalist and Louisiana-based Quiana Lynell as they cover a variety of New Orleans style jazz from Jelly Roll Morton to James Black. “The music itself is just fun to do, and everyone on the stage has something different to offer the audience,” says Suggs.

Even greater than his love of poetry growing up was Suggs’ love of music. He joined the school orchestra, playing the bass and alto saxophone, and was on the drum line in high school. He went on to earn a master’s degree in jazz studies at DePaul University, and it was there that he met Wynton Marsalis, who encouraged him to develop his voice by listening to jazz vocalists of the past.

Listening is key to both learning the craft and playing jazz music with others, says Suggs, and he compares the performance experience to a conversation in a marketplace. “Everybody’s talking and mingling, and they respond to each other. When you listen intently to something like that, you hear how everything flows and fits together. [In music] you respond to the moment, you respond to what the audience has given you and you respond to what the other musicians on stage are doing.”

Whether hot jazz, second line jazz or any other genre, it is the combination of instruments mixed together that makes New Orleans and other jazz forms distinctive. “Some people might think of it as chaotic, but it’s an organized chaos,” Suggs contends, “Everyone’s listening and responding.”

The other side of listening to others is the necessity of listening to oneself, Suggs believes, and this quality is important not just when playing the music but when creating it as well. “It’s really about authenticity and honesty in terms of how I try to communicate,” he says. “I try to be as much myself as I can.” The title of his latest album, Pure Intention, captures his view of the artistic process.

To Suggs, the ability to hear the authentic selves of others and to be one’s own authentic self while creating and playing music is more important than quantifiable measures of success. “Everybody has their strengths and where they’re at” at any given time, he says.

“Maybe some people are meant to reach and touch four or five people, and other people are meant to reach and touch and resonate with 500. But it’s all valuable in its own way because who knows how it affects the four or five people that you touch if it continues to reverberate? Just because we don’t see it in that moment does not mean that it doesn’t have a value that echoes greatly — beyond what we are able to see and perceive.”

Jazz music, in its variety of genres and its emphasis on musical and vocal improvisation, is ultimately an opportunity for musicians and audiences to listen and acknowledge the “voices” of others while responding with their own. It’s a fitting accompaniment to joyous occasions like Mardi Gras. “It’s a celebration of life,” says Suggs, as he looks forward to the upcoming performance in Atlanta. “There’s something for everybody in a show like this.”

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Shannon Marie Tovey is a freelance music journalist and educator who covers the jazz, blues and rock scene.