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JOEL ROSE, HOST:
Saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins moves easily between the complex time signatures of jazz and the raw emotion of the blues.
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ROSE: Wilkins is 29 years old, the youngest person to receive a 2026 MacArthur fellowship, popularly known as the genius grant. I called him up and asked what it felt like to get the life-changing call.
IMMANUEL WILKINS: It's cool to be kind of blessed on a random Tuesday - you know what I mean? - with that news, you know?
ROSE: Wilkins is also a multidisciplinary artist whose work is rooted in history - from narratives of injustice and pain to moments of joy and grace. When we spoke, I asked how he draws on historical acts of violence against Black people in his music.
WILKINS: You know, a lot of it is spending a lot of time with the material, spending a lot of time with the archives. I think a lot of it is actually about mining the ruins my own self and having a deep relationship and an embodied relationship, sometimes in a, you know, kind of masochistic way, in which I'm really, like, spending a lot of time with really grotesque subject matter, and...
ROSE: What does that sound like?
WILKINS: It sounds like emotion. And I think that's, like, the privilege of sound and music is that, you know, it can make us think about these worlds of emotions that we may not have the words for. A really vivid example would be on something like "Mary Turner - An American Tradition."
(SOUNDBITE OF IMMANUEL WILKINS' "MARY TURNER - AN AMERICAN TRADITION")
WILKINS: There's something that does feel quite narrative about the way that the song goes, but in a lot of ways, when I compose it and when we performed it, there was no preconceived notion of what a narrative could sound like. And so I think that one's, like, a really great example of kind of emotion, you know, building out a certain storyline.
(SOUNDBITE OF IMMANUEL WILKINS' "MARY TURNER - AN AMERICAN TRADITION")
ROSE: I want to ask about your album "Blues Blood." For several of the live performances, you and your ensemble were joined by a chef who prepared a meal on the stage. Explain what you are trying to do there.
WILKINS: I wanted to write a piece that dealt with, like, ancestral memory, generational memory, cultural heirlooms, things that get passed down through - you know, through the bloodline, things that get passed down generationally, that don't necessarily have physicality to them.
And so I'm thinking about music in that way. I'm thinking about dance in that way. I'm thinking about the trans-Atlantic slave trade in which there were, you know, a lot of things that Africans could not bring with them physically to the Americas. And so what we're really thinking about is the way that, like, immaterial art forms really flourish.
(SOUNDBITE OF IMMANUEL WILKINS' "AFTERLIFE RESIDENCE TIME")
WILKINS: And I think about food as another one of those kind of immaterial archives and one of those cultural heirlooms that gets passed down generationally. I was really just thinking about the improvisational and also deeply rigorous and theoretical art form of the culinary experience and how that, you know, serves a really similar and parallel function to what it feels like to play music and also to interact with our ancestors throughout studying this music and also thinking about recipes.
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ROSE: What was it actually like on stage?
WILKINS: Really strange. Usually when I'm in that close a proximity to food, I am in my mother's kitchen, or I'm cooking in my house, you know, or serving food, you know, from friends at the house. And so there's, like, this kind of communal atmosphere that, I think, is sometimes lost on the bandstand and something that I've always yearned for. And that kind of multisensorial experience of, you know, being able to smell food being made on stage, I think it really, like, dissolves the bandstand in a beautiful way where it's not about performance anymore. It's actually just about, you know, a bunch of people gathering together and hanging out and jamming, you know?
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ROSE: Did you play different?
WILKINS: Totally. Yeah, you definitely play different. It feels like no one's watching you, you know? It feels like you are with friends, as well. I think there's something that's, like - there's something about food that kind of removes the veil in a lot of ways. I love going out to eat and sharing plates with people because it no longer is about whether, like, you have enough, but it's about whether the person next to you has enough, you know, or who wants the last bite. I think that sort of, like, care and courtesy for other people is a practice that, like, I really have fell in love with. And it's also something that is, like, super - it functions in a really similar way to what it feels like to improvise and play with people on - you know, in the context of music.
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ROSE: OK, explain what you mean by that. Like, how does the care of, like, offering somebody the last bite translate to a musical improvisation setting?
WILKINS: There's this really, like, interesting balance between collectivity and then saying (ph), like, individuation, right? Like, my concern is, you know, throughout the concert, man, how much - like, did the piano player get enough time in the solo? Did the vocalist get enough time in the solo? Have you - has the bass player taken a solo yet? You know, like, I think about, like - also, like, the bass player is, like, the quietest instrument on stage, and the drummer is the loudest. Yeah, we're always just constantly considering everyone on stage, in a very similar way to how one would consider other people in a meal.
ROSE: As someone who got the MacArthur fellowship at a relatively young age, you hopefully will get a long time to use it, right? What are you hoping to do?
WILKINS: I think in my musical practice, there's also a visual art practice that is kind of embedded within that in which I'm, like, making graphic scores. Those graphic scores are some works on paper and then also sometimes larger-scale sculptural pieces, similar to the playground that I mentioned, which was, like, 20 feet by 20 feet. And then we've also been making some megaphones that are also pretty large, like, 6 feet by 12 feet. And so, you know, those things cost a whole lot of money to make - materials and things. And so a lot of that work, actually, we'll - I mean, like, we'll see a categorical difference and escalation in my process.
ROSE: I've been speaking with Immanuel Wilkins, the youngest winner of this year's MacArthur fellowships and a saxophonist based in New York. Thank you so much for talking to us.
WILKINS: Thank you so much for having me. It's really a pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF IMMANUEL WILKINS' "WARRIORS")
ROSE: For more music from Immanuel Wilkins, check out his Tiny Desk performance on npr.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF IMMANUEL WILKINS' "WARRIORS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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