What Kind of Artist Was Wayne Shorter?

One thing that emerges in Dorsay Alavi’s three-part documentary “Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity” (out on Amazon Prime this Friday) is that the late, great jazz saxophonist and composer was, not to put too fine a point on it, a nerd. Born in Newark in 1933, he grew up a devotee of comic books and fantasy movies, and, with his older brother, Alan, created a theatre of cosplay in a nearby vacant lot, which, he recalls in the film, served sometimes as the Sahara Desert and sometimes as Mars. He was a precociously talented child, although that talent initially expressed itself not as musicality but as a prodigious gift for art. When he was twelve, he won an art contest and was accepted to Newark Arts High School. He copied images from comic books, then started drawing comics himself. A surviving specimen seen in the movie is impressive in its elaborate and intricate artistry but, most of all, in its sheer copiousness.

Shorter was also a movie buff, and it was cinema, curiously, that awakened his musical vocation. He began cutting school to go to the movie theatre, where, between features, there was often live music, sometimes by notable jazz bands. When he was hauled before the vice-principal, the woman, with Solomonic wisdom, decided not to punish but to encourage him, and sent him to music class. At fifteen, Shorter started to play the clarinet; a year later, he switched to tenor saxophone. He says, in the film, that his talent more or less took him by surprise. Praised in front of the class by a music teacher as the only student to get a perfect score on an exam, he had an intuition: “Better not ignore this.”

With Alan (then also a saxophonist, later a trumpeter), Shorter formed a band that played modern jazz. The brothers cultivated a reputation for weirdness, wearing exotic costumes of brimless hats and floor-length coats, and painting nicknames—“Doc Strange” and “Mr. Weird”—on their saxophone cases. Wayne went to N.Y.U. and studied music composition. By that time, his performances were attracting attention from leading modern-jazz musicians, who called him “the Newark Flash.” In 1959, at the age of twenty-six, he was invited to join the drummer Art Blakey’s hard-bop band, the Jazz Messengers, for which he soon became the main composer. His compositions revealed themselves to be as distinctive as his improvisations. In 1964, he joined Miles Davis’s new quintet and immediately became its leading composer as well. The group gave him a chance to expand his music intellectually, and, in the movie, the quintet’s pianist, Herbie Hancock, provides a precious anecdote about Shorter’s growth, which incidentally answers a question I’ve long harbored about a favorite recording—“The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965,” an eight-disc set of the Davis quintet performing for two nights at the titular Chicago club. To me, these discs have always seemed to capture the band at its most radical extreme, coming the closest I’ve ever heard to the protean energies of free jazz. Now I know why: Hancock recalls that, before the gig, the quintet’s drummer, Tony Williams, said, “It’s getting too easy. I’ve got to play things that are unexpected.” Hancock continues: “Tony called it ‘anti-music.’ O.K., I’m going to play anti-music, too.” They presented the idea to Shorter, who “didn’t say a whole lot,” and to the bassist, Ron Carter, who agreed. But a surprise awaited them at the club: it was full of recording equipment. Unbeknownst to them, Davis had arranged for Columbia Records to record the gig for an album, and Hancock wondered if they should abandon their plot. But, he recalled, “Tony said, ‘I’m going to stick to my guns’ ”; Hancock agreed, and “nobody said anything to Miles.”

Shorter was with Davis when, in the late sixties, the group shifted toward rock-inflected music with electric keyboards and guitars, but without sacrificing intensity or freedom. In 1970, encouraged by Davis to form his own group, Shorter co-founded Weather Report, which similarly fused rock and jazz but with less dissonance and less fury. The results proved less challenging for Shorter, but they earned him a pop-music currency rare for jazz musicians. He played on Steely Dan’s “Aja” and, in 1977, played as a sideman with Joni Mitchell, beginning a collaboration that endured across twenty-six years and ten albums. Mitchell, interviewed in “Zero Gravity,” provides crucial insights regarding Shorter’s art, saying that he is essentially a visual artist: “I thought of him as a paintbrush; it wasn’t like music, it was like painting, which is right on. So I’m allowing him to paint on my canvas.” Larry Klein, who was married to Mitchell and produced several of her albums featuring Shorter, opines that “he was thinking like a screenwriter more than a saxophone player.”

The insight, harking back to Shorter’s primordial artistic passion, elucidates a crucial element of Shorter’s musical style—its sense of abstraction. Writing in memory of Shorter earlier this year, I described his “sonic elusiveness,” with solos that seem to be “in two places at once.” Mitchell and Klein provide the ideal metaphors for his musical manner—because, unlike musical performance, painting and movies don’t inherently involve the artist’s physical presence; the director is behind the scenes, the painter is in front of the canvas, and the result is a finished product that implies the artist’s presence without embodying it. For Shorter, improvisation has a tiny bit of lag time, a delay. It’s the sound of a thinking man who steps back even as he freely creates, with the result that, when he lets go and rushes ahead into the moment, the sense of reckless abandon is all the more exhilarating.

The three parts of Alavi’s documentary last more than three hours, and they left me feeling somewhat snookered. I had watched the documentary because, though I love Shorter’s music, I knew little about his life or the fine details of his career, and have rarely heard him speak in interviews. The movie turns out to cover this ground in an encyclopedia-like fashion, and does so at the expense of its filmed interviews. The interviews themselves are rich and varied. Shorter discusses his life and work, and we hear from various friends and family members. There are revealing insights not only from Hancock and Mitchell but from a whole range of peers, including Sonny Rollins, Reggie Workman, and Esperanza Spalding. It should be an extraordinary experience to spend time in the presence of such people, and the material cries out for a way of filming that captures that sense of experience, a method of editing that maximizes the emotion of the moment. But Alavi, concentrating on the overarching story, films the interviews without distinction and cuts them into snippets, treating them like fungible sources of information, useful only for what they tell us about this or that episode. (She also mines them for something less than information—namely, vague and fulsome praise that might embarrass Goneril and Regan.) In trying to bolster the drama of Shorter’s long life, she misses the drama that it is the first job of a documentarian who does interviews to understand: these encounters and discussions are themselves dramatic events, real-time connections between the interviewees and the filmmaker.

Shorter’s music doesn’t fare much better, often getting used as a background over which voices of interview subjects are allowed to intrude. And the film deploys a range of other visual paraphernalia as onscreen wallpaper to escape from talking heads: reënactments, animated sequences, stock archival footage, still photographs, a grab bag of ornamental methods that represent the familiar homogenizing conventions of documentaries. Not that such reënactments and animation are intrinsically worse than images of people talking, but documentarians who make use of them are venturing into the realm of fiction, and few nonfiction filmmakers satisfy the creative and stylistic expectations that a viewer brings to a dramatic film.

The movie’s failures of form and style are unfortunate, because Alavi ultimately delivers a portrait of Shorter that is both illuminating and moving. (It sometimes amplifies or refines subjects discussed in Michelle Mercer’s excellent biography, “Footprints,” and Mercer, who is frequently interviewed onscreen, also consulted on the film.) Among other things, “Zero Gravity” conveys the immense burden of loss and grief that Shorter experienced during his career. There was a scarring first marriage, in 1961, to Irene (Teruko) Nakagami. Shorter was romantically inexperienced and shy, and Teruko, growing unhappy in the relationship, took to disappearing for extended periods, which he bore stoically until their separation, in 1966. That same year, Shorter’s father, Joseph, was killed in a car accident while driving home from one of his son’s gigs. Shorter also met the woman who was to become his second wife, Ana Maria Patricio. Their first child, a daughter named Iska, was born with brain damage. From infancy on, she had dozens of seizures daily—the stress of which led both Shorter and Ana Maria to drink heavily—and died, at the age of fourteen (reportedly of a seizure, though the film attributes her death to an accidental overdose of prescription drugs that she found at home). Shorter’s brother Alan died in his mid-fifties; the movie says far too little about him, but a moment in which Shorter, filmed seemingly casually in the back seat of a moving car, discusses this loss is memorable—one of the rare scenes that conveys a sense of spontaneity and personal connection. Another shattering blow came in 1996, when Ana Maria was killed in the explosion of T.W.A. Flight 800. Shorter speaks of these losses with a rare philosophical equanimity, saying that “the tragedy is temporary” in the light of a “constant,” which is “waiting for us to know it.”

The film offers a piquant portrait of Shorter’s later years, which seem now almost like a return to the source: his visual talent had not left him, and, in 2018, he created a graphic novel, as part of his album “Emanon.” He maintained a copious collection of figurines from a wide range of fantasy sources. For a long time, he focussed on superheroes and then, as seen in the film, switched to fairies. There are also surprising insights into crucial inspirations for Shorter’s later work. We see Shorter working on a composition while a CNN broadcast is playing on a TV in his office. His third wife, Carolina, says, “The TV is actually a very important component of Wayne’s work universe, if you will. He usually writes—” and Shorter interrupts to say, “against it.” It’s in such interstices and asides that the film brings Shorter and his world, inner and outer, most vividly to life. ♦

UPSC Essentials : Expert Talk | ‘CSAT was meant to test general aptitude, not to select an expert,’ says Deepanshu Singh

UPSC Civil Services Preliminary exam was conducted nearly three months ago and ever since then, aspirants have been worried about the enhanced difficulty level of its qualifying paper — CSAT. Manas Srivastava talks to Deepanshu Singh, our expert, who weighs in on various challenges of this paper. Most importantly, he also focuses on solutions, which you will find towards the end of the interview. Let’s know the concerns and get some questions answered.

About the Expert: Deepanshu Singh is an educator and a mentor for UPSC aspirants. He has guided many aspirants in the past with his expertise on subjects such as International relations, Polity, and more. He has authored two books on International Relations for Civil Services Exam. Beyond academia, Singh is currently serving as a public policy expert and shaping strategies for India’s G20 Presidency. He was among the first UPSC mentors to highlight the increasing difficulty level of the CSAT paper.

The CSAT paper referred to here is the General Studies Paper-II of the Civil Services (Preliminary) Exam which is a qualifying paper with minimum qualifying marks fixed at 33 per cent. This 200 marks paper comprises questions on comprehension, interpersonal skills including communication skills, logical reasoning, and analytical ability, decision making and problem solving, general mental ability, basic numeracy (numbers and their relations, orders of magnitude, etc.) (Class 10 level), data interpretation (charts, graphs, tables, data sufficiency etc. — Class 10 level). The questions are of multiple choice, objective type.

Manas: This year’s UPSC Prelims is being seen as one of the toughest papers so far. CSAT paper, which is qualifying in nature, has become one of the most difficult areas to prepare. What are the issues with the CSAT paper that the aspirants and you are finding challenging or unfair?

Deepanshu Singh: CSAT was meant to test the general aptitude of civil services aspirants. It never meant to select an expert. Aptitude is tested to ascertain whether a person can be trained in the future or not so you need only basic mathematical, reasoning, and comprehension skills. Some inherent issues with the paper, as I see of late have been —

1. Undue emphasis on mathematics: Many argue that the paper places undue emphasis on mathematical and quantitative aptitude. This is problematic for aspirants from non-mathematical backgrounds like humanities, arts, and some streams of science but more so for students coming from rural and underprivileged backgrounds. It is an important psychological fact that early and formative years of learning have an impact on your higher education and these students who come from such backgrounds find it difficult to cope or compete with students from urban-middle class city-educated aspirants.

2. Complexity: Over the past few years, the complexity of questions, especially in logical reasoning and quantitative aptitude, has increased. While challenging questions may be suitable for testing aptitude, there is a thin line between challenging and discouraging. A few of my students who have even qualified for the exam and have been allocated the coveted IPS, IRS couldn’t clear the 2023 Prelims CSAT paper as they were appearing to improve their rank. Some of them are even from IITs.

So, no being an IITian or from a technical background doesn’t guarantee success in UPSC CSAT Prelims.

In my opinion, UPSC has to really think about what kind of candidates are they looking for.

3. Reading comprehension: While this section tests English comprehension skills, the passages have sometimes been long and time-consuming, leaving less time for other sections. Most of the passages have a question that asks the assumption, or theme of the passage which can be challenging for aspirants from Hindi medium background for two major reasons. First, poor Google copy-paste translation, and second non-availability of quality reading material in Hindi newspapers which limits their comprehension ability under pressure in this paper. Reading newspapers, especially the editorials, is helpful in speed reading and analysing the essence of the passage quickly as most of these passages are picked up from the editorials of The Indian Express or some book.

4. Diversion from the prescribed syllabus: The syllabus prescribed by the UPSC mentions questions based on decision making, 10th class mathematics, interpersonal skills including communication skills, general mental ability, etc however when you see the past few years’ trends, there are no questions on decision making or communication skills. In fact, there has been a sudden increase in the number and the complexity of mathematics questions which by no means are of general mental ability.

Manas: The CSAT paper according to UPSC is a ‘qualifying’ paper. What should ‘qualifying’ mean? How far does the UPSC CSAT paper ‘qualify’ the general understanding of a qualifying paper?

Deepanshu Singh: The word ‘qualifying’ should be self explanatory. Ideally, a ‘screening tool’ should filter out the non-serious from the serious candidates. Another major role of a qualifying paper should be to assess the role competence and the analytical skills required for the post for which the examination is being conducted. A ‘qualifying’ paper should essentially serve as a filter to ensure that candidates possess a minimum standard of aptitude and skills necessary for the role. It shouldn’t be a major eliminatory hurdle.

The CSAT, with its current difficulty level, appears to be moving away from this principle. Instead of ensuring basic aptitude, it is eliminating a significant number of candidates, many of whom might excel in areas more directly relevant to civil services.

Now in civil services, there are so many diverse posts and roles and all of them require some basic numeracy skills, reading and comprehension, and reasoning skills and the paper should be designed to test just this. Unfortunately, the present paper somehow doesn’t fit this criteria. According to me, it is getting biased towards people who are gifted in these skills or who have taken some advanced training, coaching or guidance in some institute for this paper. The present paper pattern somehow makes candidates believe that attending a coaching is a must. (We will discuss solutions in the latter part of the interview.)

Ironically, the cut-off for qualifying prelims was supposed to be decided by Paper 1 consisting of general studies, rather it is now being decided by Paper 2 where most good candidates are being filtered out. Some of my students who scored 20+ marks higher than the cutoff are missing out on prelims by 1 or 2 marks due to the CSAT paper.

Manas: Are students from engineering and English medium background more comfortable with the current format of CSAT? Being an engineer by qualification who mentors students from different disciplines, what is your opinion on this?

Deepanshu Singh: To an extent, yes. Though there are a lot of students qualifying from Humanities and non-engineering backgrounds, a recent report by the Parliamentary committee has made this observation which answers your question.

Students from non-engineering background from rural areas — with no proper guidance and quality education — are the most disadvantaged in this situation.

Though as I mentioned in the recent pattern, a lot of engineering students are failing to qualify for the CSAT paper due to the extreme complexity of the paper. Some ofcourse are unable to analyse the demand, but it is mostly because of the limited choice of questions available to the students once the paper becomes extremely challenging.

Having said that, I would also agree that some deserving candidates do make it to the final list, but we also have instances where some top 10 rankers have marginally qualified the CSAT paper. What if they would have missed by 0.5 marks? That’s the point to ponder.

Manas: Having talked about challenges and the increasing difficulty level, what will change in UPSC preparation and coaching industry?

Deepanshu Singh: I think it’s a boon for the coaching industry. This unpredictablity of UPSC exams questions have made at least one thing predictable now, many students are joining specialised CSAT batches which range from Rs 1000 to 50,000 — depending on the institute and the teachers from whom you are seeking guidance.

I have myself studied at convent schools and IIM, and I feel the paper is getting tougher every year.

Aspirants are now more scared. Some of my students who couldn’t qualify for the exam in the last two or three attempts are spending around four or five months on a qualifying paper which requires just 33 per cent marks, instead of honing their skills in general studies as they just don’t want to be out of the list because of the CSAT paper. Some of them have given up hope. They have been looking for some alternative as they think it’s a waste of time now if UPSC keeps on setting this kind of paper.

Manas: We are not sure by when the challenges you mentioned will be addressed. Many of the aspirants will appear next year and have less time. They write to us seeking constructive solutions as they want to convert obstacles into opportunities. Let’s talk about some constructive solutions. How should aspirants approach this paper?

Deepanshu Singh: Even though there is no one fixed way of approaching this, I would like to share some tips that I regularly tell my students and it has worked for them.

I see reading comprehension (RC) as the king. On average 25-27 questions will be from the reading comprehension, so make it your strength. Focus your energy and get maximum return in a qualifying paper like CSAT instead of preparing it like a Mains paper. Even if you get 22-23 questions right, you can score around 54-55 marks just from this section. Now, you just need 15-18 marks more to be on the safer side which comes down to solving 6-7 questions correctly without any negative. You can prepare RC section by solving PYQ of at least 5 years to understand the type of questions asked which mainly are of 4-5 types.

Also as mentioned before, reading newspapers like The Indian Express and quality books helps in this section. One important tip for all aspirants is to remove any prior knowledge bias you have as it comes naturally from reading such a diverse syllabus. If the passage says that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, then it is not.

1. Always aim for 100 marks. You need to attempt around 45 questions (that means you don’t have to even think of 35 questions), out of these 20-22 you can get right from RC, rest you have to now figure out from Reasoning and Maths. Aim for 100 because then you will land up with a comfortable range of 80-90 to prepare for Mains comfortably at least that should be the aim. If you anyway attempt less, you are reducing your chances.

2. In reasoning, some areas were predictable but based on the latest trend even this has become tricky. Still, some questions on coding-decoding, sitting arrangement, cubes, and age can be practiced which can help you solve 6-7 questions correctly.

3. Last but not least is the Maths or the quantitative aptitude section which is the main culprit here for most aspirants. I would advise focusing on certain topics here and solving as many as 20-30 different types of questions to get a hang of it. Now this is for someone who finds this section difficult, some of them breeze through maths but get stuck in RC. Number system, speed distance time, percentages, permutation, and combination are some topics that cannot be avoided. Try to practice at least 15-20 different types of questions based on the topics that have been asked in the past 3-4 years.

The above strategy will only work if you get enough practice. For someone who fears this paper, I would say practice different sections every weekend for at least 3-4 months, and someone comfortable with the paper still needs to practice MCQs at least a month or 15 days before the paper to get a hang of it.

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Maui’s emergency services chief resigns after facing criticism for not activating sirens during fire

LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — The head of the Maui Emergency Management Agency resigned abruptly Thursday, a day after saying he had no regret about not using sirens to warn residents of wildfires that devastated the historic seaside community of Lahaina and killed at least 111 people.

That decision from the agency directed by Administrator Herman Andaya, coupled with water shortages that hampered firefighters and an escape route that became clogged with vehicles, has brought intense criticism from many residents. The lack of sirens has emerged as a potential misstep, and The Associated Press reported that it was part of a series of communication issues that added to the chaos.

Mayor Richard Bissen accepted Andaya’s resignation effective immediately, the County of Maui announced on Facebook. Andaya cited unspecified health reasons, with no further details provided.

“Given the gravity of the crisis we are facing, my team and I will be placing someone in this key position as quickly as possible,” Bissen said in the statement.

A day earlier, Andaya defended the decision not to sound sirens as the flames raged. Hawaii has what it touts as the largest system of outdoor alert sirens in the world.

“We were afraid that people would have gone mauka,” Andaya said, using a Hawaiian word that means inland or toward the mountain. “If that was the case, then they would have gone into the fire.”

The siren system was created after a 1946 tsunami that killed more than 150 on the Big Island, and its website says they may be used to alert for fires.

Andaya was to take part in a meeting of Maui’s fire and public safety commission on Thursday morning, but it was canceled. On Wednesday he vigorously defended his qualifications for the job, which he had held since 2017. He said he was not appointed but had been vetted, took a civil service exam and was interviewed by seasoned emergency managers.

Andaya said he had previously been deputy director of the Maui County Department of Housing and Human Concerns and had been chief of staff for former Maui County Mayor Alan Arakawa for 11 years. During that time, he said, he often reported to “emergency operations centers” and participated in numerous trainings.

“So to say that I’m not qualified I think is incorrect,” he said.

Arakawa said he was disappointed by the resignation “because now we’re out one person who is really qualified.” Arakawa said Andaya was scrutinized for the job by the county’s personnel service.

“He was trying to be strong and trying to do the job,” Arakawa said about the wildfire response. “He was very, very heartbroken about all the things that happened.”

Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez said earlier Thursday in a statement that an outside organization will conduct “an impartial, independent” review of the government’s response and officials intend “to facilitate any necessary corrective action and to advance future emergency preparedness.” The investigation will likely take months, she added.

Avery Dagupion, whose family’s home was destroyed, is among many residents who say they weren’t given earlier warning to get out.

He pointed to an announcement by Bissen on Aug. 8 saying the fire had been contained. That lulled people into a sense of safety and left him distrusting officials, Dagupion said.

At the Wednesday news conference, Gov. Josh Green and Bissen bristled when asked about such criticism.

“The people who were trying to put out these fires lived in those homes — 25 of our firefighters lost their homes,” Bissen said. “You think they were doing a halfway job?”

Displaced residents are steadily filling hotels that are prepared to house them and provide services until at least next spring.

Authorities hope to empty crowded, uncomfortable group shelters by early next week, said Brad Kieserman, vice president for disaster operations with the American Red Cross. Hotels are also available for eligible evacuees who have spent the last eight days sleeping in cars or camping in parking lots, he said.

“We will be able to keep folks in hotels for as long as it takes to find housing for them,” Kieserman said at a media briefing. “I am confident we’ll have plenty of rooms.”

Contracts with the hotels will last for at least seven months but could easily be extended, he said. Service providers at the properties will offer meals, counseling, financial assistance and other disaster aid.

Green has said at least 1,000 hotel rooms will be set aside. In addition, AirBnB said its nonprofit wing will provide properties for 1,000 people.

The governor has also vowed to protect local landowners from being “victimized” by opportunistic buyers. Green said Wednesday that he instructed the state attorney general to work toward a moratorium on land transactions in Lahaina, even as he acknowledged that would likely face legal challenges.

Since the flames consumed much of Lahaina just over a week ago, locals have feared that a rebuilt town could become even more oriented toward wealthy visitors.

The cause of the wildfires, the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century, is under investigation. But Hawaii is increasingly at risk from disasters, with wildfire rising fastest, according to an AP analysis of FEMA records.

The local power utility faced criticism for leaving power on as strong winds from a passing hurricane buffeted a parched area , and one video showed a cable dangling in a charred patch of grass, surrounded by flames, in the early moments of the wildfire.

“Facts about this event will continue to evolve,” Hawaiian Electric CEO Shelee Kimura wrote in an email to utility customers Thursday. “And while we may not have answers for some time, we are committed, working with many others, to find out what happened as we continue to urgently focus on Maui’s restoration and rebuilding efforts.”

The search for the missing moved beyond Lahaina to other communities that were destroyed. Searchers had covered about 45% of the burned territory as of Thursday, the governor said.

Corrine Hussey Nobriga, whose home was spared, said it was hard to lay blame for a tragedy that took everyone by surprise, even if some of her neighbors raised questions about the absence of sirens and inadequate evacuation routes. The fire moved quickly through her neighborhood, not far from where crews were sifting through ash and debris looking for human remains.

“One minute we saw the fire over there,” she said, pointing toward faraway hills, “and the next minute it’s consuming all these houses.”

The search was marred by intermittent cellphone service and misleading information on social media. There were also challenges finding people who may be in hospitals, hunkered down at friends’ houses or in unofficial shelters that have popped up. Many people made fliers and were going door to door in search of loved ones.

The FBI’s Honolulu division said it is helping Maui police locate and identify missing people. Immediate family members who are on Maui can provide DNA samples at the Hyatt Recency in Kaanapali beginning Friday, and those elsewhere can contact the FBI for instructions.

Judy Riley, who has been working with families seeking relatives, said false leads and a sense that “no one is in charge of the missing” have contributed to a sense of despair.

“If you are looking for the missing, it’s easy for people to slip through the cracks,” she said.

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This story has been updated to correct the spelling of the name Nobriga in one instance.

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Kelleher reported from Honolulu and Weber from Los Angeles. Contributing to this report were Associated Press journalists Michael Casey in Concord, New Hampshire; Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island; Seth Borenstein in Washington, D.C.; and Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Missouri.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.