5 Questions with Mali Obomsawin
1) What first got you into jazz?
My grandfather was a country and jazz mandolinist in the Bay Area back in the mid-20th century. He, my dad and my uncle had a band, too… I think their repertoire varied, but the old jazz songs that I heard my dad singing growing up were from those times. My grandma’s favorite song they played was “Tangerine.” When I was a kid and chose the upright bass, my dad was happy to be able to play the old songs together.
When I was about fifteen, I attended the Maine Jazz Camp in my hometown, which brought in a lot of modern jazz and avant-garde players from New York and Boston for a couple weeks every summer. My first memory is trying to play Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” with a bunch of squeaky teenagers. I remember how exciting it was, and how different the music felt from my understanding of how jazz worked. I wish I could remember who the ensemble leader was that year; it might have been Kirk Knuffke.
2) Can you share about your background?
People really sleep on the traditional folk music of the Northeast. Growing up in rural Maine, I was raised in the area’s deep, deep fiddle and dance community – a tradition that reflects the history of colonization and settlement in the region. I grew up with a lot of exposure to Wabanaki music, but once I got to middle and high school, I was really excited about the trad stuff that you’d find at jam sessions, contradances, community spaces and summer camps in Maine. When Europeans settled the northeast, they brought Irish and Scottish music to Maine and the Maritime provinces, French-turned-Quebecois tunes and dances from the Acadians that came from ‘French Canada’ and the borderlands, and Appalachian tunes that traveled up the AT (which ends in Maine). Ragtime, sea shanties and all kinds of other influences have created a wildly complex series of traditions that inform the musical culture in the western foothills where I grew up.
While I don’t live in that world anymore, I’m really grateful for having grown up playing community-based music that was passed on aurally and shared in community spaces… It almost feels like a relic of another time before the corporatizing and flattening of everything. Jazz has certainly suffered in a similar way through its institutionalization — I think predatory capitalism takes a huge toll on music scenes that rely on communal practices and physical spaces.
3) What themes do you pursue in your work?
I have a need to hear a mix of predetermined and undetermined voices in my music. I’m not really interested in hearing parts executed by shredding players as much as I am in finding out what a character has to say – how my idea might be shaped and improved by others. I write for specific voices and sometimes a tune isn’t complete until I’ve found the right personality for it. I want to encourage agency and sovereignty in the community I cultivate through my music. People like to dismiss free jazz as anarchy, but I feel that’s kind of uneducated. Jazz’s visionaries charted this out as a new way of negotiating form and freedom, and it takes just as much rigor and structural intention as any other part of the tradition. Whatever you want to call it, this creative approach remains expansive and exciting to me as someone curious about what it means to push against rigid systems. I like to provide structured context for uncensored dialogue.
4) What projects are you working on currently?
I’m taking 2025 to rest, write, study and shed. I’m learning that constant touring isn’t actually a mark of success, and I’m taking time to reconnect with my practice.
5) What artists do you love that everyone should check out?
I just found out about Lassi Logrén’s Jouhikko record. Pretty cool.
Bonus question: What’s in your instrument case (besides the instrument)?
My clarinetist got me a chicken-wing shaped candle for my birthday. It’s bubble-wrapped and tucked into the front pocket of my bass case. You never know when you’re gonna need a wing.
