Amina Claudine Myers: Well, actually, I was still searching, trying to find out.
Sandra Mujinga: There’s an exercise I do where I look at myself for five to ten minutes.
Myers: Yes, it’s possible. (Laughs) You have to move on, move ahead, keep moving.
Mujinga: Nihilism and cynicism are states that you could be so drawn to because they’re instantaneous—like relief, like a feeling of control—while hope is something that’s really built, something you’re fortifying every day, right?
Myers: Right, organ, tenor, drums. Everything.
•••
Mujinga: The idea was to make the sound kind of stretch and travel, where you can hear an echo. Like there’s something afar that is communicating.
Myers: It’s a slower kind of feeling and you have to really be on top of it and play kind of directly from the muscle work.
Mujinga: And also, seeing the same form again and again is tied up to how a group can be simplified.
Myers: But the thing was, at the beginning, it was really the type of club where they danced.
Mujinga: They know something that we don’t know.
•••
Myers: That era was coming to a close.
Mujinga: That they look the same is almost like a protection, a shield.
Myers: When I was in college, there was this one sister, she had all of Errol Garner’s records.
Mujinga: The older I get, as I become closer to the age she was when she passed, I fear that I’m losing her memory.
Myers: You have to consider all that.