Naming Names

Recently I had a conversation with a friend and collaborator about a project we did together. They’d published a case study and I asked that they put attribution to the broader team on their site – they were deeply gracious and agreed but they did mention that they’d been missed off the attribution on my site. I was mortified. (sorry again azi rad, you and the team were epic)

Correct citation has always been deeply important to me. I collected records in London for as long as I can remember. My collecting buddy the great Jazz Drummer Matt Skelton and I used to head up to the infamous Mole Jazz in London’s Kings Cross to skim through bins of records, I think we were as young as 10.

Matt was better versed in Jazz than I, so I was always playing catch-up. One of the best methods I used to educate myself was liner-notes. The liner-note was the internet before the internet. It allowed me to buy ‘Outer Thoughts’ by George Russell, then start searching the next week for the great Eric Dolphy (Alto-Sax and Bass Clarinet) and Don Ellis (Trumpet). In this way I was able to discover my love for Don Ellis, then his piano player Milcho Leviev, Bulgarian folk music, Dave Holland, then Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard… you see how it goes.

Following players soon gave way to looking at the great producers, mixers and arrangers, before long I began to understand the intricate connections that made music good. I followed these roots right to the beginnings of Blues, discovering the delights of Mary Lou Williams and Lil Hardin the female origins of Jazz that received so little publicity.

Of course citation isn’t limited to Music. Science and Scientific method depends on it. The idea of the ensemble is key to all innovation more profound than any think tank or brain-storming. Building upon the great work of others and providing citation allows others to do the same.

I encourage you all to go look at your portfolios, your websites, your books and publications and think deeply. Did you leave a trail for others to follow? Did you miss people who were deeply important to the work that you helped bring to life. I’m obsessed with citation and I still missed important people. But just through a single conversation I was able to rectify that error. That’s the power of the internet.

In the age of self-promotion it’s so easy to assume the credit for work that you contributed to, even easier to take credit for work you didn’t participate in. I would like to propose that citation is a creative standard. Maybe this is something that Linkedin could create as a data point?

I’m as proud of the people I’ve worked with as I am with the work itself. What they have done beyond the work I have done with them inspires me continuously – and it shows that the decision I made to work with them in the first place was the real brilliance.