by Robert Zigmund

James McBride, who moved with his mother to Germantown from Brooklyn as a child, must have a really big room to hold all of his awards. “Philadelphia is full of wonderful, wonderful musicians,” he told us recently, “and it’s where I really learned to play jazz.”

A saxophonist and acclaimed composer, McBride was awarded the American Music Festival's Stephen Sondheim Award in 1993, the American Arts and Letters Richard Rodgers Award in 1996 and the inaugural ASCAP Richard Rodgers Horizons Award in 1996. He has written songs for Anita Baker, Grover Washington Jr. and others; he composed the theme music for the Clint Harding Network, for director Jonathan Demme's New Orleans documentary, “Right to Return,” and the Off-Broadway musical, “Bobos,” among others.

But McBride’s accomplishments as an author may be even more impressive than as a musician. He is famed for his 1995 memoir, "The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to his White Mother," as well as his many other works, such as the 2013 National Book Award winner, "The Good Lord Bird," a fictional telling of John Brown's raid, which helped spark the Civil War.

We caught up with the renowned author/musician when he visited Penn State Abington last month. His most recent publication, "Five Carat Soul," is a collection of short stories that McBride wrote over many years. He is now a New York University “Distinguished writer-in-residence.”

What writers had the greatest impact on McBride’s career and writing style? "Jim Harrison was certainly very talented,” he replied, “and, of course, all of the big ones — Harper Lee, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin. Paul Monette, writing at the time of the AIDS crisis, was a fantastic writer, but I just wish they would edit out some of the sex because it turns people off. Without the sex scenes, his work reads as a beautiful coming-of-age story."

Which of McBride’s books was the most difficult for him to write? "Easily the book on James Brown; there were so many vipers, robbers and thieves out for his money. Nobody wanted to tell the truth, and everyone had a different truth, mostly about getting his money." The James Brown biography (2016) is entitled "Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul."

When asked how he manages to juggle two art forms, both at the highest level of expertise, McBride replied, "I tend to do one at a time and do it to the max. I've never been the greatest saxophone player, but I play because it brings me joy."

When asked what question McBride wished he had been asked that he wasn’t, McBride laughed and then remarked, "That in and of itself is an unanswerable question, but I suppose 'Why is it enjoyable to not know the answer to everything?' And the answer is that the joy is in the journey. And now we're getting more abstract, but people are saying 'everything is wrong.' Everything's not wrong; it's the way it is meant to be; so we should start looking for solutions instead of just finding problems."

After the interview, McBride, speaking to a packed room, began recounting memorable stories of his life and shared lessons with the audience. After living in Germantown, he earned a master’s in journalism from Columbia University, which led him to his first writing job, at the Wilmington News Journal.

McBride talked about his experiences working at the Boston Globe, People Magazine and the Washington Post. He said that at these publications, there were many writers who were much better than he was but that he worked twice as hard, and that made the difference. The message was that working hard for something can overcome gaps in skill and that we should all strive to be better than we were the previous day.

"Most of what you do as a creative artist is failure. The important thing is to learn to forget and move past those failures … Use your imagination because nobody can ever take that away from you. Change in the world isn't from tomorrow's biggest headline, and it's not in a tweet or a Facebook post; it is the good things you do that change the world."

Reprinted, with permission, from the Penn State Abington newspaper. For more information about McBride, visit www.jamesmcbride.com.