Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Civil Rights-Jazz document, 1963

Prior to tomorrow’s inauguration, the New York Times (and I suspect many other publications) has focused in many columns, book reviews and reports on Barack Obama’s election as a turning point in the U.S.’s movement towards full civil rights for all people. The entertainment section makes the case for movies having led the way to our first not-completely- “white”-identified President.

I maintain that the jazz community was in the forefront of the civil rights movement, and remains in the lead for demonstrating how all-inclusive meritocracies look, sound and work. A historical document highlighting the conjunction of jazz and the Civil Rights movement has come to hand — programs from two nights in 1963 when major players performed and major jazz journalists emceed in benefit for CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality) at New York City’s Five Spot Cafe, plus a letter of thanks to bassist Henry Grimes for his participation.

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Armstrong to Ellington to Obama

If anyone needs a primer on how jazz leads directly to the inauguration of Barack Obama as 44th president of the U.S., see Nat Hentoff’s Wall Street Journal article on the history of musicians, audiences, presenters and producers of all “colors” in the struggle for Civil Rights. 
The march from Buddy Bolden playing in New Orleans’ “back ‘o’ town” to a man of diverse ancestry leading the free world from the White House has been direct (if not necessarily “straight”) and determined.

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Cutting Contest, online

Six emerging jazz acts, playing in their hometowns from Fresno to Brisbane, Australia competed publicly via video clips to win a Coltrane boxed set and $1000 cash prizes — that was the First World Internet “Cutting Contest”, results announced January 31 online (of course).  Pretty good gimmick — er, marketing idea — to use the web, expose new talent, enlist the audience in interactivity, among other things the endeavor of TruthInMusic.com (among its motto’s:  “This is John Coltrane’s world . . . we just live in it”)  seems to be about. 

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Parameters of jazz now

The Winterjazzfest held at three venues in Greenwich Village last Saturday, a smorgasbord of almost two dozen acts offered up to attendees of the Association of Performing Arts Centers conference, gave a hint of some sounds to be heard around the U.S. in the months to come. What I witnessed was diverse, engaging, virtuosic but not didactic. The musicians seem to know they’ve got to be audience-friendly, or go without. So they’ve tailored their acts for clarity, balancing familiarity and novelty but not dumbing down. 

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Manhattan music surge for APAP

The Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) convenes in Manhattan this weekend, demonstrating the greatest health and resilience of any sector of the jazz-new music economy. Last year more than 4000 attendees registered to schmooze, exhibit, theorize and opine on panels, take in showcase performances and make deals with musicians eager for gigs.
The talent search is paramount, and among the numerous music showcases in conjunction with APAP all around Manhattan January 9 – 13, three especially stand out: Winterjazzfest, the Brooklyn Jazz Underground Festival and globalFEST 2009. Talent to spare!

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Hope we still hope we can believe in

We — I — need a deep-winter burst of positivity. The Presidential election was two months ago, and nothing has changed! Except the pres-elect is getting heat for all he hasn’t done (bring peace to Israel-Gaza, fix the economy, justify appointments) while the sitting lame duck gets a virtual pass for what he’s ignoring (Israel-Gaza), what he’s flubbed (US economy, world affairs, environment — need more examples?) and what he’s doing now (opening wilderness to development, putting appointees in protected jobs, spinning his legacy).

So here’s an Obama praise song by Fula Flute, an internationally-constituted band featuring a felicitous West African sound: two unusual flutes in not-quite-unison, kora and balafon, upright bass, congas. Vocalist Adoulaye Diabate sings, “If you’re looking for a great leader, you have to find a good person . . . Good evening, Barack Obama.” Fula Flute dedicates its new, second album Mansa America to Big O, with the note “May he help lead the World into a new enlightened era.” Amen to that. 

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South Asian-American jazz from New York

Rudresh Mahanthappa — an extraordinary American jazzman of South Asian descent — has a critical fave with Kinsmen, his album featuring his own alto sax coupled with that of Indian Carnatic master musician Kadri Golpanath, supported by Karachi-born but L.A.-bred former surfer/electric guitarist Rez Abassi, violin, bass, traps, mridingam from East and West. They all talk and play in my NPR production on last night’s “All Things Considered.”

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Celebrating Freddie Hubbard, the intrepid fox

Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard died last night around 2 a.m. in Sherman Oaks Hospital (Los Angeles) of complications following a heart attack he had suffered on the night before Thanksgiving (November 26), not November 30 as previously reported. He was 70 years old.

Gifted with powerful technique, abundant melodic imagination, rhythmic drive and a deep bluesy feeling, Hubbard emerged in the 1960s as one of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and recorded timeless music throughout that decade with John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Andrew Hill and many others — as well as leading his own crackling sessions for Blue Note and Atlantic Records. He was not ideologically an avant-gardist; his compositions such as “Up Jumped Spring” had a lyrical playfulness. But he also excelled at expressing urgency with tunes such as “Crisis” and “Breaking Point.” 

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late gift ideas

You can’t buy ’em music, ’cause you don’t know what they’re missing – so try other music and beyond formats (books, videos, music toys) as stocking stuffers for the out-leaning — 

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I wake up screaming

“Do You Hear What I Hear?” —  the most odious quasi-pop song ever committed – was ringing in my semi-conscious loud enough to jolt me out of sleep one night last week (I summoned to mind “Night In Tunisia,” trying to recall ever kink in Charlie Parker’s famous alto break, to dispell it). “Little Drummer Boy,” “Silent Night,” Gene Autry’s original version of “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer” and James Taylor singing “Go Tell It On The Mountain” — does it really have an extended chorus for recorder ensemble? — assault me at the grocery store (the butcher behind the deli counter fights it with a salsa radio station on high volume). “Jingle Bell Rock” is the best of the bunch — at least Bobby Helms swings and the guitar twangs. Must we suffer this cloying drivel every winter holiday?

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Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard ailing

L.A.-based jazz consultant Ricky Shultz (who directed one of this year’s most innovative label rollouts for Resonance Records) writes: “Freddie Hubbard suffered heart failure last Sunday and is in ICU. One of Freddie’s past bandmates spoke with his wife yesterday a.m. He is being worked on to revive certain organs’ function. I’m told there were some encouraging signs but his condition remains critical. Share some love with all that great Freddie music and keep him in your thoughts.”

Trumpeter Hubbard has been a jazzman’s jazzman and a jazz listener’s, too, bringing bravura chops and visceral feeling to acts of creative daring as a form of popular entertainment (and sometimes art) for 50 years. What follows is my feature article on Freddie Hubbard in “authorized” form, slightly different than the version published as the cover story in Down Beat last June:

On the second of four nights at Freddie Hubbard’s record date with the New Jazz Composers Octet in December 2007, the star trumpeter didn’t commit a note. He improvised poses, faces and witticisms, but no lines on his horn. He didn’t even venture into the isolation booth Tony Bennett’s sound engineer had prepared for him…

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Ten top of 2008 and many more recommendations

So much music, so little time — it’s absurd to whittle down this year’s “best” recordings to 10, an act that merely bows to convention. Why not 15? 25? 50? — if there are that many albums that reward repeated listening with enjoyment and revelation.

I make no claims for the following list being definitive — I haven’t yet had a chance to hear once many of the some 1100 promising cds that arrived for consideration of review since November 1 2007. But I guarantee that none of these recommendations are made on the basis of anything except my liking how they sound, and I didn’t work directly (write liner notes, pr material or consult) regarding any of them. As always, comments on my choices or choices of your own are invited and I urge you to try some out-of-the-ordinary sounds — sure beats “Jingle Bells,” even by the Million Dollar Quartet — right away! 

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