Sault's Untitled (Rise) and "Real Talk"

Review and discussion on Sault’s 2020 album “Untitled (Rise)”

Avery R. Young's tubman.: Religion and Resistance

Review and discussion on Avery R. Young's 2019 album tubman.

Moor Mother's Uncomfortable Conversation: Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes

Review and discussion on Moor Mother’s 2019 release Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes

Relevant Links:

Full Red Bull interview with Moor Mother

For more on Black Quantum Futurism

Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On:" The Virtuosity of Message

 Review and discussion on Marvin Gaye's 1971 album What's Going On.

Göransson's "Black Panther:" Hegemony and Representation

Review and discussion on Ludwig Göransson’s 2018 score to Marvel’s Black Panther movie.

Relevant Links:

The Making of the Black Panther Soundtrack with Ludwig Goransson

Song Exploder Podcast ep. 131

Living Colour: A Vivid Recollection

Review, discussion, and anecdotes surrounding Living Colour’s 1988 album Vivid.

Fela Kuti's Zombie: Weapons of Power and Practice

Review and discussion on Fela Kuti’s 1977 album Zombie with special guest commentator Digital D.

Relevant links

A old text post on the Budos Band and Fela.

Zombie was a top 10 album for me in 2004

Digital D’s Soundcloud page

Summer Album Overview 2020: Shades of Black pt. 2

Another overview as summer 2020 draws to a close, including:

Funkadelic – Maggot Brain (1971)

Heroes are Gang Leaders – The Amiri Baraki Sessions (2019)

Moses Sumney – Græ (2020)

The Koreatown Oddity – Little Dominique’s Nosebleed (2020)

MonoNeon – Living The Best Life And The Worst Life At The Same Damn Time (2019)

Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On? (1971)

Previous post in the Shades of Black series

Link to Robert Johnson post

And below is the ever-growing 2020 Radio playlist

Summer Album Overview 2020: Shades of Black pt.1

Overview of my mid-year music stimulus package, including:

Run the Jewels – RTJ4 (2020)

Damon Locks and the Black Monument Ensemble – Where Future Unfolds (2019)

Moor Mother – Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes (2019)

Afrikan Sciences – Centered (2019)

Shon Dervis – 16 (2018)

The Meters – Look-Ka Py Py (1970)

Relevant Links:

Review of Hama’s Houmeissa

The ever-growing 2020 Spotify Playlist

Fishbone's "In Your Face:" Echoes of Desegregation

Review and discussion on Fishbone’s 1986 album In Your Face through the lens of 70s and 80s school desegregation practices.

Relevant Links
Older post on Truth and Soul

Breaking the Silence: The Life and Legacy of Robert Johnson

A look at the life and legacy of Robert Johnson through the lens of the 1997 compilation King of the Delta Blues.

Relevant Links:

Robert Johnson’s VEVO

Spring Album Overview Part 1: The Quarantine Collection

Overview of recent albums in rotation, including:

Steve Hackett: At the Edge of Light (2019)

avery r. young: tubman. (2019)

dumama + kechou: buffering juju (2020)

Dana Jean Phoenix: PixelDust (2018)

Anna Meredith: FIBS (2019)

Venetian Snares: Rossz Csillag Alatt Született (2005)

Relevant Links:

Older text review of Anna Meredith’s Varmits

Venetian Snares’ Traditional Synthesizer Music

2020 Spotify playlist

Brubeck's "Time Out:" Acadacemicizing Jazz

This month, the world lost two incredible and historically important musicians. Doubtlessly, I have nothing but love and respect for the music and life of Ravi Shankar, but Dave Brubeck was an important personal influence. By extension, Brubeck influenced virtually every student to whom I have had the pleasure of teaching jazz.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s unlikely hit Take 5 (written by saxophonist Paul Desmond) from their 1959 album Time Out is a rare beast in the jazz realm. Its infectious melody, which effortlessly flowed over a seemingly un-swingable time signature, allowed the tune to cross over into mainstream popularity. Hiding complexity within accessibility is a surefire way for a song to earn my adoration, so Take 5 had huge appeal.



Dave Wolpe’s big band arrangement of this standard became a regular presence in my jazz pedagogy for years. Of course, putting it in the set list meant that I had to teach drummers to swing in 5/4, which was a long-term goal often wrought with frustration. Almost always, however, the song’s appeal won out. In retrospect, Take 5 doesn’t remind me of specific students I have taught as much as the whole experience of teaching big band to high schoolers for over a decade.

Looking back on that experience, I see now that in my early years I taught the song with a relatively superficial understanding. When I added Time Out to my jazz collection for the sake of study, I gained a much deeper appreciation for the song and the statement it was trying to make. As a whole, the album a historical step towards academicizing jazz. Jazz's improvisational conventions were developed in the loosely structured jams of the after-hours Dixieland and dance bands. The angular, through-composed, odd-timed experiments of Time Out would most likely not be found popping up at 3am in a New Orleans club. The harmonic structures of the pieces, however, along with the melodic vocabulary of their improvisational aspects, certainly place the album firmly within the jazz tradition.

Take 5 was the initial hook for me, but when I listened to the album in full, I became fascinated by many of the songs, not the least of which was the album’s Turkish-inspired opener Blue Rondo a la Turk. Calvin Custer released a big band arrangement of this tune and I added its kaleidoscopic duple and triple rhythmic structure to my 4 year pedagogic cycle. This one also became a band favorite.



Brubeck stood at the nexus of a variety of cultural forces. As a white musician applying intellectual and multicultral concepts to an African-American art form forged in practical settings, it seems like another example of dominant cultural ideology appropriating a subcultural style for profit. I think that there were certainly cases in the history of jazz where this happened, which was a justifiable source of racial tension. There were also many white musicians, however, that had the utmost respect for jazz tradition, and their interest in contributing to that tradition was generated by a genuine love of the style. Dave Brubeck, I think, fell into this category.

Since I have been teaching middle school, I have not had the regular opportunity to teach high concept songs like the ones found on Time Out. For young jazz musicians, learning to hold a blues form is difficult enough without having to deal with weird time signatures. Right before Brubeck's passing, however, my piano player, without any prompting from me, sat down at his piano and knocked out Take Five’s familiar rhythmic introduction. Inspiring - now to start in on that drummer…..

An Apology: The Black Keys and an Anonymous Student

One of the overarching topics of UNT's “Popular Music in American Culture” was to examine the codependent relationship between the music cultures of black and white America.  When I was a TA for this class, I was approached by a student on several occasions who insisted with some conviction that we check out The Black Keys, although he never really made a cogent case as to how they might be relevant.  This was a couple of years ago when they were relatively unknown, so his suggestion was filed under the “OK (yeah, right)” file and never saw the light of day. 

In the interim The Black Keys became critical darlings of a sort, appearing on a number of commercials and movie soundtracks.  I am usually wary of the attention of the music press, but, despite never actually hearing a single note of their music, I finally relented and picked up Brothers last year as a counterbalance to Ratatat’s electronic extravaganza LP4.  Fortunately, every now and then a band lives up to its own hype, and Brothers spent quite a bit of time in the player in 2010.  I am revisiting it again this week, though, and it has recaptured my interest.

In retrospect, I should have followed up on the student’s suggestion.  At he most, we would have seemed brilliant, and at the least enriched the class experience.  A close examination of the classic blues and Motown elements that The Black Keys employ would have revealed how the complex musical relationship between black and white America is still comingling.  Although my knowledge of The Black Keys’ back catalog is still limited, Brothers is undoubtedly an excellent collection of consistently well-crafted and accessible songs that have just a hint of bluesy gutbucket grit.

Like other whitewashed adaptations of African-American culture, though, the performance similarities that Next Girl and other Black Keys songs have with the raw emotionalism of the blues is, to a degree, measured.  I don’t care how much they may have suffered for their art I doubt that two white guys from Ohio have had the kind of experiences that informed the music of Robert Johnson and Son House as they lived in black America at the turn of the century.  Still, The Black Keys’ reverence for this performance style is clear, and folding it into their songs infuses their work with an effective gravitas.

At this point in the game, I also think that the moral implications of irreverent “whiteboy blues” are less pronounced than they were when Elvis, the Beach Boys, Cream, and the Rolling Stones initially discovered and rewrote America’s underground folk music for the masses.  African-American music has been widely broadcast and reinterpreted, and it now runs near the motherlode of contemporary music worldwide.  It is very likely that The Black Keys grew up listening to Motown and the blues, so one can hardly blame them for playing so well in a familiar style.  No apologies necessary (although some acknowledgement might be nice).

This post, however, is intended to be a sincere apology to the student for blowing off his suggestion. The class regularly had the largest enrollment of any in the music department, with roughly 500 students online and 300 face-to-face students, so you will perhaps forgive me for forgetting the student’s name, if I ever even knew it. If somehow you run across this, though, please be assured that you were right.  Totally relevant.  My bad.  Way to pay attention.