Album Previews for 2021 Part 5: Stick With The Issues

Another set of previews that address new music for 2021, including:

Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers– Just Coolin’ (2020/1959)
Slauson Malone - Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Crater Speak) (2020)
Mononeon – Banana Peel on Capitol Hill (2021)
Duma – Duma (2020)
Rafael Anton Irisarri- Solastalgia (2019) 

Ecker & Meulyzer – Carbon (2018)



Relevant Links:
Full short video documentary for Growth

The ever-evolving 2021 Radio playlist

Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew:" Jazz?

 Review and discussion on Miles Davis'1970 album Bitches Brew.

Here's a previous post on Kind of Blue.

Frank Sinatra and Count Basie Live at the Sands

Discussing Sinatra and Basie's 1966 live collaboration

Flashback to the Oughts: 2004

2004 was a year of beginnings that were fueled by equal parts confidence and, if I am honest with myself, delusion. At the end of the previous year, I acquired a Chapman Stick, and the practice that I had been using as therapy started to manifest in some real musical output. Determined to master this non-traditional instrument and use it to somehow subvert academia, I began coursework for a Master’s degree in Ethnomusicology. My studies included jazz improv courses and a seminar in global pop music, both of which began to further diversify my listening.

At the same time, I continued to teach out at Krum. The breadth of these new experiences make connecting the dots between my memory episodes and the reality of the calendar particularly confusing. My propensity to listen to older albums or to let albums simmer for a while complicates matters further.  I’ve had to refer to school records, Amazon shipping statements, and even dates on old pictures to flesh out specifics.  Still, after toying around with my memory and all available information, the 2004 list is, like its predecessors, a good representation of what I was into at the time.



This project is making me realize the extent to which memory episodes resist lining themselves up in neat chronological order.  They seem to arise in vivid flashes as I revisit this music, bringing to mind seemingly random events that must then be categorized.  This all might seem to be more trouble than its worth, but organizing my life story by the music that I surround myself with has, in recent years, emerged as a satisfying narrative in this blog.

10 The Drowners - Think of Me: I continued a steady diet of inexpensive power pop albums throughout 2004, many of which were unremarkable. The Drowners’ Swedish identity provided a unique perspective on the style that was slick and compelling.

9 Muse - Absolution: It has been a rare occasion for me to favorably compare any band to Rush. In 2004, however, I discovered Absolution, which earned Muse that distinction for a time by virtue of its accessible songs, impressive chops, and intense energy.

8 Blackfield - Blackfield: I supported Porcupine Tree’s move towards heavier and more identifiably progressive territory, but part of me missed Steven Wilson's relatively straightforward songwriting on Stupid Dream. Blackfield became the place where I could get my fix.

7 The Decemberists - Her Majesty the Decemberists: I saw The Decemberists in Denton on a lark, without ever hearing a note of their music, one night in 2004. Their show was impressive, and within 24 hours, Her Majesty the Decemberists had the dubious honor of being one of the few albums that I uploaded through ITunes in its earlier iteration.

6 Green Day - American Idiot: I saw American Idiot as the 21sy century Tommy - a punk rock opera of resistance for the Bush administration. Alas, within a few years Green Day would jump the shark with this great album and run it as a broadway musical, but at the time it was quite the statement.

5 The Trey Gunn Band - The Joy of Molybdenum: As I was getting more and more into transcription, I started making more of an effort to find other Stick and touchstyle guitar players that I felt a connection with. Gunn’s style was, and still is, a baffling exploitation of the instrument’s affordances, but his melodicism and conceptual adventurousness makes him one of my favorite players and The Joy of Molybdenum remains my favorite of his solo works.

4. Miles Davis - Kind of Blue: I owned Kind of Blue for decades, but in retrospect, I had never really engaged it beyond mere background music. Transcribing solos from it for an improv class changed all that, however, and provided me with a deep appreciation for the clarity of Davis’ ideas.

3 Brian Wilson - SMiLE: Brian Wilson finally released the long awaited follow-up to Pet Sounds in 2004 with compelling results. The tour that followed provided one of the best live shows I had ever seen.

2. Fela Kuti - Zombie: A seminar in Global Popular Music fleshed out my understanding of Fela and his unique political position. I ended up getting several Fela albums this year, but Zombie remains the best of the bunch.

Album of the Year: 2004

1. Opeth - Damnation: Opeth’s one-off experiment in melodic melancholy would, in hindsight, serve to pivot them from their black metal roots into their current progressive rock incarnation. In itself, however, it remains a unique masterpiece in their catalog.

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…..

Knives Out: Grizzly Bear's "Shields" and Reinvention

In 2001, on an uninhabited stretch of road between Denton and Allen, I decided that Amnesiac was a bust. Radiohead had presented rewarding challenges with every album up to that point, but after struggling with it for quite awhile, I could not convince myself that the jarring differences between its burbling sound experiments and jagged songwriting would have a payoff like Kid A did. I shelved it and forgot about it. 

Several months later, however, during a rather innocuous set of standards, a UNT graduate jazz combo slipped in a genuinely moving rendition of Knives Out. It brought to my attention the song’s unsettling harmonic dissonance and challenged me to reconsider the original recording. Retrospectively, my opinion of Amnesiac is a bit higher (even though it’s still still one of Radiohead’s patchiest albums) but I view Knives Out as one of the finest songs in their oeuvre.



The combo that reframed the song for me earned my respect for focusing their intellectual and artistic energy on a song so obviously against the grain of jazz tradition. You don't often find that kind of idealistic innovation outside of the academic setting. Certainly, the audience for that sort of thing is quite limited and difficult to engage, especially back in the pre-YouTube era of the early 00s. These days, however, virtual music performances can sometimes serve as a creative venue for encounters like this.  One such performance played a role that led me to Grizzly Bear's most recent release.

Ever since I got Veckatimist last year, I have pondered Grizzly Bear’s deeper musical potentials. That album exhibited a level of musicianship that might indicate that there was more to them than meets the ear, but they are also indie darlings right now. Very often, indie sites have their own agendas that are not too dissimilar from the ones that guided record company promotional practices in the past. I have been very cautious about jumping on board the Grizzly Bear bandwagon simply because I want to make sure that I’m engaged by the band's musicality and not the hype that surrounds them. Therefore, when news of Shields started trickling through the feed, I was carefully interested. One night at Aikido Summer Camp, however, this video came up through my feed as I was getting ready to crash for the night.



Keep in mind, this guy isn’t even in the band, and he's not playing jazz.  Still, the amount of respect that this creative and skilled percussionist paid to Grizzly Bear in arranging an orchestrally-styled part to Sleeping Ute, a song that had not even been officially released yet, is a tribute to his belief in its broader intellectual potential.  For me, Shields went from being a curious interest to a must-have.

When it was finally released months later, it made an incredible first impression on me, so much so that I was afraid that it would burn brightly and proceed to collect dust. After being with it for awhile, however, I think that Grizzly Bear’s praise is mostly well-deserved. In addition to Sleeping Ute, I also connected almost immediately to Yet Again.



The production on this track, and on the album as a whole, captures an ambience that recalls Radiohead back in their early days when they were more like a band and less like a project (an identity shift that I think they were struggling with on Amnesiac). Listening to the laid-back, Keith Richards-esque strumming in this song, there is no question that Grizzly Bear’s music is generated by human hands. Additionally, their brilliant melodicism makes their work more inviting than that of Radiohead, sometimes reminiscent of Lindsey Buckingham’s quirky approach to pop songwriting. Lyrically and musically, however, they paint abstract, impressionistic pictures with the potential for multiple interpretations.



As an example, my first impression of Sun in Your Eyes, with its asymmetrical time signatures, rolling drumming, and desolate lyrics, was programmatic: a metaphor for a lonely, tumultuous sea voyage. I was a little disappointed to discover that there was scant lyric reference to support this imagery, but also impressed that this notion came entirely from the musical content.  My musical impression seemed quite clear, but the song's text pointed in a different direction.  Multimodal layers like this one can frequently be found in Grizzly Bear’s music, and the most interesting ones don’t always neatly coincide. Like Radiohead, they have ruptures between abstraction and clarity that leave lots of room for subjective interpretation, and therefore, creative reinvention.

Charles Mingus: Chaos, Commentaries, and "The Clown"

When I took my jazz band to participate in the CCCC Jazz Festival in the spring of 2008, I discovered Charles Mingus' Haitian Fight Song.  This piece reinvigorated my interest in his work and its educational value. Years before, as a much younger teacher, I tried to get my band to play Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, but as great as that tune is, it requires a musical maturity that, in retrospect, is probably unreasonable for the average high schooler.

Not to say that Haitian Fight Song is easy, but it does have an aggressive, chaotic energy that immediately appealed to my students. Additionally, it is, in essence, a blues piece, and in my later years as a jazz educator, I strongly emphasized the importance of soloing over blues changes. It all seemed to fit, but I needed to find a model.  Usually, commercially available big band arrangements are based on a specific recording, and I always try to make it a point to find and become intimately familiar with that recording. After some digging about, I found it on Mingus’ 1957 album The Clown.



A bit of patience is required - although it begins at a barely audible murmur, the original version of Haitian Fight Song is a piece of devastating, perhaps almost terrifying, intensity. Within minutes it builds into a transcendent chaos, boiling over into a gripping trombone solo that simultaneously drives and floats, preparing for the next eruption.

The next year, we played Haitian Fight Song, and in my mind, it became the signature piece from my 08-09 band. Additionally, although the usual starting point for Mingus’ work is the great Ah Um, The Clown is now easily one of my all-time favorite jazz albums. On the one hand, I admit that it pulls my memories back the conflicted state of mind I was in when my time teaching jazz in Krum was drawing to a close, but its musical strengths and artistic statement also elevate the listening experience above mere nostalgia.

In truth, I feel that all of the tracks on The Clown are equally affective in their own way. As a whole, they relate a sense of intellect and defiance that society would not catch up to for over a decade. In particular, the album’s title track is a scathing satire with that belies its late 50s release date.



As a composition, The Clown is an attention-grabbing expedition through a variety of styles, programmed to enhance the simmering build-up of its plot. Its narrative begins in a bittersweet, almost heartbreaking tone. It unfolds, however, into a disturbing commentary on the entertainment industry and, more subtly, the often wicked expectations of a faceless public audience. I don’t know of a more contemptuous and self- referential send-up outside of Frank Zappa’s usually acerbic oeuvre. Although Zappa never cited Mingus as an influence, and was a bit ambivalent about jazz in general, there is a tenuous conceptual relationship between these two giants that I perceive on The Clown.  In both cases, well-crafted compositions, edgy performances, and defiant narratives speak strongly in the countercultural voice of their time.

Coltrane's "Giant Steps:" Spontaneously Laying it Down

I’m on Spring Break this week, but by a lot of people’s standards, I usually don’t do a whole lot. Obviously, the days of sticking to Velcro walls in Padre Island are long over (a story with its own soundtrack that may one day be worth recounting). These days, I usually find the “staycation” just as cathartic. It feels good to wake up to no alarm, drink coffee, and decide what I am going to do based on whatever I feel like doing.

This year is a little more complicated, however, because I also get to play “Mr. Mom” with the Little One. This in no way a complaint - during the school year, I often drop her off in the morning and don’t get to spend much quality time with her until bedtime. I am grateful for the opportunity to hang with her all day. Now we “hit the town” together, but taking into account naptime, feeding, and general mood swings, I have to plan my “spontaneity” a little bit more carefully than in the past.

This afternoon, I spontaneously decided to cook one of my absolute favorite paleo dishes for lunch: yam and sausage hash. My vegan/vegetarian wife is a little apprehensive about the meat in this dish, so when I’m cooking just for me, it’s kind of a special treat. The Little One and I took a trip to Whole Foods for the ingredients to this easy recipe:

-Grate 2 yams (food processor makes this quick)

-Brown 1 lb sausage

-Put it all in a skillet with some coconut oil and cinnamon

-Cook it all up

-Mack it down

When we got back, the Little One played happily with a variety of sound-making apparatus, I filled the house with the smell of cinnamon and sweet potatoes, and we listened to John Coltrane’s Giant Steps.

She, of course, is an old expert in jazz by now. The very first album she ever heard in open air was Kind of Blue. As great as that album is, Giant Steps is another beast entirely. I’m a decent improviser, but if you asked me to play over any of the songs in Giant Steps, I would humbly decline. I know just enough to know that there is no way that I could fake my way through these amazing songs. The studies that I have engaged in, however, have provided me enough of an ear for what “sounds right” to really appreciate Coltrane’s incredible mastery over both his instrument and his contributions to jazz theory.

Giant Steps represents the pinnacle of harmonic complexity in "traditional" jazz. The main melody its title track is catchy and simple, but it skips across a set of chord progressions that are fiendishly complex. Hold on tight:

When improvising, a jazz musician has to spontaneously juggle a complex musical vocabulary based on jazz tradition and the harmonic potentials offered by the song. After thousands of hours of practice, the best improvisers cultivate an awareness of these potentials, intuitively setting up and targeting the notes that sound good in any given key. This is an incredibly difficult skill set to master, even on a relatively standard song form in a common key.

Coltrane devised a logic for a distinctive flavor of harmonic complexity, successfully crafted it into a working song, and proved that it worked by improvising over it with unparalleled fervor. Giant Steps changes keys virtually every measure, each with its own set of tendencies and potentials. Professionals and college professors have, at the very least, a healthy respect for playing an effective solo over its changes.

Coltrane continued to explore the potential in his harmonic approach throughout Giant Steps, sometimes in entirely different settings. On the unbelievably beautiful ballad Naima, Coltrane explores the saxophone’s unique timbral potential. From the very first note to the very last, Coltrane’s saxophone cries on Naima. This version below is much more aggressive at times than the studio recording, but it also shows the incredible range of sounds that Coltrane had in his toolbox at the time, not to mention his astounding rhythm section.

The master plan while Coltrane was laying it down this afternoon was to eat, strap the Little One to my chest, and go for a walk on a local hiking trail. Before the album finished, however, and before I finished my lunch, the Little One had fallen asleep. She spontaneously became the one laying it down, so to speak. So much for plans – perhaps a rerun of original series Star Trek is in order.

Motian, Haden, and Allen's "Etudes:" Carried on Currents

I have a many friends and acquaintances who are serious, if not professional, jazz musicians, so when Paul Motian passed away in November, my news feeds lit up with video clips and retrospective posts.  I love my jazz, but my collection of recordings is relatively small in comparison to a lot of the people I know.  I like to think, however, that what my jazz collection lacks in breadth it makes up in depth, so I add titles to it with a degree of caution.  I don't just let any old album in.  After all this attention on Motian, though, I was on the lookout for a characteristic recording.

Paul Slavens is one of my Facebook friends (although in real life I'm sure I am barely another familiar face), and as a status update, he cited Etudes as his favorite album with Motian. It sounded quite good from what I could find and, because I respect Slavens as a musician and critic, I trusted that it would be consistent.  I put it on my Amazon wish list.

When I spontaneously earmark an album in this fashion, there is the danger that it will languish on my wish list for months, even years, before it ends up in rotation. My Amazon list has become so bloated, though, that when the holidays come, I am often pleasantly surprised by what ends up under the tree.  This year, my parents ordered Etudes (and even ordered themselves a copy based on Amazon's samples!). I listened to it all the way through for the first time with my mother as we were reading books before going to bed, and we were both taken in by its subtle interplay of tension and mood.



Charlie Haden and Paul Motian had a long professional relationship by the time Etudes was released in 1987, which shows in their seamless interactions on the album. Effortlessly, they propel their performances forward without a trace of analytical thinking. Geri Allen’s melancholic piano gracefully integrates into their established chemistry.  It is a pristine example of masterful, experienced musicians in an expressive act.

After Christmas my wife and I traveled to South Texas to visit her family, and I had a small stack of untested CDs in hand. In cases like this, it’s usually a bit of a gamble to decide what will go over well in close quarters with her. For example, she gave me Syd Barrett's The Madcap Laughs for Christmas, but it did not go over so well as we drove around McAllen (although it did spark some interesting conversation). Etudes, however, was quite an amenable listening experience for everyone who got in the car, and it played pretty much for the duration of the trip.

One morning in McAllen, I was waiting in the car with the Little One as she slept while my wife picked up some breakfast, leaving me alone with Etudes to reflect for a moment.  Ten years ago, I would have probably never found this album.  Thrown out unknowingly into the anonymity of the internet, however, then washed ashore by my parents as a holiday gift, Etudes ended up in my hands like a message in a bottle carried on digital currents.  As it is, the album has turned out to be a great find that has deepened my jazz collection just a little bit more.

Introductions in the Hospital: Miles Davis and Shahid Parvez

Eighteen hours after that Friday morning, I found myself waiting in the hospital room for my wife and our newborn baby daughter.  Long before all this, I had been charged with the responsibility of providing music for the birth and recovery process.  When it came time for labor and delivery, there really was not too much room for music, but very soon, I would be introducing my daughter to the ocean of sound into which she had been thrown.

Obviously, I took this responsibility very seriously.  We all hear music in the backgrounds of existence much more than we realize.  Although this ongoing musical exposure often occurs beneath the level of our perception, I think that it matters.  In fact, I think that it is a powerful inculcating force, despite often taking disembodied and mediated forms.  I certainly did not expect the little one to start bobbing her head to anything I put on in the first hours of her life, but I was convinced that the first strains of humanly organized sound that she heard would have some sort of impact.

When the room suddenly burst into activity, I turned on the MP3 boombox and spontaneously chose Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue.  Mr. Connell, one of my high school jazz mentors, advised me that if I were to have one jazz album in my collection, it should be Kind of Blue.  I passed on that advice to students and friends for many years before I really appreciated the album’s depth. 

Kind of Blue seemed appropriate in this instance because on the one hand, it is hardly an offending or jarring listen - it can hang on the edge of silence even at a perceptible volume.  In my more adrenaline – fueled High School days, I would study or read by it.  Later, though, after transcribing parts of it in jazz improv classes, I found it impossible to do anything but sit and listen to the album in stunned admiration.  Davis showcases a deliberately lyrical style that now demands my attention.  I took great joy in humming his solo in Freddie Freeloader to my daughter as she looked up at me in what looked like awe.

It seemed impossible to follow up that masterpiece, so I changed gears entirely by choosing another album that I came to appreciate during my ethnomusicology studies, Shahid Parvez’s Sitar.  When I was first exposed to Eastern Indian classical music, I found it to be beautiful and soothing, but I had great difficulty coming to understand its underlying structure from a practical standpoint.  This particular album is the one that made the whole thing fall into place.

To make a long story short, there are two interacting forces in Indian classical music: raga, its melodic aspect, and tala, its rhythmic organization.  In performance, the players explore these features within certain well-defined rules to create and release tension, similar to the way in which classical composers use phrasing and harmony.  I knew all of this from a theoretical perspective, but still had difficulty really hearing it.  Watching a video performance of Parvez performing raga Bageshri, however, with a little coaching from my teacher Poorvalur Sriji, allowed me to see and hear the system work for the first time.  In a flash, the competitive interplay of Hindustani styles opened up.

Both of these albums are relatively mellow to listen to from a superficial standpoint, but more subtly, are also musically expressive and intellectually engaging.  We stayed in that room for four days, transforming the sterile hospital room environment into a place that would hopefully be much more in keeping with the surroundings that she would eventually go home to.  I took great pride in the fact that, although most other rooms on our floor had televisions blaring into the hallways, when we opened our door, music and conversation spilled out.

What is New in Jazz? Christian Scott and Mouse on the Keys

The title of this post could be read in a couple of ways. For example, you could ask “what is NEW in JAZZ?” expressing an interest in the current jazz artists that are doing something above and beyond the usual instrumental pop drivel.  You could also ask “what IS (the) ‘new’ in jazz?” perhaps wondering what kinds of innovations allow good contemporary jazz to avoid becoming the usual instrumental pop drivel.  I am not going to put my head on the chopping block by trying to directly answer either question.

I will, however, say that jazz artists should and do innovate, but it is also hard to pin down the point at which individualistic jazz styles evolve into something else.  Jazz and not-jazz is separated by a fluid boundary, often resulting in complex answers when you (often with fingers in your ears) ask  the seemingly simple question  “is THIS jazz?"  Even more confusing, there are well-established musics (for example, Eastern Indian classical music), that are improvisational like jazz, and sometimes cross over into jazz, but definitely are not jazz.  Where does one start and another stop?

Ridiculous, right?  There are people with a lot more credentials than I have grappling with these kinds of problems as we speak.  Some of them even get paid to do it.  

Personally, it helps me to consider how the music in question can be tied to “the jazz tradition.”  Jazz is aurally transmitted though a lineage that can be traced back to the African-American improvisational styles from the turn of the 20th century. Now, over 100 years later, the point at which jazz started and where it is today often seem to bear little relation, but the two points should connect through the transmission of a specific yet evolving improvisational syntax.

In a previous post on their Sezzions EP, I suggested that the Japanese band Mouse on the Keys is more like “math rock on keyboards” than “jazz fusion.” When I began listening to their full-length release An Anxious Object, it seemed a bit jazzier than its predecessor, but as it has simmered, I still think that it is more “rock-jazz” than “jazz-rock.”

An Anxious Object prominently features instruments that are associated with the jazz tradition, like saxophone, trumpet, and, of course, piano.  Drummer Daisuke Niitome plays in a straight-eighth rock style, but he interacts with the kit with a melodic nuance that seems informed by jazz study.  Mouse on the Keys, however, generally deemphasize lyrical melodies in favor of textural rhythmic interplay, and although there is improvisation in their music, it seems to have a significant compositional element.  Plus they wear weird bodysuits (in their videos, anyway).



Keep in mind that my musings on Mouse on the Keys' "jazziness quotient" are not supposed to reflect poorly on them.  On the one hand, they don't really claim to be jazz, and on the other, An Anxious Object blows me away. The point here is to say that even though superficially they seem to be playing jazz, I think that they are, at the very most, doing something more akin to the jazz fusion that Bill Bruford used to get into in his “rock goes to college” days. It’s not really “new jazz,” but it is killer rock with some jazzy elements.



Besides, from a bit more cynical standpoint, it’s a bit of a bittersweet compliment to say that someone is doing something “new” in jazz. “New” jazz is often indicative of a fracture with the jazz canon. It seems far more desirable and safe to be labeled a jazz “innovator,” because it implies a solid connection with jazz tradition, rather than a break from it. From this rather myopic perspective, Mouse on the Keys may not be innovating in the jazz tradition, but I think that trumpeter Christian Scott clearly is. His release Anthem is a current favorite.



I think that the melodic and harmonic vocabulary that Scott and the members of his band employ is derived from a studied knowledge of bebop, cool jazz, and 70s fusion conventions. He plays unbelievably beautiful melodies that are both distinctive and familiar, and he exhibits an attention to the dramatic and expressive capacities of timbre in a way that identifies him as a Miles Davis devotee.

One of Scott's innovations, especially on Litany Against Fear, is the way in which he employs the starkly melancholic and sometimes dissonant soundscapes of early Radiohead and other “post-rock” bands as a launching pad for improvisation. Many of these groups play with jazzy sounds, but Scott seems to be taking them on at their own game by injecting established traditions into a relevant contemporary setting.  This is the kind of work that helps keep jazz alive and vital in its homeland.

Looking Forward by Looking Back: Art Blakey's "Moanin'"

There is a dichotomy that surrounds the state of contemporary jazz.  One camp believes that the best jazz has already been made, and that innovations within the style should happen within the boundaries set by its originators.  To stray too far from these conventions can potentially challenge the integrity of jazz, especially in the eyes of its more conservative advocates.  The other belief is that jazz is a fluid concept at its essence.  Although the style can take on a myriad of forms superficially, branching into fusion and hip-hop in recent decades, its basic vocabulary and improvisatory nature tie it to an ever-evolving genre.

Both of these viewpoints have their merits and faults.  I don't think that jazz should be "museumized" and preserved in some idealized, pristine state.  It should evolve, but it should also build on what came before, and I don't mean at a superficial level.  In order to appreciate what is being done in contemporary jazz, it is absolutely necessary to include, elaborate on, and transcend the vocabulary of jazz’s historical pioneers.  I think that this kind of continuity is what holds the genre together, and distinguishes true jazz from "instrumental adult contemporary sax pop" or "improvisatory prog rock noodling."

This belief has led me to amass a relatively substantial collection of great classic jazz albums.  Basie, Miles Davis, Coltrane, Parker, Mingus, etc. all figure prominently in my CD racks, but I still feel like there are many classic jazz albums that I have yet to discover.

This was proven yet again when I picked up Moanin’ by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers earlier this year.  This recording is considered a classic by critics and scholars alike, but for whatever reason, it has eluded me.  Moanin’ is very reminiscent of some of my favorite jazz albums, particularly from Miles Davis’ “hard bop” period with the Modern Jazz Giants.  The tunes are catchy and straightforward, of course, but a good jazz recording is not solely judged on the basis of its head melodies.  Rather, it’s what these melodies and their associated changes allow the soloists to create.

Moanin’, of course, excels in this regard.  Despite being a bandleading drummer, Blakey plays a fairly conservative hand in his own group, although it is nearly impossible to ignore the depth of Blakey’s groove and the power of his fills. In my opinion, the single performer who really shines on Moanin', however, is trumpeter Lee Morgan.  The first solo he takes on the title track is just devastating.

This clip is not the original recording, so this is not specifically the solo I am referring to (although it is the one that he is referring to, if you get my reference).  I will include the original in the April roundup playlist for the jazz researchers out there.  This is a "must transcribe" performance.  Considering the fact that jazz in an “improvised” tradition, I think it is really interesting to pay attention to the way in which these two solos (and the “bonus track” alternate take, as well) conceptually intersect and diverge from one another. 

In its entirety, Moanin’ lives up to its reputation as a “hard bop classic.”  It’s meant to be listened to and appreciated for its intensity, intelligence, and heart.  Albums like it are the reason that I gravitate towards classic jazz.  Becoming familiar with the soloing vocabulary of the musicians in this era enriches my appreciation of those who employ it in other manifestations of the jazz style.  Additionally, on current recordings, I have to entertain the idea that performance is constructed in the studio.  For Moanin',  there is little question in my mind as to the relative "liveness" of the album and the intuitive interactions in each performance.