Rolling Jazz Thread 2022

I’m in NYC for my first-ever Vision Festival (had wanted to go for years, never could). Tonight is the Wadada Leo Smith Celebration.

wow this I AM album is immense

― rob, Tuesday, June 21, 2022 2:05 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol i hated this

i did like the chosen few record from last year fwiw. but this new duo one just sounds like cosplay to me.

LP i'm loving today is the new joel ross, THE PARABLE OF THE POET. really nice harmonic stuff going on that is sure to please fans of classic-era abdullah ibrahim

Pretty cool feature on Freddy Hubbard on American Routes this past week I caught.

https://www.wwno.org/show/american-routes/2022-06-17/american-routes-shortcuts-freddie-hubbard

Cool dude, went through some serious BS.

funny, budo jeru, I was totally unimpressed by the Brodie West record— might have been my mood, might have been that I was expecting a completely different vibe based on the title and cover, but in the end, I just can't *remember* anything about it, even after a few listens.

I may have to turn in my jazz fan card but I didn’t know Hubbard is still alive.How long has it been since he’s played?

Hubbard died in 2008.

Ok really turning in my jazz fan card.

it seems like we can't agree on anything in this thread!

I saw him in an elevator once at The Collective so that must have been…must have been…

Early 90s. He was rehearsing with Betty Carter.

Guess it must have been 1990, for this album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTy9I79f4i8

See also
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym_yvXemJpo

yeah, that's a good interview with Hubbard, and good musical excerpts for the context ( also good anyway, as expected)

Been a long time since I'd heard his hit "Backlash," and I think he alludes to some jazzbos thinking it's too commercial, of course---and some of them might have looked down on Lou Donaldson's striking "Blues Walk," which I'd never heard 'til it ended the hour of Hubbard's segment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Liy9tw03p1I

Which reminds me of another American Routes interview: Bob Porter, talking about his book Soul J Jazz and playing good excerpts, also some whole tracks, by artists incl. Donaldson, Hank Crawford, a bunch of organ trios (had to have showmanship to stand out in all those, whom club runners loved to book cause only had to pay three guys, if any), also Grant Green, eventually some fusioneers.
Have seen mixed online reviews of the book, like jazzbos complaining about why all this Duke Ellington rehash because of connections w Wild Bill Davis etc, but having heard the interview and music therein, also a few more things like "Blues Walk" since, I'd like to read it---here's a page from Google Books, showing some of the artists he covers:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Soul_Jazz/XgeODQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1

Sorry I typo'd the title; it's Soul Jazz: Jazz in the Black Community, 1945-1975.

Here's the page I meant to link:

https://books.google.com/books/publisher/content?id=XgeODQAAQBAJ&pg=PT4&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&bul=1&sig=ACfU3U2vRoQeEKToXpi9yFKIMiheBQ6WSA&w=1280

The local station still plays some bad examples of this at times, but Porter showed me there was more to it (I did already enjoy Hank Crawford, esp. w Jimmy McGriff, also *some* Grant Green, Jimmy Smith, and guess Charles Earland would fit w some of the later artists he mentions).

The book was definitely not everything it could have been, but as a corrective to 50+ years of entrenched white critical narrative about which jazz “matters” and which jazz doesn’t, it’s fantastic that it exists at all.

here we go. recorded 2005, released 6/24, byard lancaster feat. khan jamal:

https://komosrecords.bandcamp.com/album/soul-unity

Yeah that Hubbard interview was an archive one, but they used it in last weeks show.

It's a really good show, I've listened to it over the years and they have covered a ton of stuff.

It's all old episodes now I think when they play them, but I love that Blues Before Sunrise show that was made out of Chicago too. They played some pretty crazy records on that one of blues and jazz.

This new album has taken a long time, and it’s still not ready, but Terrace Martin is producing it, and Thundercat, Robert Glasper and Kamasi Washington are gonna be on it, as is Kendrick Lamar. I’m looking to these guys for ideas, because this is their century, and I’m from the last century.

Yeah, Terrace Martin talked to me about the Herbie record last year. They’ve got hard drive after hard drive of material with absolutely head-spinning collaborators, but who knows when it’s gonna come out.

From American Routes' own archive, here's the streamable show with the Hubbard interview x music, in Hour 2---whole thing is pretty amazing (must dig up my ancient LP of Africa/Brass, though this listing reminds me I still need to get the complete sessions)http://americanroutes.wwno.org/archives/show/1278/Sounds-of-Freedom-Fontella-Bass-and-Freddie-Hubbard

Code Girl were a delight live, really tight and together while also stretching the songs out quite a bit in the solos. Amazing version of "Mexican War Streets" where Halvorson played a dazzling noisy solo using her looper and delay effects. My only gripe would be that it was impossible to see what she was doing behind her (two!) music stands.

what a nerd!

New Selebeyone just announced. I think this is the most advanced jazz-rap fusion out there, throwing 4/4 out the window and loading up on spectralism. The MCs are great too. Love the rhymes in Wolof. https://stevelehman.bandcamp.com/album/xaybu-the-unseen?from=fanpub_fnb

what a nerd!

Haha yeah she seems endearingly a bit like Fripp in terms of stage presence, a bit withdrawn and seated while the rest of the band stood, shredding a storm back in her corner.

https://division81records.bandcamp.com/

this new Isaiah Collier & Michael Shekwoaga (I Am Beyond) album is extremely good!

wow this I AM album is immense

― rob, Tuesday, June 21, 2022 2:05 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol i hated this

― budo jeru, Tuesday, June 21, 2022 4:42 PM (one week ago)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

and I'm actually curious what budo's objection was. I've had the "cosplay" reaction to some other nu-spiritual jazz stuff, but I thought this sounded pretty fresh

Yeah, I like it. Collier's doing good work — not wildly original, he's operating within a tradition, but it's clearly sincere.

The drummer is fucking ridiculously good.

Not sure about the use of reverb/delay. It feels like someone loaded up some Valhalla reverb and delay plugins and is just randomly pulling them up sometimes (usually too often, although then it feels weird when it goes back to the dry mix).

If you're going to take it there, it feels like it should be taken even further (like modulating the fx more, making it sound more musical). Also it's hard to do a dub mix on music that doesn't have any space.

The drummer is fucking ridiculously good.

this was my strongest impression too, not that I really know anything about drumming

sorry i never responded re: isaiah collier duo. i don't have a good answer, it just hit me weird. maybe will revisit. can't remember if i mentioned that i really loved the "cosmic transitions" LP from last year.

2022 first releases and reissues, hadn't heard about most of these:
https://perfectsounds.blogspot.com/2022/07/favorite-new-music-releases-and.html

smooth jazz as a form of radical Black art, arguing that screechy avant-garde jazz is actually a somewhat reactionary style that plays into white bourgeois/middlebrow tastes while smooth jazz represents aspiration.

Also of course, re some of the musical elements employed by artists discussed and linked on this & related threads:A catch-all thread for the current jazz scene in London, including Shabaka Hutchings, Yazz Ahmed, Moses Boyd, Nubya Garcia, Camilla George, Theon Cross, Zara McFarlane, Daniel Casimir, SEED Ensemble,

(But I'll take the wilder stuff too, as will some of the people some of the time.)

Without having read that essay, I'd say that it would be easy to slip into the popism-as-rockism imitative fallacy of Authenticity, ignoring the subjective complexities of the actual listening experience.

thanks for that perfect sound link, stoked on the cyrille / parker / rava trio:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKLT0KwpeXI

In my dives through Youtube, I came across a good one. This documentary "All You Need Is Jazz" from 1977 is well worth a watch. Lots of people show up and there is some excellent playing on the film. Worth a few if you have never seen it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM-q09ujllU

I really dug the George Shearing band clip. I guess put him on the list to check out. The lady jazz singer segment was pretty cool too, no idea who that might be. I was wondering if she was a UK singer.

smooth jazz as a form of radical Black art, arguing that screechy avant-garde jazz is actually a somewhat reactionary style that plays into white bourgeois/middlebrow tastes while smooth jazz represents aspiration.

Is the article readable online anywhere? Because this sounds like complete horseshit but I should probably read the original source first.

It's not, but here's a sample paragraph which kind of gets at the author's thesis:

No music involved with the record industry is free from commercialization, but the critical dismissal of smooth as overly commercial is revealing. Love is a revolutionary value. And against the backdrop of Black history in America, the desire for and celebration of Black material security is neither trivial nor necessarily reactionary. Jazz music which had seemed to encode or express Black political struggle, Black economic deprivation, or any kind of austere or esoteric spiritual doctrine had seemed acceptable to orthodox jazz critics and audiences. White listeners were willing to assimilate any amount of Black pain, historical suffering and political fury as entertainment, edification or both. But the turn toward Black love, optimism and worldly happiness was unpalatable and unassimilable to the hip, intellectual tastes of the jazz connoisseurs.

That last sentence, especially, goes rong, if you think of white heads among the loyal fans of, say, Sun Ra, Pharaoh Sanders, Lonnie Liston Smith, Kamasi Washington, Archie Shepp, Alice Coltrane, Dorothy Ashby, Andy Bey, or are these artists not Black (love, optimism, and [cosmic theatrical-poetic stylized idealist expression as a sensual-sensuous replenishment of] worldly happiness) for the doctrinaire (as anti-doctrinaire) author? This is what I suspected re popist-as-rockist fallacy etc.

And I've known plenty of whites who like smooth jazz, though the author may consider that they can't really get it/like it for bad reasons.

Yeah, almost every part of that sounds dubious to me. "White listeners" (or listeners of any race tbh) were not in significant numbers willing to assimilate any amount of challenging avant-garde jazz, fairly obviously, and were not averse to smooth jazz - it did not achieve mainstream commercial success without appealing to white listeners. If the Peter Brotzmanns of the world could assimilate the ideas in free jazz, surely artists from Steely Dan to Kenny G to whoever does the music for the Weather Channel have been able to assimilate smoother sounds for plenty of white listeners? Aspiring to material security is perfectly valid and respectable but was not some radical new idea for a popular, or even jazz, musician. And seeking respect from the intelligentsia, I'd that's even what free artists were doing, is no less aspirational. And like dow notes, identifying free jazz with struggle and strife and smooth jazz with love and optimism seems far too broad. Maybe there are some more compelling arguments and examples given on the article?

*if that's even what free artists were doing

I don't hate smooth jazz btw, nor do I unequivocally love free jazz.

even though i've been meaning to acquire that issue of the We Jazz zine, i have to admit that the quoted smooth jazz article sounds fucking dreadful