The Independent Ear

DE Jazz Fest move to summer is a winner

Posted on June 17, 2009 by The Independent Ear

The Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, brainchild of the savvy, all-city big-tent philosophy of Charlie Fishman, celebrated its 5th anniversary last week by shifting it’s eleven day event from a previous fall incarnation to the front end of the traditional jazz festival season, the month of June.  There was far too much activity for one observer to catch it all — much of it presented under the tent as it were by community-based jazz presenters across the metro area (ala an exceptional evening of new music at the sparkling Atlas Performing Arts Center in the city’s northeast sector from drummer Nasar Abadey & his special Supernova septet augmented by strings) — but what this observer did sample more than slaked the thirst.  Saturday/Sunday June 13/14 were devoted to all-day (free) blowouts (1:00pm-7:30pm) at the Sylvan Theatre, on the Mall in the all-seeing shadow of the Washington Monument.  Reflecting the heart of the fest’s New Orleans-on-the-Potomac theme were the Rebirth Brass Band, Irma Thomas, Nicholas Payton, Donald Harrison, Trombone Shorty, Bob French’s Original Tuxedo Jazz Band, banjo master Don Vappie, Little Freddie King, Buckwheat Zydeco and other reps of the Crescent City’s rich music culture.  DC enthusiasts were getting their New Orleans on big time all weekend.

 

I couldn’t help but recall Ned Sublette’s prodigious tome Cuba and It’s Music as NEA Jazz Master Paquito D’Rivera, artistic director of DEJF, delighted in contributing his rice & beans enriched alto sax to the mix during sit-ins with Buckwheat and Harrison.  Paquito proved an excellent manifestation of the irristable ancestral connections between Cuba and New Orleans that Sublette so aptly details.  The clave connection was deep.  It was also good to see the highly-touted young bassist-singer Esperanza Spalding out of her usual element, ditto another precious jazz youth, pianist Taylor Eigsti, as members of Nicholas Payton’s fine band.

 

The festival highlight was unquestionably the grand finale Monday (June 14) evening at the Kennedy Center.  The Marsalis brothers — Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo, Jason and poet Ellis lll — were joined by Harry Connick Jr. — who took two turns on piano, one in duo with the honoree, and one on voice — Billy Taylor in duo with Ellis, Branford’s regular bassist Eric Revis and drummer Herlin Riley in a beautiful homage to Ellis Marsalis.  The music, through the lens of a canny retrospective set that ran the gamut from a Louis Jordan classic (sung by Herlin) that was one of Mom & Pop’s courting songs, through a blister of a whistling essay of "Donna Lee" by Jason, a crisp rendering of Monk’s "Teo" through a scrumptious menu of Ellis’ underrated originals, was unquestionably superb.  But what really capped the evening were the stories and various asides between tunes from the brothers, each of whom is blessed with good comic timing.  The warmth in the KC concert hall that evening was palpable and the audience explosion at the end — which followed a second line through the house — threatened to blow the roof off the Kennedy Center.

 

Stay tuned… the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival is here to stay, well on its way to becoming a DC tradition.

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Ain’t But a Few of Us: Black jazz writers tell their story pt2

Posted on June 12, 2009 by The Independent Ear

Modern Music Man JOHN MURPH

John Murph has channeled his voracious appetite for modern music — particular that which falls into the creative contemporary category.  In his case that includes an encyclopedic sensibility when it comes to modern jazz, the leading edge of hip hop, trip hop, drum ‘n bass, electronica, house, broken beat and assorted other flavors, often in collaborations of the same.  He’s coupled those interests with a writing skilll that makes great sense, and become one of the more astute observers of his 30-something generation.  You can find Murph primarily on the web at The Root, Liberal Muse and in hard copy in The Washington Post, DownBeat, JazzTimes, and Jazzwise magazines.

 

It has been a personal pleasure to observe Murph’s growth as a writer.  When Suzan Jenkins, then of the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, sent a young Mississippi State University grad over to the old National Jazz Service Organization office for a chat, during which he certified his deep interest in writing about jazz, Murph soon joined the NJSO staff.  At that time our staff also included associate director Sara Picillo (now Sara Donnelly) the architect of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s brilliant new Jazz.NEXT funding initiative (www.midatlanticarts.org), and WPFW’s inimitable show host Myrrh Cauthen (some of you may remember her from years of running IAJE conference concert venues).  From NJSO Murph went on to develop the web site content of National Public Radio, then BET.  All the while he was growing his jazz and modern music writing craft and a prodigious record collection and appetite for the music.  In addition to being a keen commentator on the scene Murph is also a programmer on WPFW in DC, host of Wednesday Late Night Jazz, where he is just as likely to spin some newly minted Brits, Germans or Norwegians who use jazz as a launching pad towards new expressions as he is Stacy Dillard, Sean Jones, Jose James or some other young stalwarts.  John Murph is the second contributor to our Ain’t But a Few of Us series of observations from black jazz writers on the state of their art & craft.

 

What motivated you to write about serious music?

 

I started writing about music in college at Mississippi State University for the school newspaper The Reflector.  Growing up, I came up with a lot of my family members either listening to music and/or reading about it — whether it was newspapers, comic books, trash novels, etc.  During my second year in college I was still an accounting major, but it was music and writing that I truly loved and that eventually captured my true spirit.  Still, while in college I didn’t see music journalism as a viable career because there weren’t many models there.  And writers for say, The Rolling Stone, Spin!, and Musician seemed galaxies away.  Luckily, I got a paid internship at the Smithsonian, working with the Duke Ellington Collection in the American History’s archives center.  I did two consecutive summer internships there, which opened the doors wider for me to pursue music journalism.

 

When you started on this quest were you aware of the dearth of African Americans writing about this music?

 

Seriously, at the beginning I didn’t.  When I arrived in Washington, DC, first interning at the Smithsonian then working in arts administration at the National Jazz Service Organization and the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, I had African-American mentors such as Willard Jenkins, Anthony Brown, and Reuben Jackson.  I also befriended other African-American writers such as Eugene Holley Jr., Wayne Self, Bill Brower, and [the ancestor] Tom Terrell.  And I was reading a lot of stuff by Greg Tate, Stanley Crouch, and Nelson George.  Perhaps the first thing I noticed when I started writing nationally about serious music was the age gap.  I always felt like a kid in the groups of jazz journalists.  It wasn’t until I started writing for The Washington City Paper, The Washington Blade, JazzTimes, and DownBeat, and attending events such as the International Association of Jazz Educators conferences that I began realizing that I was indeed a "fly boy in the buttermilk."  It really hit me when I worked at National Public Radio.

 

Why do you suppose that’s still such a glaring disparity — where you have a significant number of black musicians making serious music but so few black media commentators?

 

Wow, that’s such a loaded question with so many answers and perspectives that could very well serve as a collegiate sociology course.  When it comes to African-American music and culture, it always seemed as if our community was much better at creating than documenting, especially after the civil rights era.  For some reason, anything vaguely related to the past seems too passe for many African Americans to pay attention to on a regular basis.  So when it comes to serious music with a long legacy (e.g. jazz, blues and increasingly R&B), a lot of that gets ingnored for what’s currently popular (e.g. hip hop) and that attitude filters in the black media.  You can’t ignore the lack of coverage of serious music in black media — Ebony, Jet, O, Essence — all of which have the potential of not only giving black music journalists more writing opportunities, but also of cultivating a more erudite audience for serious music.

 

For anyone breaking into music journalism, the task can prove daunting — especially when it becomes more about "who you know" than "what you know."  For writers of color that can prove even more challenging if white editors and publishers see little value of having a multicultural writing staff beyond tokenism.

 

Do you think that disparity contributes to how the music is covered, including why some musicians may be elevated over others and whether that has anything to do with the lack of cultural diversity among the music writer fraternity?    

 

Indeed I do.  Take for instance the coverage of jazz singers nowadays.  If you looked at retail outlets such as Amazon.com, Borders and Starbucks, the epitome of a jazz singer now is a white female.  How the media (print, film, radio, internet) covers jazz and more importantly, who they will cover feeds into that perception.  And this is nothing against Diana Krall, Jane Monheit, Madeleine Peyroux, and Norah Jones, but it seems incredibly difficult for both emerging and established black American singers to make the same rapid inroads in terms of getting coverage not only from mainstream glossy magazines but also in the main jazz publications such as JazzTimes and DownBeat.  I find it incredible that Carla Cook is often cited as one of the best and natural jazz singers of our generation, and she’s yet to land a major feature story in JazzTimes and DownBeat.  (That she hasn’t released a new disc in years is clearly noted.)

 

When Jose James released his splendid debut, The Dreamer last year, it was somewhat sad that I had to make special note of his race and the fact that it’s been a while since a young African-American male singer had emerged in comparison to say, Jamie Cullum and Peter Cincotti.  And in my opinion, despite critical albeit underground acclaim, he’s yet to receive the same, timely amount of ink as his white counterparts.

 

You can also argue the same in regards to some instrumentalists.  When the Bad Plus and again, Jamie Cullum. first hit they graced the covers of JazzTimes and DownBeat.  Robert Glasper, Stefon Harris, JD Allen — not so much.  A decade ago, heavy-hitters such as pianist Rodney Kendrick and guitarist Jean–Paul Bourelly hardly got any ink beyond the "CD review" in comparison to say, Brad Mehldau and Bill Frisell.  I remember a rumor circulating that Rodney’s personality was "too urban" or something of the like to get a major feature story.

 

John Murph asks: Why not Rodney Kendrick in the prints?

 

Then there’s the whole idea of what is deemed more artistically valid when it comes to jazz artists incorporating contemporary pop music.  I notice a certain disdain when some black jazz artists channel R&B, funk, and hip-hop, while their white contemporaries get kudos for giving makeovers to the likes of Radiohead, Nick Drake, and Bjork.

 

Do you ever get the sense that the way and tone of how serious music is covered has anything to do with who’s covering it?

 

Yes and no.  I think there’s a tendency by writers of all creed of trying to make "serious music" appear "smarter" than it needs to be.  Brad McKee, one of my best editors of all time from The Washington City Paper told me this: "Jazz is already smart.  You don’t need to make it sound any smarter.  Just be smart."  It took me a while to really get to that.  But the main takeaway I gathered from that is that oftentimes we forget to put the human element and a bona fide narrative arc when writing feature stories on "serious musicians", especially if their music is deemed "avant-garde."  When I was writing about Andrew Hill, one of the cliches I always tried to avoid was "He talks the same way he plays the piano", equating a speech impediment with his distinctive approach to improvisation.  Indeed, the ploy is great when trying to portray a distinctive musician as more "artistically exotic" than he/she needs to be, but it can also marginalize the artist as well.

 

I think it’s always beneficial for journalists who write a lot for niche magazines, such as JazzTimes and DownBeat,to challenge him/herself with writing for a mainstream, less-informed audience without sacrificing what makes the musician great, but also portraying that artist as a well-rounded person.

 

You’ve not only written about jazz but also quite extensively on hip hop, drum n’ bass, house, electronica, and other modern music.  Where do you see intersections between these forms?

 

I see the intersections happening in terms of "points of reference" from musicians’ and music listeners standpoint.  From checking out electronica (house, broken, drum-n-bass) and hip hop, I noticed a number of jazz artists (e.g. Marc Cary, Robert Mitchell, Taurus Mateen, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Roy Ayers, Roy Hargrove, Robert Glasper, Derrick Hodge…) playing on those cuts.  Some would argue that they were doing it for the money (which is a valid point).  But oftentimes, these musicians saw something of artistic value [that attracted them] to play those non-jazz genres.

 

Also, many people listen to a variety of musics.  I grew up in the ’70s with a healthy diet of R&B and funk, but I also heard country, blues and jazz.  So hearing Willie Nelson, Z.Z. Hill, and Return to Forever was hardly any different from me hearing Bill Withers, Parliament Funkadelic, and Millie Jackson.  It was only until I was in colege that I realized that Santana was considered rock, then later Latin-rock.  Since Santana was on Columbia, as were Earth, Wind & Fire and Weather Report, and their music all had a distinctive Afro-Latin tinge ever so often, I associated them together, thinking that they were all black music — for better or worse. 

 

Then you can link the improvisational nature — particularly when it comes to rhythm — between jazz and hip-hop, drum-n-bass, and broken beat as well as them all being rooted in the African musical Diaspora.

 

Which musicians do you hear most successfully addressing those intersections in their music?

 

From a hip-hop perspective, I would look at how the late J Dilla had a profound influence on artists such as Robert Glasper, Stacy Dillard, Jaleel Shaw, Nicholas Payton, Roy Hargrove, Jeremy Pelt…  But he’s not the only influential hip-hop artist on jazz.  There’s the WuTang Clan (check out Steve Lehman’s new disc), Q-Tip, the Roots, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Dr. Dre, Madlib, Pete Rock, Jazzy Jeff, Mos Def — these hip-hop legends and many more — have had a significant influence on many post-Motown bop artists.  And we can talk for eons on how many jazz samples filtered through hip-hop during this golden period.

 

West London’s broken beat scene (I.G. Culture, Mark de-Clive Lowe, Kaidi Tatham, 4hero, etc.) is also of note, especially when you hear how its sonic imprint is rooted in electric jazz-funk (Roy Ayers, Herbie Hancock, Patrice Rushen, Chick Corea, Fela, Tom Browne, Donald Byrd, Sun Ra, the Mizell Brothers, Charles Stepney, Eddie Henderson) and how they influence the music of some of today’s renegades such as Leo Tardin, Soweto Kinch, and Robert Mitchell.  From a house music perspective you can look at the works of Jazzanova, Masters at Work, Carl Craig, King Britt, Moodymann… and immediately hear the jazz influences.

 

If you were pressed to list several musicians who may be somewhat bubbling under the surface or just about to break through as far as wider spread public consciousness, who might they be and why?

 

Again, I have to mention Jose James because not only is he a remarkable jazz singer, he’s a jazz singer of the hip-hop generation.  He’s not gunning after the same sepia-toned aesthetic as many of his other contemporaries.  And he’s built a lot of cult following from outside the jazz world by singing on albums by Jazzanova and Nicola Conte, and having noteworthy remixes of several songs from his disc.  Yet James still managed to make a head-turning appearance on Chico Hamilton’s latest disc.

 

Lately I’ve been impressed by saxophonist Stacy Dillard and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire.  I’m always checking out the Black British jazz scene too, particularly saxophonists Denys Baptiste, pianist Robert Mitchell, and singer Eska.  I love how they’re willing to incorporate their Caribbean, African, and European heritage into their takes on modern jazz.

 

Given your radio programming activities and your writing you obviously have your finger on the pulse of a lot of what’s being released.  As we close in on the second half of 2009 what for you have been the most intriguing records released so far this year?

 

Right now, I’ve been spending a lot of time listening to Stacy Dillard’s new disc, One [Smalls Records].  I’ve also discovered a new modern classical composer, Joseph C. Phillips, Jr. who incorporates a lot of jazz on his new disc, Vissapana [LABEL?].  Phillips happens to be African-American (yeah, another long discussion).  Steve Lehman’s new disc Travaukm Transformation, and Flow is on heavy rotation as is Kneebody’s intriguing makeover of Charles Ives’ music.

 

Since you just recently returned from covering the Cape Town Jazz Festival, what observations do you have on the music scene in South Africa?

 

It’s obvious that there’s a deep, valid tradition of jazz in South Africa.  But it also seems as if many South African artists feel as if they need to play smooth jazz to get heard or recorded.  I think South Africa’s jazz scene needs a figure like Wynton Marsalis and Courtney Pine to both educate its audience on its jazz history and jazz history worldwide and to inspire its South African musicians to dig deeper than the commercial whims of the mainstream. 

 

John Murph in Soweto

 

Continue reading →

Posted in That's What They Heard | 12 Comments

The Sampling Game: Bonding the Generations

Posted on June 12, 2009 by The Independent Ear

Jonathan Kaslow Reverses the Sampling Equation

I’ve known Jonathan Kaslow since he was a youngster growing up in New Orleans.  He comes from a musical family with particularly strong influences from his late mother Allison Minor, one of the founders of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the subsequent foundation of the same name.  It was Allison, who succumbed to bone marrow cancer a number of years ago and was one of the great people in my family’s life, who stood her ground and insisted that Jazzfest be operated as a not-for-profit by the Foundation.  As a result the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation has done great work ever since, with many musicians benefitting from Jazzfest’s success.  Allison was one of the most thoroughly music-immersed people I ever met and Jonathan is a living embodiment of her zest for music.

 

Though he is an enthusiast of many forms of creative music, Jonathan’s principle entry point in the music industry is on the hip hop side.  He is a freelance A&R man, Producer, and Music Supervisor based in New York City.  Jonathan’s credits include work with Def Jam recording artist Ghostface Killah and the documentary film Boys of Summer, which follows the Curacao Little League national team on their journey to the Little League World Series.  Among his most recent projects have been combing through the vast archives of the Concord Music Group (which owns the Fantasy catalogue — including such rich jazz motherlodes as Riverside, Contemporary, Prestige, and Milestone Records) for material to recommend for sampling potential to some of the leading artists in the hip hop game.

 

That Concord vault also houses the classic R&B label Stax.  Earlier this year Jonathan Kaslow produced the striking compilation Stax: The Soul of Hip Hop.  The disc includes 14 R&B tracks which have been liberally sampled for hip hop hits.  When the disc arrived in the mail I was struck by the relative obscurity of many of the tracks. Who on earth recalls the song "Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth" by 24-Carat Black, or "Why Marry" by the Sweet Inspirations for example?  Being a boomer like Jonathan’s mom Allison, these tracks were like a coming of age soundtrack — except many of them are shrouded in relative obscurity, B and C level in terms of impact in their original incarnations.  This got me pondering the whole sampling aspect of the hip hop game and the intrepid cleverness of that aspect of the form.  Immediately I started pondering so many of the jazz-oriented tracks that have been sampled and how many of them were also somewhat unlikely.  Immediately a conversation with Jonathan Kaslow seemed in order.

 

What was the motivation for doing this Stax: The Soul of Hip Hop project?

 

The motivating factor was to provide history to the hip hop community of both the Stax records catalog and sampling roots in general.  It was also to educate the Stax generation to the wonderful way in which hip hop has honored and upheld the rhythms and melodies from their own era.  One thing I have always been interested in is creating bonds between generations through music.  To me hip hop is not only, as Chuck D famously said, the "CNN of the streets" but also the History Channel.  It can educate you to the past, present and future and I think that has always been part of it’s worldwide appeal.  My hope would be that people who own the hip hop albums I discuss in the liner notes will discover this compilation and learn more about the history of both soul and hip hop music.  I liken the compilation to a multimedia textbook of sorts.

 

How did you go about researching the tracks you decided to include?  Obviously there must have been other sample source material in the Stax catalogue, so why these particular 14 tracks?

 

The process involved providing the most robust initial investigation into how the Stax catalog has been sampled.  I wanted to make sure that we would include songs from the early days of Stax through the mid-seventies when they shut their doors.  In addition, it was important to give a semi-sequential order to the liner notes, reflecting the changing artists and producers through the years who have sampled from the Stax catalogue.  It’s interesting that many of the songs in the compilation are not very well known at all on their own but are the backbone of some of the most famous hip hop records of all time.

 

Some of these tracks are so obscure I don’t even remember the groups, let alone the tunes.  What was your detective process in uncovering these gems?

 

I have been lucky enough to have much of the knowledge passed down to me by some of the producers I speak about in the lner notes.  Also, thanks to the internet much of the additional research was right at my fingertips.  Having a general knowledge of the catalogue, I was able to look up different artists I knew had sampled Stax.  Once I had a list of potential songs I would use different websites to verify certain information.  It’s incredible how the combination of websites like allmusic, wikepedia, and various fan created pages, along with easy access to audio sources from online retailers can provide unprecedented education into the previously shrouded-in-mystery world of sampling.  The [compilation] album aggregates much of the info that is out there into a digestible format.

 

Given the relative obscurity of some of the tracks on this sampler, how do you suppose they had such initial appeal to the MCs and producers who chose to sample these tunes?

 

Part of hip hop involves authenticity and especially in the late 80s-early 90s era of hip hop it was important to have a tone that was authentic but not representing consumerism.  The Stax catalogue represented the same ethos during its tenure and I think that appealed to artists like Public Enemy, Ice Cube, and Geto Boys, and continues today for artists like Ghostface and Freeway who aren’t making mainstream urban pop.  No disrespect but there is a reason these guys aren’t sampling Motown.

 

The opening track, "Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth", is by the group 24-Carat Black.  In your liner notes you cite an obvious family connection: DJ Hi-Tek’s (of Eric B. and Rakim) father was a founding member of 24-Carat Black; but besides that track some of these tunes beg the question of how the MCs, deejays, and producers who sampled snippets of these tunes go about digging up this material.

 

I think that Stax in particular has developed a reputation for being prolific for sampling.  Also, since sampling is rooted in DJing, many of the famous breakbeats from Stax were being looped live in the parks and parties before samplers were even invented, so they were familiar to the producers.  Once technology increased the possiblities for manipulating these sounds the floodgates opened.  The environment you are in definitely affected sample choices as artists like George Clinton and Roger Troutman were hugely popular on the west coast and were sampled heavily by LA hip hop producers.

 

The whole sampling universe is very fascinating because from a jazz listener’s perspective I’ve often been very surprised at the effective use of samples from jazz pieces — some of the CTI catalogue for example — which were otherwise rather forgettable pieces of music in their original form.  That begs the question again, how do these guys come up with this stuff?

 

I think a song being forgettable, but then years later being sampled, is a testament to the fact tht some musicians are truly ahead of their time.  It’s like in the art world many times an artist is not appreciated until they have passed away and people discover their work and contextually, for whatever reason it resonates with the current time more than when it was first created.  The response of hip hop to years of airwave bombardment from disco, new wave, Lite FM, and the other mediocre genres in the late 70s and early 80s was to resurrect the sound of the streets.  At the end of the Reagan era the advancements made by the civil rights and the soul generation were washed away by crime and urban neglect.  1988 needed a soundtrack that sounded more like 1968 and it was Stax that provided a large portion of the musical direction.

 

Would you say this is also in some instances — like track one for example — of MCs, deejays, rappers and producers growing up with this music from their parent’s collections?

 

Absolutely.  I can tell you from first hand experience that from the day I started listening to one of my parents’ records and found a breakbeat that was the instrumental of a hip hop song I liked I was hooked on digging.  Digging is a term we use to describe scouring record stores and collections of music to find the source material for hip hop tracks.  It was a way that DJs would show people how knowledgeable they were about old and new music.  In the 90s it became a competitive game of who had the original records and how you could mix them with the new songs at parties and on mixtapes to make people go "Oh, that’s what that’s from…"  Definitely if your prents were Parliament/Funkadelic, Stax, The Meters, and James Brown fans you had a leg up on the competition.

 

When we first talked about this project you mentioned how home studios are increasingly prevelant, perhaps even threatening the traditional recording studio business towards obsolescence.  It seems that this whole sampling universe is part and parcel to that, after all its not exactly profitable to rent studio time digging through crates of old vinyl to find these beats and samples — though that level of investigation would seem to require the kind of superior equipment generally found heretofore only in studios.  Talk about how these artists go about the research and extraction of these source materials.

 

Sampling is at a crossroads today.  Much of the best material is controlled by large corporations that understandably want their businesses to be profitable but demand licensing fees that due to the decline in record sales today, many record companies aren’t able to provide.  This either limits artists to release music that does not contain any derivative material or making the decision to simply include the sample and hope that they are not discovered, as is the case with many smaller indie labels.  That being said, there are also numerous new opportunities for sampling that never existed in the past which are pushing the boundaries of creativity to new levels.  With the advent of Pro Tools, multi-track masters which once sat dormant for years in warehouses are being digitized and given to producers as source material to create arrangements and sonic lanscapes never before even imaginable.  The access that producers have to go into the iTunes or Amazon store and stream a preview of an obscure old tune and then buy and send straight into their sampler makes me confident that sampling will continue to play an important if not dominant role in modern songwriting.

 

How much more viable material is there in the Stax catalogue that has been engaged like these 14 tracks have?

 

With the proliferation of more digitized sessions the possibility of new material being created from previously unremarkable songs with the exponentially larger sample choices by using the multis is staggering.  This will serve to grow the value of the Stax catalogue and enhance its market share in newly created songs that generate revenue streams in licensing and other non-traditional means, along with album sales.  As more young artists discover the catalogue for songwriting inspiration and previously unusued songs are chopped and repurposed in new ways to create derivative material, the manner in which the original songs can be marketed will grow as their sound becomes subliminally embedded in the ears of young consumers.

 

If you had a dream opportunity to put together a box set of such sampled tracks, what would that be?

 

There are literally hundreds more songs that have been sampled in the Stax catalogue, so hopefully one day we can complete the multi-volume set as a comprehensive examination into the history of the sampling of Stax.  Entire volumes could be created for Isaac Hayes and Rufus Thomas [both of whom are represented on this compilation] alone.  What I envision is taking the concept one step further by creating a computer-based visual component that gives the user music and information together in an interactive format.  Ultimately I would love to be able to take the concept to music education programs at schools to give young people an interesting way to learn about the history of music.

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Ancient Future – the radio program: 6/11/09 playlist

Posted on June 11, 2009 by The Independent Ear

Ancient Future the radio program airs Thursday mornings on WPFW 89.3 FM (www.wpfw.org), Pacifica Radio serving the Washington, DC metro region at 50,000 watts.  Here’s the playlist for Thursday, June 11, 2009:

 

ARTIST

TUNE

ALBUM TITLE
LABEL

 

Duke Ellington

Blues for New Orleans

New Orleans Suite

Atlantic

 

Dr. Michael White

Dark Sunshine

Blue Crescent

Basin Street

 

Wynton Marsalis

New Orleans

Marsalis Standard Time

Columbia

 

Bob French’s Original Tuxedo Jazz Band

New Orleans

Livin’ the Legacy

 

Rebirth Brass Band

Fire

Welcome To the Party

Shanhachie

 

Troy Andrews

Slippin’ & Trippin’

Trombone Shorty’s Swingin’ Gate

Lousiana Red Hot

 

Donald Harrison

I’m The Big Chief of Congo Square

The Chosen

Nagel Heyer

 

Harry Connick Jr.

Bourbon Street Parade

Danson du Vieux Carre

Marsalis Music

 

Nicholas Payton

The Charleston Hop

Into the Blue

Nonesuch

 

Irma Thomas

Early in the Morning

Simply Grand

Rounder

 

Ellis Marsalis

Teo

An Open Letter to Thelonious

ELM

 

Irma Thomas

This Bitter Earth

Simply Grand

Rounder

 

Soundviews extended play feature-of-the-week

Sean Jones

Life Cycles

The Search Within

Mack Avenue

 

Sean Jones

Letter of Resignation

(same)

 

Sean Jones

The Ambitious Violet

(same)

 

Sean Jones

Transition

(same)

 

The New Release Hour:

Seamus Blake Quartet

Way Out Willy

Live in Italy

Jazzeyes

 

Branford Marsalis Quartet

The Return of the Jitney Man

Metamorphosen

Marsalis Music

 

John Scofield

The Old Ship of Zion

Piety Street

Decca

 

(Nicholas Payton interview)

Nicholas Payton

Tryptich

Into the Blue

Nonesuch

 

Ben Tucker

T.N.T.

Sweet Thunder

Benglo Music

 

Contact: willard@openskyjazz.com

c/o Open Sky

5268-G Nicholson Lane

#281

Kensington, MD 20895

 

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Salim in South Africa: From Bahia to Durban

Posted on June 10, 2009 by The Independent Ear

A residency in South Africa, following a similar stint in Brazil, has given Salim Washington some interesting perspectives on the music of those two culturally-rich nations.

 

Salim Washington in performance

 

I had the pleasure of first meeting the Memphis-born, Detroit-raised saxophonist-flutist-composer-educator Salim Washington in the early 90s while collaborating with the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) on the formation of the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest National Jazz Network project.  At that point Salim was a valued member of the Boston jazz community and someone my colleagues from NEFA made sure I met.  Since then Salim has taken up residency in New York as a member of the jazz studies faculty at Columbia University, where the goal is not pedagogy but rather jazz music as a course of general study.

 

Last year Salim distributed several superb chronicles detailing his residency in Bahia in vivid detail of the sort one only gets from someone thoroughly aware and hip correspondent down on the ground.  This year he’s done the same from his even more extensive current residency in Durban, South Africa, the bustling city that is at the heart of that beautiful country’s Kwa-Zulu Natal region.  His portraits of South Africa have been so vivid that a more detailed conversation with The Independent Ear was in order.

 

Please talk about the nature of your recent residency in Brazil and your current residency in South Africa.

 

My residency in Brazil was simply a case of being called down to Bahia by the spirits.  I went there basically with no agenda or any kind of affiliation with anyone there or here.  I have been curious about Brazil in general and Bahia in particular for some time, most especially since my brief visit to Cuba in 2002.  That trip found me unhappy about having to leave so soon, and as I spoke with my travel mates about the things that intrigued me so about the peoples and cultures of Cuba I was advised to make it a priority to visit Bahia.  So, I went there simply to learn about the music and culture of Bahia.  I also needed a break from New York to a certain extent.

 

My residency here in South Africa is very similar, in that I am here because of a long time curiosity and admiration for the music and peoples of this country.  I first wanted to come to South Africa after the Soweto uprisings of 1976.  I was just out of high school and was impressed with how the young people of South Africa had taken the lead in the freedom struggle.  Shortly thereafter I heard a record of Chris McGregor & the Brotherhood of Breath and fell in love with the sounds of [trumpeter] Mongezi Feza, [alto saxophonist] Dudu Pukwana, [bassist] Johnny Dyani…  More recently, I became quite curious about the sounds of [pianist-saxophonist] Bheki Mseleku and began to research South African jazz more thoroughly.  I was awarded a Fullbright fellowship to spend time here teaching and researching jazz.  So, this trip is more formal in some ways, and also it is funded, allowing me a greater degree of comfort and also the privilege of experiencing the trip along with my two daughters.

 

Although you have completed your residency in Brazil and your South Africa residency is ongoing, how would you compare & contrast the two countries and your experiences?

 

That is a question that we could spend quite some time on…  Briefly, I would say that the two countries are vastly different.  They are similar in important aspects as well, including a long-standing political, economic, and cultural reality of race-based discrimination and oppression.  The racial and class divide between, say, the favelas of Rio and the beach properties of Ipanema are stark and heart-breaking, not to mention dangerous.  While not based upon a legal system like South Africa’s Apartheid or the United States’ Jim Crow, racial stratification is nearly as complete as it is in those two countries.  Another similarity is that much of the current landscape is determined by economic status moreso than race, but the racial history of both nations have left long legacies and determine much of the economic and social reality for many to this very day.

 

My stay in Brazil — mostly in Salvador, Bahia, but also briefly in Marahanao and also Rio de Janeiro was quite beautiful.  It was a life-changing encounter.  Highlights of my experience were finally learning what it means to have been raised in a Puritanical culture (the neo-Calvinist strains were very salient in my COGIC upbringing, for instance), the discovery of a culture that truly celebrated feminine beauty without making it prurient or pornographic, the discovery of the spirit of Yemanja, who reigns supreme in Bahia (I think, though officially its Obatala).  It was enchanting to experience how thoroughly infused with music and tradition the everyday culture of Bahia is.  The strength and the beauty of African cultural retentions through dress, custom, religion, music, dance, cuisine, etc. was quite impressive.

 

Rather than beauty, which is also [in South Africa] in abundance, I am struck by the cosmopolitan complexity and political energy of South Africa.  I have thoroughly enjoyed my time this far in South Africa, but there are certain difficulties.  For instance, there is the high crime rate.  There is unbelievable poverty and sensational crime in Brazil as well, but in Bahia everyone lives and goes about their business together.  As one Baina told me, ‘we are all going in the ground together, so we might as well live together;’ the poor and downtrodden still have a quality of life and a palpable happiness that is fantastic.  [In South Africa] there is a culture of fear around crime, especially robbery and rape, and it has made everyday living more cautious.  There is not a viable public transportation system, so here I have a car.  That too has made my experiences different.  This is an exciting country and I feel like I am learning so much about what it means to be in the modern world.

 

Have you found much common ground from a musical perspective between Brazil and SA?

 

That is also a difficult question.  In Brazil people are widely knowledgeable about various kinds of music.  They know their folkloric music, their popular music, their classics, and can dance to all of it.  They know music from other countries.  They are very hip that way.  South Africans are also very savvy about different traditions in music.  I don’t think [South Africans] have as widespread emphasis on the folkloric traditions as they do in Bahia, however.  And there is a stronger African American influence in South African culture.

 

I have long contended that South Africa has the deepest, broadest jazz history of any African nation.  Would you agree with that contention?

 

I would definitely agree with your assessment.  In fact, I would go further, and perhaps say [South Africa’s] jazz history is deeper and broader than any nation, save the United States.  It is ironic, for the three nations with the most interesting jazz outside the United States from my perspective are Cuba, Brazil, and South Africa.  In the case of Cuba and Brazil, their interaction with the music is so strong that it has influenced the way we play our own music.  To say, let’s do this Afro-Cuban, or say let’s play a bossa or a samba, all of these things have meaning to American jazz musicians.  I think that South Africa’s influence would be just as profound were it not for the isolation caused by Apartheid.  I might even say one more thing about this, that the South African jazz tradition is more similar to the African American jazz tradition, perhaps because the music signifies in such similar ways for the two peoples.  Also, there are striking similarities in the way African Americans and South Africans entered modernity (what with industrialization0, Christianity, slavery, proletarian exploitation, race-based segregation, etc.

 

Since you are also an educator what’s your sense of the training available to musicians in Brazil and SA who have eventually become professionals?

 

The young South African musicians are extremely well-trained.  I think there is more opportunity for black youngsters in particular for higher education than there is in Bahia.  Black students in higher education in Brazil is virtually non-existant.  With the end of Apartheid, blacks are now more frequently found in tertiary education, including pre-professional music programs.  They are still operating at a disadvantage often because the township schools, where most blacks, Indians, and Coloureds come from, most often do not have formal music programs.  So often you find that black music students are coming to their instruments late, and often are left to learn basically on their own.  This might have inadvertently raised the level of creativity and certainly the degree to which they learn from records rather than from books.  So ironically, a certain disadvantage in one way might have produced advantages in other ways.  In Bahia the folk traditions are still vibrant and ongoing, so through samba schools and through caporeira groups, etc. many people will continue to become proficient in music.  But the jazz musician per se, is probably at a disadvantage educationally in comparison to his/her counterpart in South Africa at this time.

 

How did the Brazil experience affect your own music? And how has South Africa affected your music so far, and how do you suspect that influence to evolve in your perspective as this current residency continues?

 

Brazil affected my whole life.  Musically, it has taught me to be more tolerant and more beautiful.  I think jazz culture can be quite macho at times.  But machismo does not make sense in Bahia, and the music is not as "hard" in the masculine sense as in the United States or even in Cuba.  So, I am learning to value beauty over strength, along with strength, if that makes sense.  I have not had as much time to filter my experiences here in South Africa, but already I am examining the relationships between duple and triple meter somewhat differently due to my exposure to South African jazz musicians.  I am sure there will be much more, as my learning here is constant!

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