[Dixielandjazz] Evolution of Jazz

[Stephen Barbone]

WARNING, NOT FOR EVERYBODY ON THE LIST.

BUT, IF YOU ARE A BAND LEADER, OR A SIDEMAN THERE IS PERHAPS A GLIMPSE
OF WHERE THE GENERAL AUDIENCE FOR JAZZ IN THE USA IS HEADING.

MY BAND HAS FOUND A VERY VIABLE MARKET NICHE AMONG GENERAL AUDIENCES FOR
LOOSE, JAM TYPE, OKOM BASED JAZZ. THE FOCUS OF THE BELOW ARTICLE IS NOT
TOO FAR REMOVED FROM THAT.

IF YOU ARE LEADING A "WORKING" JAZZ BAND, OR A MEMBER OF ONE, YOU MAY
FIND THIS ARTICLE WELL WORTH READING.

MY SUGGESTION? CONCENTRATE ON THE SCENE THAT THE ARTICLE TRIES TO
PORTRAY, RATHER THEN ON THE WORDS AND PHRASES IT USES. IN OTHER WORDS,
"HEAR THE MESSAGE"

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

May 20, 2003

Smooth? How About Some Chunky?

By BEN RATLIFF

       Around 1974 a mutant strain of jazz broke apart from the main
organism. Its leading artist was Grover Washington Jr., a supertalented
alto saxophonist, and the music was made by jazz musicians playing jazz
vocabulary (if through a limited number of chords) over shuffles and
funk rhythms.

By the mid-1980's that music diversified, found a marketing genius or
two and came to be called smooth-jazz. It developed its own world of
consumption.
It cultivated a large audience, both black and white. And as the options
in popular music for adults quickly proliferate, it is sounding tackier
every day.

These three new CD's seem to predict where the audience for smooth-jazz
could go next. It's likely that the genre — as represented in
smooth-jazz radio
playlists and the Contemporary Jazz category of the Grammys — will
revisit its early-70's roots: it will get identifiably blacker, guided
by neo-soul, and
more hippie-ish, with the connotations of jam-band music.

Hard Groove
Roy Hargrove

Roy Hargrove's "Hard Groove" (Verve) was recorded with a studio
collective Mr. Hargrove calls the RH Factor. A lot of hopes have been
pinned to this
record. Mr. Hargrove, who has a successful mainstream-jazz working band,
was the trumpet player on D'Angelo's studio masterpiece "Voodoo" a few
years ago, and this CD was similarly assembled: it has a large core
crew, with piecework added from recognizable names.

Like "Voodoo," it transmits the feeling of musicians at work in a casual
atmosphere. Every track attains the loose-limbed momentum of a jam
session, and
the sound has been heavily altered in postproduction by Russell Elevado,
who also designed the remarkable mix on "Voodoo." Mr. Elevado
multitracks
Mr. Hargrove's trumpet sound, caking it with fuzz and wah-wah at points;
he artfully buries a Hammond organ, and sometimes even vocals, under the

rhythm section.

"Hard Groove" is a late-night party album: it begins upbeat then settles
into a stoned haze. The rapper Common comes along in the second track,
freestyling badly; D'Angelo himself arrives in Track 3, efficaciously
nailing Funkadelic's "I'll Stay"; Q-Tip drops by to rap about jazz in
his mentholated,
nasal tones, followed by Erykah Badu. And so on, through sweet funk
ballads and even an uptempo charge through free harmony by the
saxophonist
Steve Coleman.

It's an odd album, lurching regularly across 72 long minutes from the
banal to the inspired. The record aims for a feeling of mystery. These
are primarily
jams, not songs. That's good. And thanks to Mr. Elevado, it always
sounds seductive. But too many dull ideas are spun out too long, and
there's a
persistent dependence on all kinds of instrumental and vocal clichés of
funk.

Ethnomusicology, Vol. III
Russell Gunn

Russell Gunn, who's just released "Ethnomusicology, Vol. III" (Justin
Time), has much in common with Mr. Hargrove: he's a young hard-core jazz

trumpeter who has worked behind R&B stars (in Mr. Gunn's case, the
singer Maxwell). Logically Mr. Gunn wants his work to build a sensible
bridge
between the jazz and neo-soul audiences. If Mr. Hargrove's touchstone is
"Voodoo" and the music that inspired it, Mr. Gunn's might be Guru's 1993

album "Jazzmatazz," with a lot of sampled drum loops and D.J. scratches.
(The jazz and hip-hop/R&B aesthetics are quite far apart: this hybrid
music
evolves slowly, precisely because it's so hard for musicians on one side
of the fence to become masterly at the music from the other.)

Mr. Gunn wants to relax you with soul ballads, a few of which seem right
for commercial radio. Then he wants to challenge you. There are samples
of
squealing tires, a car crash, a barking dog; he encourages crunching
dissonance here and there. The album uses some different beats, like a
fast house
rhythm in "East St. Louis" and some jazz historicity: an airy jazz-funk
version of "Yesterdays" and a swirling bad-dream arrangement of "Strange
Fruit."

Up All Night
The John Scofield Band

Since the 1970's the guitarist John Scofield has effectively
incorporated rock and funk into his jazz; "Up All Night" (Verve) uses
his tight new working
band, aiming right at the jam-band (i.e., post-Grateful Dead) audience.
What makes this album different from the two above? This is guitar
music, for one.
(Mr. Scofield has an unusual, woozy touch and rattles off beautiful
fractured solos, unified by his own rhythmic logic.)

It's a strict band, playing in real time; the goals are more focused.
The dance groove is shallower and brighter: it's the classic early-70's
sound of the
Meters, rather than contemporary R&B, that's in his head. And despite
Mr. Scofield's frightening musicianship, this album is also more
unapologetically
workmanlike: it is merely the latest installment of a natural-sounding
discourse.