Local Event - Ethnic Heritage Ensemble at Lovin' Cup

TONIGHT!! - you really should, if at all possible, get out to Lovin' Cup and hear the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble. This is a really fabulous  trio - Kahil El Zabar (percussion), Ernest Dawkins (tenor) & Corey Wilkes (trumpet). The EHE is among the longest running groups to come out of the AACM in Chicago and they play music that you will not likely hear, for instance, at the Rochester Jazz Festival (RIJF). Details on the show are available here. Two other reasons to turn out are (1)  that this part of the diverse series of shows put on by Tom Kohn at The Bop Shop and (2) the folks at Lovin' Cup work hard to bring good, off the equilibrium path music to town. Support them!

Passings ~ Fontella Bass (1940~2012)

Soul/R&B/Jazz vocalist Fontella Bass has died. You can find an obituary here at The Guardian. And here is Bass performing her biggest hit:

Enthusiasms (36) ~ Tarbaby

So, here is a CD by a trio named Tarbaby consisting in Orrin Evans (p), Eric Revis (b) and Nasheet Waits (d).  The trio is designed to be expandable, meaning it is meant, over time, to accommodate friends, collaborators, co-conspirators. In this instance - their second CD, entitled the end of fear (Posi-Tone Records 2010) - their accomplices are J.D. Allen (tenor), Oliver Lake (alto) and Nicholas Payton (trumpet). A very, very, very good CD, and a nice concept for an improvisatory (in the organizational sense) ensemble. Not only is the music terrific, it gives me a bit of a soapbox.

You'll note that among the labels attached to this post is one that reads "jazz." Pianist Orrin Evans has been embroiled in a bit of a fracas regarding whether that term should be accepted, or discarded as insulting and basically racist. You can find a brief story here laying out his views. There is not much news in the disagreement - in which Payton apparently has played a major role. (Recall that the motto of the AACM has been "Great Black Music, Ancient to the Future" for decades now.) Lots of white folks nevertheless get worked up about the claim that jazz fundamentally is black people's music. I do not see why that observation is startling at all and, in fact, have written here repeatedly about the racial amnesia surrounding "jazz" in its safe and predictable manifestations, epitomized by the relationship between local jazz fest and the white denizens of suburbia who use it as an excuse for tourist forays into the city.

In any case, Evans is mostly interested in reinvigorating the black audience for jazz. That is an admirable task. And if, in the process, some white folks get their knickers in a knot, that leaves him (rightly, I think) perplexed: "Why is it exclusionary when we all know and we all recognize that jazz is an African-American art form?  . . .  I understand where anything black, to people who are not black, is exclusionary if they're not comfortable in their own skin." I myself look at jazz and other variants of Great Black Music as a gift (intellectual, aesthetic, organizational), which I receive with all the humility I can muster.

Finding Good Music in Out of the Way Places

Yesterday afternoon I paid a visit to Vaxkupan and discovered a bunch of releases from Ayler Records, an indy label I had never heard of before. I picked up a couple of CDs - live recordings by Henry Grimes/Hamid Drake/David Murray and Fred Anderson/Harrison Bankhead that sound promising. It just reinforces the realization of how much music is out there to be heard. And, of course, you don't find these sorts of discs at your local big box.

The Rochester International Jazz Festival & the Illusion of Post-Racial Music

The tenth edition of the Rochester International Jazz Festival (RIJF) is about to open. Many see this as a time to celebrate success. I think it also affords the opportunity for some much needed, critical reflection.

When I read down the RIJF schedule I see lots of what we might call World Music, R&B, Pop, Blues, or Americana. I love Elvis Costello and K.D. Lang. However, I suspect we can, charitably, agree that they hardly are jazz performers. In many instances of course, labels may make no difference; an exception is when a genre – and here I have jazz in mind - is ripe for the endangered list. That said, let’s set aside the overly expansive - dare we say indiscriminate - conception of what counts as “jazz” at the RIJF. My primary worry lies elsewhere.

Consider history. One can exaggerate the extent to which jazz revolves around improvisation. But it undoubtedly is a music defined by creativity and inventiveness. Overwhelmingly, African Americans are responsible for the major innovations in jazz. Musically the pattern is crystal clear – think of the brilliance of Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman. It is only somewhat less clear when we consider “practical’ considerations like organizational forms, from the early New Orleans funeral marches to the Basie Band to Mingus’s Jazz Workshop to the AACM. Obviously, there are lots and lots of excellent jazz musicians who are not African American. And one can easily name non-African Americans who have made substantial contributions to jazz on artistic and practical dimensions. Think, for instance, of Bill Evans and John Hammond respectively. It is nonetheless fair to say that those contributions pale in comparison (pun intended) to the defining innovations of those I listed above.

With that in mind, there are three things to notice about the line-up at RIJF. The first is that the preponderance of performers are white. The “stars” trailing down the left side of the RIJF web page this year are Elvis Costello, Natalie Cole, Chris Botti, K.D. Lang, the Fab Faux, and Bela Fleck. All but Cole are white. That pattern holds once we look beyond the headliners. And it holds too over the past decade. It is, in other words, deep and persistent.

The second thing to notice is that the average age of the few African-American jazz musicians on the program is what we might gently call “advanced.” This year Marcus Strickland is the exception that proves the rule. But what about the myriad other African American musicians in their thirties, forties, and fifties who are renewing and redefining the jazz tradition? They are too numerous to name and are conspicuous by their absence. Of course, age often brings accomplishment and it is wonderful to see Cedar Walton on the program this year. But even if we restrict ourselves to the august, the RIJF organizers seemingly have a narrow view of accomplishment. Where are the other “elders” – from, say, Muhal Richard Abrams through Archie Shepp to Randy Weston - of the music? If these august figures have appeared at RIJF in past years, I missed it.

Finally, you will notice that many of the African American performers who do make it onto the RIJF program fall most plausibly into a non-jazz genre. In recent years, as I recall, we have had Taj Mahal, Booker T, and the Neville Brothers. This year it is Lucky Peterson. Wonderful musicians all. But none is obviously a jazz musician in any meaningful sense. And surely they are not aiming to challenge or transform listeners in the way Abrams or Shepp or Weston continues to do.

As it stands the RIJF schedule does not vaguely reflect jazz history and, as a result, it risks reinforcing and compounding what I think is a massive misinterpretation of the music – that it is not a living, developing enterprise. In that sense, the RIJF patronizes it’s audience, refusing to push any musical boundaries or challenge listeners in any significant way.

When I recently listened to the RIJF producers being interviewed on our local npr station (WXXI ~ 31 May 2011) it became clear that virtually every aspect of festival planning – down to the time it takes, for example, to walk from venue to venue - is carefully considered and calculated and calibrated. This leads me to ask the obvious question: in their programming have the organizers chosen to downplay the historic and ongoing contributions African Americans to jazz? Is this a conscious decision or merely thoughtlessness?

Passings ~ Fred Anderson (1929-2010)

Fred Anderson sits on the edge of the stage at the Velvet Lounge
before opening for the evening (February 2006)
~ Photograph © Jeff Robertson/AP.

Fred Anderson has died. You can read obituaries here and here and here and here. Anderson was a musician, entrepreneur, mentor and, by all accounts, a genuinely decent man. His passing is an immense loss to the jazz scene in Chicago especially, but very far beyond as well. I commented on a recent Anderson recording here just about this time last year.
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Thanks for the heads up!

Enthusiasms (25) ~ Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake

This 2007 recording, by Fred Anderson and Hamid Drake is simply wonderful. Anderson & Drake were both born in Monroe, Louisiana - a quarter century apart. Both have been resident of Chicago for many years. And their contributions and collaborations are far too numerous to mention. Anderson, in particular, is now 80 and was a founding member of the AACM. He also has been a long time club owner; his current venue is the newish incarnation of the Velvet Lounge. This recording was released on Thrill Jockey Records but Anderson and Drake also have recorded multiple times for Okka Disk another mid-western label. Part of the message here is that middle America has sustained a robust infrastructure for creative music over the course of decades. The other, more obvious, part is that Anderson and Drake have a remarkable musical partnership.

So what follows is a sample from the record. The number is long, but well worth a listen. Anderson is on tenor and Drake on drums. They are joined by Harrison Bankhead on cello, guitarist Jeff Parker, and Josh Abrams bass.

"Strut Time" ~ Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake, From the River to the Ocean. Thrill Jockey Records.

Enthusiasms (19) ~ Myra Melford

I have spent a considerable amount of time lately listening to a couple of CDs by pianist Myra Melford and several collaborators. I had been vaguely aware that over the years Melford had kept musical company with, among others, various AACM luminaries ~ Henry Threadgill, Leroy Jenkins, Reggie Nicholson and Joseph Jarman. Then a while back I saw this notice in The New York Times about her side project with Trio M (Mark Dresser on bass & Mark Wilson on drums) and was intrigued enough to go fetch their CD, (Big Picture on Cryptogramophone). To be clear, as The Times notice makes clear this trio is a side project for all the Ms who profess to being over-committed with other undertakings. In any case, I have been playing the CD more or less constantly since.

I've also been listening to Melford's most recent duet recording (Spark on Palmetto) with yet another M ~ Marty Erhlich (clarinet, mostly). Although this is surely not Ehrlich's fault, the label's web page lists the recording under his name rather than as a duet. Shame on them.

On both records Melford's playing ranges from luminous to jagged; she often threatens to careen completely off on her own but never does, unfailingly carrying us back to her musical interlocutors. Her collaborators are, it goes without saying, all superb. But in both settings, Melford simply dazzles.

Enthusiasms (17) ~ Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton is an extraordinary musician (primarily reeds) and composer who teaches at Wesleyan University and has a long-standing association with the AACM. I will say that my efforts to appreciate Braxton's own compositions have been an abject failure. But I have lately been listening to a set of his CDs of "standards" that are simply wonderful. I have two largish collections issued by Leo Records a couple of years back. These are live recordings of Braxton's quartet - Kevin O'Neil (g), Kevin Norton (d), & Andy Eulau (b).

The same quartet - sometimes augmented by Paul Smoker (tr) and
Steve Lehman (ts) - also has recorded two really terrific CDs of (mostly) Andrew Hill compositions. These discs were released on the CIMP label.

It seems to me that these recordings elicit three pretty obvious observations. The first has to do with tiny, obscure labels - and the remarkable individuals who run them. That is the culture of jazz. One need not have access to the major labels (say, Columbia) and well-heeled donors at, say, Jazz at Lincoln Center, to make, record, and distribute great music. Resources help, to be sure. But there are lots of people out there working without anything resembling a big-time budget. Second, the compositions that Braxton covers in these recordings puts the lie to pompous pronouncements regarding what counts as "the" jazz tradition. Such attempts at legislation are truly laughable. In addition to the inimitable Andrew Hill, we get interpretations of compositions by Coltrane and Monk and Evans and Desmond and Brubeck and so on, as well as an ample sampling from the "great American songbook." Third, it is fair to say - if anyone needed a basis for doing so -that attempts to exclude Braxton from the jazz tradition are simply fatuous. These recordings show Braxton instead as a master of that tradition. What they show about those who've appointed themselves to the task of policing the boundaries of "the tradition" is another matter altogether.

Braxton has played over the years with - among others - Marilyn Crispell, George Lewis, Dave Holland, Barry Altschul, Dave Douglas, Mal Waldron, and Sam Rivers. But I first heard him on "Birth & Rebirth" (1978) released on Black Saint; it is a set of duets with the great Max Roach. Braxton does not need the say-so of anyone. But if he did, this is way more than good enough.

Summer Reading ~ George Lewis on the AACM

I am starting to make a list of things I hope to read this summer. Among the first things I want to take a crack at will be a new book by trombonist/composer George Lewis, Professor of Music at Columbia University and long time member (since 1971) of the AACM <1> <2>. The book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music will be released soon by the University of Chicago Press. You can find a story on Lewis and the book from the Chicago Reader here.

The AACM is a truly wondrous outfit, arguably unparalleled in the contemporary United States. It is a collective of avant-garde musicians playing "great black music", that has sustained itself over the course of several decades ~ truly a monument to cultural, artistic and organizational creativity. Among the reasons I was so excited to go off to graduate school in Chicago in the late 1970s was the prospect of hearing music by members of the association. Happily, I managed to take in quite a number of performances in the many years I lived there. I have posted on some of the AACM's guiding lights here and here.
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Update ~ (11 May 08): Here are a couple of pieces from The New York Times prompted by the release of Lewis's book [1] [2].

Henry Threadgill

Henry Threadgill, composer, musician, founding member of the AACM was born 15 February 1944. Threadgll was a member of the great trio Air along with bassist Fred Hopkins and drummer Steve McCall, both now deceased.

Roscoe Mitchell

In The Nation this week is a nice essay by Brian Morton on saxophonist/composer Roscoe Mitchell who, among other things, is a stalwart in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and a founding member of and driving force behind the Art Ensemble of Chicago. I've been listening to the AEC since before I went to graduate school, but have only occasionally listened to any of Mitchell's many other musical projects. Morton's essay is a useful guide to all of those. And it helps to situate Mitchell at the intersection of more or less traditional jazz sensibilities and modern European compositional music.

Not long ago I had purchased a new album by Mitchell Composition/Improvisation Nos. 1,2 & 3
(ECM) which is a daunting live recording by a 14 member ensemble. The liner notes to the disc begin like this: 'Arnold Schoenberg in 1933 described composition as "slowed down improvisation," adding "often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas." Indeed, the ideas on this recording burst forth, sometimes scored, but often also from musicians (singly, in sub-groups or as the whole ensemble) given wide latitude to improvise. It is difficult for me to understand quite what is going on in this music some of the time. It does make me wonder though, and I take that to be a good thing.