Rolling Jazz Thread 2024

I get why this chilled out minimalist/ambient thing is all the rage but I find it a total snooze! Can't help but feel there's a lot of reliance on spiritual jazz signifiers to give the music a sense of depth. At worst, it's some phoney new age bullshit.

Moor Mother had a hilarious tweet the other day:

Just imagine if some of the folks playing spiritual jazz was actually spiritual

— poetry (@moormother) February 21, 2024

(Her new album is amazing, btw; Iyer's on it, and a bunch of other people. Not "jazz" exactly, but really, really strong stuff.)

Ha I saw that! She's OTM.

Very excited for her new album. She can do no wrong!

curious to hear the new shabaka album

i'm not familiar with all of his work, just sons of kemet and the comet is coming, but he has popped up on some other stuff. i like him, but there've been several times where i immediately clocked it was him because...he plays the same licks all the time? like i could hear a certain phrase and it's just immediately recognizable

Haha. I'm 100% in favor of that, my favorite horn player (Derrick "Kabuki" Shezbie) has 5 - 10 licks he deploys with the utmost sound, feel, & musicality and no one else can play those licks like him.

I think there's a conceptual divide where some musicians think true improvisation is playing something you've never played before, without a net, and others feel that's what the practice room is for and that you shouldn't try to play everything you hear if you don't know where it's going. Idk, I think licks = words and it's all in how you use them. Talk with them rather than recite a prepared speech.

yeah to be clear i'm not against it or criticizing him really, it's just SO noticeable to me compared to a lot of other horn players

i like him, but there've been several times where i immediately clocked it was him because...he plays the same licks all the time? like i could hear a certain phrase and it's just immediately recognizable

Allow me to introduce you to the work of Fred Anderson...

Ha I saw that! She's OTM.

Very excited for her new album. She can do no wrong!

(I have also had the distinct privilege of seeing her a LOT since we are both Philly jawns)

On the ambient turn... this review of Winter Jazz Fest makes some good observations. His argument - comforting music for troubled times - is solid enough, but that's the problem. If there's a time for jazz to be angry it's now. A lot of this new age ambient jazz comes across as hippy escapism. It's also not very interesting musically. I put on a Carlos Nino album and think that's cool, some nice grooves, some nice sounds, but it doesn't keep me engaged. But then that's maybe the point - it's background music to chill to. Perhaps I'm not temperamentally disposed to blissed out Californian vibes.
Of course any revolutionary movement needs collective joy, beauty, love - that's why the latest Irreversible Entanglements is so powerful. And I get that Shabaka, for example, has released plenty of politically charged music before (The third Sons Of Kemet album in particular) and has every right to follow his bliss. But still...

Sorry, didn't include the link: https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2024/02/28/jazz-ragas-for-restless-times/

I don’t really understand the fuss over Niño and am lukewarm on Hutchings’ latest efforts, but I am a little skeptical of the idea that a sound being projected onto some musicians betrays their stance on social or political issues.

That said, could it be possible that by making music that is calming, comforting, even contemplative, there is a desire for futurity being projected into the world? Why does music have to be “angry” to be read as in tune with political and social demands? And isn’t that more a problem with the subjective listener than the music itself?

To clarify, I'm not arguing that all music should be angry, noisy and political. Free jazz has always looked after the spirit - music as a healing force and all that. And it's always had space for the contemplative. By its very nature, jazz and improvised music is inherently subversive, a liberation technology as Moor Moor puts it. Or at least, any jazz and improvised music that is alive and real, and not just industry hyped pseudo spiritual jazz or sub ECM muzak.

And I'm not questioning Shabaka's political commitment - I really admire the way SOK brought anti-colonial, anti-racist politics to the edge of the mainstream. That glorious FUCK THE TORIES FUCK THE FASCISTS bit in My Queen Is Ada Eastman needs to be blasted from rooftops.

My beef is really with the wider ambient trend and the marketing of it. Again, it ties back to another recent Moor Mother tweet about flooding the market with ambient and soft indie so people remain asleep.

Yeah sorry I don’t buy that

What is “real” spiritual jazz? Does Camae Ayewa get to decide that for us?

Shiroishi has made deeply political records, full of feedback, skronk, and wailing that gets to the center of the goddamn earth. He also is one of the leaders of Fuubutsushi, a group that definitely makes ECM-style “vibes” music, albeit with a political bent, given samples used and song titles.

This whole oppositionality to what is seen as a burgeoning “trend” seems to me to be more about certain people acting like cops about what people can and can’t enjoy based on whether it meets some very subjective ideas of what spirituality is and can be.

Isn't "spiritual" a notoriously vague, even vacuous, term? To the point that people are often mocked for self-describing with it? It's kind of funny to assert that some people have this quality and others don't. Also I know everyone itt knows that original spiritual jazz was strongly detested for decades because genre purists thought it was "phoney new age bullshit" (not always without reason!)

By its very nature, jazz and improvised music is inherently subversive, a liberation technology

more like jazz music has always been an idea onto which the white jazz critic cannot resist projecting his politics, his ideas about authenticity, his hang ups and squabbles with other critics, ya feel me

and i don't mean that as a personal attack, and to be clear i really like having you around, Stew, but i think if there's been any kind of through line or 'essence' to jazz, it has to be this more than anything else

more like jazz music has always been an idea onto which the white jazz critic cannot resist projecting his politics, his ideas about authenticity, his hang ups and squabbles with other critics, ya feel me

Agree with this 100%. It's a major problem. Amiri Baraka's essay "Jazz and the White Critic" remains a crucial text even in 2024, and you can always read Frank Kofsky for a tragic lesson in what not to do and who not to be.

Absolutely, and as a white jazz critic I'm well aware of these pitfalls and try my best to avoid them or at least learn from mistakes. The Baraka essay is a touchstone and in my writing and teaching I draw on what musicians like Moor Mother William Parker, Pat Thomas et al have to say, as well as thinkers like Fred Moten, Edward George and Rashida Philips. Jazz has had a profound impact on my politics. As a friend puts it, music is why I'm not a Tory.

Obviously I'm not claiming every jazz musician is politically radical, but I don't think it's hard to see the liberatory potential in a music based on improvisation, freeing up melody, harmony and time, expressing your individuality etc. Which is why more conservative kinds of jazz don't do it for me, aesthetically or politically. But I wouldn't call them inauthentic.

'What is “real” spiritual jazz? Does Camae Ayewa get to decide that for us?'

Of course not, but I don't think she's trying to be prescriptive about what spiritual jazz is. Rather, the point is that "spiritual jazz" has become a marketing term, both for the reissues market and new releases. There's lots of deeply spiritual jazz that's just too radical or intense to fit the commercial idea of "spiritual jazz", i.e. modal, groove-based music modelled on the more accessible aspects of Alice/Pharoah's classic Impulse! sides. It says a lot that a musician of the "revolutionary spiritual school" like William Parker is too much for the posh rare groove tastemakers.

I think there's a British class dimension to this that maybe needs explaining... my beef is largely with privately educated white British musicians and tastemakers, including Floating Points, who let the "spiritual vibes" do a lot of heavy lifting for their bland expensive wallpaper music.

'This whole oppositionality to what is seen as a burgeoning “trend” seems to me to be more about certain people acting like cops about what people can and can’t enjoy based on whether it meets some very subjective ideas of what spirituality is and can be.'

People can enjoy what they like, but it's not the critic's job to just hold their hands up and accept any old nonsense.

Big fan of Shiroishi and the sheer variety of his music is stunning. And I think the political charge makes a big difference, putting those crystalline ECM sonics to radical uses.

Obviously I'm not claiming every jazz musician is politically radical, but I don't think it's hard to see the liberatory potential in a music based on improvisation, freeing up melody, harmony and time, expressing your individuality etc. Which is why more conservative kinds of jazz don't do it for me, aesthetically or politically. But I wouldn't call them inauthentic.

The last sentence here is crucial. Because yeah, I listen to tons of free and out jazz, but I also listen to tons of early 70s CTI recordings, and dudes like Hubert Laws, a flutist equally conversant in jazz and classical, blending both of those with psychedelic funk production, is making music that's totally authentic to his experience of the world. And Afro-Classic is a fucking incredible record as a result. Could you throw some of it on alongside the Andre 3000 record?

Somewhat related to this, I've heard sizable chunks of the next Kamasi Washington album, and...it's not really doing it for me in the way The Epic or Heaven and Earth did. Was I just infatuated at the time? Did I buy into the hype cycle? I don't think so — my excitement when I heard that album was real, and I'd already heard Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane and all the rest of the influences he was clearly drawing upon. More to come...

Got it. I guess the problem I have is that while I agree with you pretty sturdily on yr complaints regarding Floating Points and the ilk, I bristle at the idea that anyone can diagnose what counts as “spiritual” jazz or “spiritual” music, and find Ayewa’s tweet to be wrong-headed, because the spiritual experience is one that is entirely subjective and not within the realm of rationality. That is to say: some people might find something in FP or Carlos Nino that I don’t. I personally think ‘descension (out of our constrictions)’ is a heavy spiritual record, and that NIS are lumped in with the more wallpaper stuff in the AQ article feels like the writer isn’t actually listening to the music, because last year’s record is pretty damn spiritual too, just not as ecstatic. Not all spiritual experiences are based in ecstasy or transcendence.

Now, I agree that the marketing of “spiritual” jazz is super fucked, but this isn’t anything new— the more accessible side of spiritual jazz has always been pushed harder! I heard Alice Coltrane for the first time as a 17 year old and it totally blew my mind, but within a few years I knew that it was the tamer side of the spectrum . (That isn’t a knock on Alice, of course).

Totally agree with you on NIS. I think there are certain superficial connections with the new age/ambient stuff but that's as far as it goes. Heavy stuff with loads going on.

I do wonder if there's a bit of mischievous humour to that Ayewa tweet - she does shitpost from time to time!

x-post - I think the psychedelic funk influenced stuff is pretty radical in its own way. Some amazing arrangements and textures there. I know some people have been sniffy about Washington, but those records are really enjoyable and he puts on a great live show. I also appreciate the way he's given props to his community, hipped people to Horace Tapscot et al.

Not exactly related to the above, but when I saw Makaya McCraven recently he had 3 violinists in addition to his harpist and cellist and flute/sax player, trumpet, bass, etc and a dj guy I know who had seen McCraven at Big Ears once, said he felt this show was too sedate. I enjoyed it and to my ears at times it felt like McCraven was going almost for a Sketches of Spain meets Curtis Mayfield soundtrack feel. More sedate-- yea, but I liked it.

Coupla unrelated things (other than the general subject). I finally got around to reading that utterly amazing Kramer interview/more-or-less essay in "The Believer." I appreciated his depiction of the personal path from loving nothing but free/experimental music to settling into loving nothing but Bill Evans and Nelson Riddle. Sometimes I get so used to listening to jarring music that more sedate music becomes a bit more jarring. I think I was playing a playlist of The Book Beri'ah, and the moments that made me perk up were not the skronky or metal bits, but when it would suddenly downshift into something more subtle.

Second, I saw that Julian Lage did a gig with Joey Baron recently, and it reminded me that I didn't know what Baron was up to lately, which brought me to this:

https://downbeat.com/news/detail/blindfold-test-joey-baron

I love ears so attuned that they can recognize a drummer just from how they hit the cymbal or snare. (I also had somehow never heard Tyshawn Sorey!)

(I also had somehow never heard Tyshawn Sorey!)

His albums on Pi Recordings are incredible. Not on streaming services, though. The Inner Spectrum of Variables, Verisimilitude, Mesmerism and Continuing are the ones to start with. The latter two are collections of standards, but the way they play them really is transformative. I love the pianist in that group, Aaron Diehl. He draws from old-school jazz, like the 1930s and 1940s, and really makes it work. He's on a level with Jason Moran in my estimation.

Agreed re: Sorey. Mesmerism is a transformative listening experience.

Sorry for the self-promo, but I lead a ten-person jazz-adjacent proggy band that just announced our first LP, out in full in early May; maybe people on here will/might dig at least some of it (three long tracks)--I have hired a publicist, so unperson be forewarned, haha:
https://kunudusuvuntu.bandcamp.com/album/pita-parka-pt-i-xam-egdub

i'm 100% here for ilxors plugging their own jazz-adjacent music in the rolling jazz thread fwiw. looking forward to checking this out

Also xp, yes Josh In Chicago, that Kramer article in the Believer is so good! I could use a re-read--remember it being a fittingly bizarre, digressively eye-opening blast

Re: "I appreciated his depiction of the personal path from loving nothing but free/experimental music to settling into loving nothing but Bill Evans and Nelson Riddle. Sometimes I get so used to listening to jarring music that more sedate music becomes a bit more jarring," I can't help but think of Nels Cline, when promoting his 2CD set The Lovers, enthusing about the arrangements on Stan Getz's Focus

Yeah, I got sent your album yesterday; I'll definitely check it out.

Seconded on Unperson's Tyshawn Sorey recommendations. Would add Pillars, which is absolutely incredible, as if Bill Dixon and Tony Oxley had made the greatest drone metal album of all time.

Just got a hurt-feelings email from a free jazz player I wrote about in BA last year, asking me to take down the article about them because it was overly harsh. I re-read it and it was nothing of the kind, just a (mostly favorable) assessment of a young musician who hasn't fully developed their own personality yet, with some additional discussion of how young players pop up all the time and some of them last and some of them don't. I probably shouldn't have, but I responded, saying basically, "If I didn't like your work and think it was worth people's attention, I wouldn't have written about you at all," wished them well, and didn't even acknowledge the takedown request.

cheer up zoh amba

not listened to Pillars in ages, it's brilliant.

Tyshawn's collaboration with King Britt is a lot of fun too and the one my students connected with immediately.

On a related note, the new XT/RP Boo is a great curveball (at least, a curveball in jazz/improv terms, not the artists themselves). Footwork + jittery free improv/jazz is a great combination. See also Jana Rush's reworking of Lonely Woman.

https://feedbackmoves.bandcamp.com/album/yesyespeakersyes

Not sure how I stumbled on this one, but this release of a Mars Williams/Hamid Drake live set from '96 at the Empty Bottle is making my morning. https://corbettvsdempsey.bandcamp.com/album/i-know-you-are-but-what-am-i

Thx for heads-up, RIPs to Williams as well as documenter/recordist M. Ritscher (grimly/righteously back in the news as a self-immolating protest precedent back in '06)

Thanks for the reminder. That's the first vol of a series of Mars Williams archival releases CvsD have just announced: excited to hear them all.

Equinox single from Gilad Hekselman live album sounding good this morning
https://giladhekselman.bandcamp.com/album/life-at-the-village-vanguard

Really nice Swedish straight-ahead sax/piano/bass trio album (Gilbert Holmström on tenor, Peter Jansson on bass bar one tune,
Kresten Osgood on drums) that reminds me of what has excited me in recent re: Chris Speed's trio on Intakt with Chris Tordini and Dave King (s/o to one of my fave bass players here in Toronto, Dan Fortin of Bernice, for the heads-up via snooping on his BC fan page): https://gottaletitout.bandcamp.com/album/easy-to-remember

Catherine Sikora/Susan Alcorn sounding good this foggy morning

https://catherinesikora.bandcamp.com/album/filament

Not jazz per se but this is a really cool record, found just by looking to see what Susie Ibarra's been up to:
https://www.goldenhornet.org/insectum

Short (25 min!), sounds amazing, each track is interpreting a different insect sonically.

I wrote about Louis Armstrong for BA this week.

Catherine Sikora/Susan Alcorn sounding good this foggy morning

https://catherinesikora.bandcamp.com/album/filament🕸

I wrote about Louis Armstrong🕸 for BA this week.

Hat Hut has put out a previously unreleased Cecil Taylor live recording from February 1980.

He and his band recorded four sets between February 8 and 10. The second set, which bled from late 2/8 into early 2/9, was released as It Is In The Brewing Luminous, from which I took the title of my forthcoming book, In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor. This new release is the third set, from the night of 2/9. The band is Taylor on piano, Jimmy Lyons on alto sax, Ramsey Ameen on violin, Alan Silva on bass and cello, Jerome Cooper on drums and balafon, and Sunny Murray on drums.

Amazing! What an era of the Unit.

Hat Hut has put out a previously unreleased Cecil Taylor live recording from February 1980🕸.

He and his band recorded four sets between February 8 and 10. The second set, which bled from late 2/8 into early 2/9, was released as _It Is In The Brewing Luminous_, from which I took the title of my forthcoming book, _In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor_. This new release is the third set, from the night of 2/9. The band is Taylor on piano, Jimmy Lyons on alto sax, Ramsey Ameen on violin, Alan Silva on bass and cello, Jerome Cooper on drums and balafon, and Sunny Murray on drums.