Robert Glasper

[Stefan Wood]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/pianist-finds-the-right-notes-between-hip-hop-and-jazz/2012/03/29/gIQAWsQdlS_story.html

Seriously, haven't we heard this before? Not the just the music, but the viewpoint. I guess this ignores artists like Matthew Shipp w/Mike Ladd, Steve Coleman & the Five Elements, Anti Pop Consortium, etc. etc.

Edited April 1, 2012 by Stefan Wood

[AllenLowe]

I've hear clips of this on NPR and they are really sad, IMHO.

[Clunky]

I've hear clips of this on NPR and they are really sad, IMHO.

Agreed, I like Robert Glasper , seen him once live and have 3 of his CDs , if you believe him his current music is some new frontier but I was very disappointed by this MOR slush. Awful. Blind alley. Reverse.

[jlhoots]

Phooey IMHO,

Terrible stuff.

[brownie]

Intrigued by all the hype, I listened to a program of his music on French radio. Gave up after a couple of tunes.

If he is a Messiah, I don't want any part in his Church

[JSngry]

http://www.washingto...QdlS_story.html

Seriously, haven't we heard this before? Not the just the music, but the viewpoint. I guess this ignores artists like Matthew Shipp w/Mike Ladd, Steve Coleman & the Five Elements, Anti Pop Consortium, etc. etc.

Don't know about the "mesiah" business, that's hype if ever there was hype (and you know there has been...) but that's a general field that I've long been in favor of sowing.

The samples of Black Radio I've heard are all to my liking in that regard, so I'm buying this one.

And while I'm at it, I'm buying Nicholas Payton's Bitches too. Fuck it.

It's time. Way past time, actually.

[A Lark Ascending]

Hyperbole seems to be the general currency of selling jazz records, like other areas of popular music.

At one end you get 'messiah', 'incredible new talent' etc; at the other 'icon', 'master' etc.

The iTunes Jazz page has been overwhelmed by this chap for a few weeks - big banner, his choice of records, his choice of Blue Notes, his choice of underwear....

Which is no comment on his music (which I've not heard and doesn't seem to be my cup of tea [i much prefer a good fjord)). But it puts me off. But then, I'm not part of the target demographic, I'd imagine.

Edited April 1, 2012 by A Lark Ascending

[Clunky]

It's time. Way past time, actually.

Yes it is time for something new but this isn't it IMO. I listened to the whole album when NPR had it streaming and it was a real turn off for me. I wanted to like it because I respect Glasper , his aspirations and his previous output,

[JSngry]

Not all steps are directly forward, but I'd rather see missteps towards the forward than repeated marching in place, which when sustained over a long enough time end up basically creating a pit in the ground from which eventually there is no escape.

Truthfully, "this type of thing" should have been happening a long time ago. As mentioned earlier, people have been trying, but the Masters Of The Jazz Plantation wouldn't allow for Runaway Slaves and the like, (and you must admit, Lincoln Center is a pretty impressive Big House, as far as Big Houses go (which ultimately isn't very far, but...it sure is BIG!!!)). so "jazz" is behind the curve here, it's instincts & reflexes stunted for a generation or two and now running from behind.

But I have hope and I have faith that once the catching up has been done that some GLORIOUS music will come forth, and things like Glasper's & Payton's works will be seen as waves that helped erode the rocks that once stood where the road now lies.

[A Lark Ascending]

Glad to see historical determinism is alive and well in the 21st century!

[JSngry]

Don't know about "historical determinism", but I for one am glad to see that musical determination is still alive and somewhat well.

[A Lark Ascending]

Don't know about "historical determinism", but I for one am glad to see that musical determination is still alive and somewhat well.

Lots of that around world wide if you want to hear it.

If you want 'the true path (incorporated)', well...

Edited April 1, 2012 by A Lark Ascending

[JSngry]

As far as "historical determinism"...please note that the advent of "smooth jazz" over the last several decades is the first time that a "contemporary pop" form of jazz has not been populated by music or musicians who display an even tangential relation to the "hardcore" stuff.

This has not been an accident. "Pure jazz", "upholding the tradition" all that neo-conman rhetoric has created an environment where The Noble Jazzman MUST NOT indulge in popular tastes, especially ones as "anti-musical" as those displayed by the "musical illiterate" "street hoodlums" of hip-hop/etc. The Jazzman must be BETTER than that! So put on the suits, look down your noses (even if from the perspective of your head being up your ass) at your world, and UPHOLD THAT TRADITION (that tradition which is dictated to you by thsoe running the Big House). DO NOT ENGAGE THE MASSES!!!!

Me myself, I think that's just about as wrong as wrong can be, and it makes me happy to see "jazz musicians" starting to display some recognition that they too might feel the same. It would be a real treat to have "pop jazz" sound like the "pop" and the "jazz" both were real again.

If you want 'the true path (incorporated)', well...

Then I'll just read your posts in What Are You Listening To Now!

I mean really, is this a game you want to play again?

I don't. sorry.,

[A Lark Ascending]

Oh, I'm all in favour of jazz people who are so inclined relating directly to the popular mainstream - perfectly healthy and legitimate direction. Jazz vocalists have been doing it for yonks (and getting panned by the elite).

I just don't see it as 'the' road ahead that is long overdue. It's an option, one of many.

When you first leave the village there are just a few paths, the direction is clear. But as you get further away the paths fork and multiply and cross lots of other villages. In the end you choose those that fit your own needs.

For all I know Robert Glasper is making vital, engaging, popular jazz that can connect to a jazz-unaware audience. More power to him.

It's just the record company 'Messiah' stuff that I don't buy. He's an option, not 'the future'. But that's not how stack 'em high and sell 'em cheap promotion works.

Now I could be wrong. But having been told about the future before (M-Base, turntables, laptops [and I'm not knocking any of those as an approach]) you'll have to excuse me if I'm a bit sceptical. One strand of the future, quite probably, but 'the future'? Hmm!

Then I'll just read your posts in What Are You Listening To Now!

I mean really, is this a game you want to play again?

I don't. sorry.,

What you see there is what I choose to listen to (often incredibly random), nothing more. I've no stake in crystal ball gazing or asserting what is or isn't significant.

Edited April 1, 2012 by A Lark Ascending

[JSngry]

Messiah, no. HELL no. That's record company hype, all the way.

My point is that in it's relatively short history there has never before been this big a gap between the technological and/or technical of "jazz" and it's contemporaneous "street music" cousins (or whatever familial relationship one chooses to append). I don't think that this has been particularly healthy for either, and yes, I do find it to be an enforced, not a natural, segregation.

The signs that the "laws" are finally being disregarded by some names who could have stayed inside the lines heartens me no end.

As far as it being "the future", well, yes, it is. All futures are ultimately "the future".

I've no stake in crystal ball gazing or asserting what is or isn't significant.

Except when you think somebody else is doing it.

It's an old game we play here...

[A Lark Ascending]

My point is that in it's relatively short history there has never before been this big a gap between the technological and/or technical of "jazz" and it's contemporaneous "street music" cousins (or whatever familial relationship one chooses to append). I don't think that this has been particularly healthy for either, and yes, I do find it to be an enforced, not a natural, segregation.

It's happened before.

'Classical' music grew out of popular music and was fed by it again and again. But it then became something else. I'm not sure that is necessarily unhealthy.

Was Bebop unhealthy? That was the point jazz (or some jazz musicians) chose the intellectual path.

I've no problem with any music charging off down a non-populist path (or paths) just as long as the people making it and those that follow it don't use its relative obscurity as a means of lording it over everyone else.

[CJ Shearn]

This is good for people of my generation, because for a hip hop-jazz project, Glasper is doing it RIGHT. What's right about it is he has a true connection to the hip hop scene, and the names on the recording are all well known, whereas in the past hip hop and jazz projects (I think back to Steve Coleman a Tale of Three Cities) have had names that are pretty underground, and "Black Radio" will get my generation and kids exposed to jazz, Blue Note, etc. A few people from those segments will get truly interested in jazz beyond "looking for beats", and that's the goal of this project I think. It helps Blue Note because, although its not what *we* think of as Blue Note, its a global brand at this point and that select few will check out the storied history we like. Also Glasper is commended for not bending into misogynist, mainstram top 40 "rap" on this release.

[Dave James]

Marc Myers from JazzWax did a piece on Glasper a couple of weeks ago. I was intrigued enough to DL Black Radio from iTunes. I've listened to it a couple of times, but the jury is still out. At times, it will strike me as interesting and at others, I don't hear anything very deep or engaging at all. I give the guy props for trying to produce something that will resonate at multiple levels, but I'm not sure he's there yet or if he ever will be. It's like he's trying to be too many things to too many people.

[Stefan Wood]

So, what were Tribe Called Quest/Jungle Brothers/the Roots doing? JDilla? I respect what Glasper is trying to do, but again, to say this is new is ignoring a lot of recent history.

Edited April 1, 2012 by Stefan Wood

[JSngry]

It's like he's trying to be too many things to too many people.

I'm waiting for the time /person who can just be these things without "trying". Stevie Wonder was there for a little while, Earth Wind & Fire too. Marilyn Scott's first LP, the greater part of Monday Michiru's work is all the way there...so I know it's not a "human" impossibility to naturally/meaningfully be simultaneously parts of may different places/strata/whatever. But we live in a time where this..."multiness" has been steered into a cheap lower-common-denominator-ness, appealing only to base instincts, be they high or low in character.

I'm also waiting for the time/person who can make music like this without it being a "project" and instead just have it be their music. Period. Again, Monday Michiru has pretty much been there and done that, but that she had to do it w/o any support at all from the American pop or jazz "industry" suggests that these industries like to sell what they know that the consumer knows that they want to know. Big surprise, that, eh?

So...anything that moves the ball along, the game of musical literacy and imagination being able to organically speak a language that "preaches past the choir", be that movement be inside the artist, the public, the industry, all/some/none/of the above, and/or etc., I'm all for it. Those who are not so called can go ahead on, but those who are...should not let Purism (real, imagined, feared, or forced) be a consideration.

With all the Purist Tentacles infesting the music at all levels these days...easier said than done, which leads me to wonder...was the Glasper album under discussion here sanctioned by the new Don Was Blue Note Regime?

So, what was Tribe Called Quest/Jungle Brothers/the Roots doing? JDilla? I respect what Glasper is trying to do, but again, to say this is new is ignoring a lot of recent history

Couldn't agree more, but Hype gonna do what Hype gonna do...

And remember - this Hype is being directed at/to "jazz fans" for whom computers in music are necessary evils, and then only for reproducing music, never for actually making it!

(ok, that was a little snide. But inaccurate? Not all that much...)

Edited April 1, 2012 by JSngry

[Tom Storer]

"Pure jazz", "upholding the tradition" all that neo-conman rhetoric has created an environment where The Noble Jazzman MUST NOT indulge in popular tastes, especially ones as "anti-musical" as those displayed by the "musical illiterate" "street hoodlums" of hip-hop/etc. The Jazzman must be BETTER than that! So put on the suits, look down your noses (even if from the perspective of your head being up your ass) at your world, and UPHOLD THAT TRADITION (that tradition which is dictated to you by thsoe running the Big House). DO NOT ENGAGE THE MASSES!!!!

Well, yeah, except that viewpoint was only prevalent for a relatively brief period. Jazz musicians have never stopped "indulging in popular tastes." There was a period of maybe ten or, maximum, fifteen years when the "young lion" Marsalisite thing was trying hard to take over the world, but since then? Branford Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, Christian McBride and many, many others have played jazz/funk concoctions with sincerity, and some success, and those named are only the famous ones (famous in jazz terms). Jazz/hiphop has perhaps not been explored to the same extent, now it looks like people are going there too. It's nothing new, really.

[JSngry]

There was a period of maybe ten or, maximum, fifteen years when the "young lion" Marsalisite thing was trying hard to take over the world, but since then?

10-15 years is a generation (or three) of players and educators and "industry types" (meaning labels, bookers, "thinkers", etc.). I have seen firsthand, and more than once, the impact/influence that "playing to the expectations" of these people have has had on young players who decide to become "jazz musicians". One night they're partying their asses off on the bandstand in a neighborhood club, then when the sun comes up the next day, that shit is OVER and it's all about not stooping to that level any more, where's my Clifford Brown records, I need a bath?

I've also seen firsthand a time when the same "type" person would be reaching for their Clifford Brown records after they got home from the club, and then go back to the club the next night (after taking a bath, of course, but to get clean for the new night, not from thee last one), and not even think about there being anything right or wrong about any of it.

Times have changed, brains have been washed (sometimes with boiling water...), and if we can't put Humpty back together again, at least we can work on getting the hen to lay another bigass egg.

[jlhoots]

I heard all of that nonsense about "hip-hop is the new be-bop" years ago.

Never happened (for me).

[Chuck Nessa]

I heard all of that nonsense about "hip-hop is the new be-bop" years ago.

Never happened (for me).

You weren't the audience but it still didn't happen.

[Larry Kart]

I'm no expert here, but why does there have to be some meaningful musical-social relationship between hip-hop and jazz (of the past, present, or future) or between jazz and hip-hop? Is it merely/essentially because (to use Peter Pullman's term) they're both af-am musics in origin? If so, there are plenty of popular and artistically significant non-af-am musics that never had much (or that much) to do with each other (e.g. the waltz, Italian opera, Rembetika, Gamelan, Ragas, etc., etc., and no one got their panties in a knot over their "failure" to have musical commerce with each other. Of course, anyone is free to try if they themselves feel within themselves a viable musical reason to do so -- I think, for one, of what the members of Air did with ragtime way back when -- but otherwise? Or are we really talking about some blend of marketing and social engineering?