"Why J Dilla May Be Jazz's Latest Great Innovator"

[Joe]

An NPR article of some interest / provocation...

"He's so important," says jazz drummer Karriem Riggins, who collaborated extensively with Dilla and is himself a hip-hop producer. "Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams and Miles [Davis]: He's in the same category to me."

http://www.npr.org/b...great-innovator

My own opinion: now's the time, provided you believe that time could or should ever come.

Edited February 7, 2013 by Joe

[JSngry]

[CJ Shearn]

I've heard some of his work, I'm a bit more into Nujabes, but there is a textural thing different from the way hip hop used samples in the early mid 90's. I'm far from a hip hop head or authority but I could tell you that people I know who like hip hop aren't aware of J. Dilla or Nujabes, that stuff is maybe a bit too intellectual for the crowd that likes Kanye, Nicki Minaj and that kind of thing.

[Chuck Nessa]

Let's say yes and move on.

[.:.impossible]

People you know who like hip hop aren't aware of J Dilla? That doesn't seem possible.

A Tribe Called Quest

De La Soul

Slum Village

Pharcyde

The Roots

D'Angelo

Badu

Mos Def

Common

Talib Qweli

Amp Fiddler

Madlib

Oh No

Ghostface

Raekwon

I'm definitely forgetting some others.

That Dwele album! Good grief. So damn good. The whole Soulquarians collective is one thing, but James Yancey was another in and of itself.

Edited February 8, 2013 by .:.impossible

[CJ Shearn]

Yeah, Impossible, I know one guy who likes hip hop very into J. Dilla, but I'm talking about people who are mainly into popular top 40 stuff, the mainstream.

[Noj]

A fan of Dilla, and I haven't had a chance to read the article, but I think that's broadening the term "jazz" too widely. And innovation-wise, wouldn't the true originator of what Dilla ran with be someone like Kool Herc?

[Joe]

A fan of Dilla, and I haven't had a chance to read the article, but I think that's broadening the term "jazz" too widely. And innovation-wise, wouldn't the true originator of what Dilla ran with be someone like Kool Herc?

True. One wonders at the author's sample size (pun maybe intended). Glasper, Riggins, Osby (sort of)... but how far and wide does knowledge of Dilla and Dilla's own influences reach into the community of those musicians who might classify themselves as jazz improvisors?

Still, I appreciate one of the major points here: that jazz is much more than improvisation, or, perhaps better, that the focus on improvisation among both practitioners and scholars has perhaps unbalanced our understanding and appreciation of these other essential elements of the music.

[JSngry]

I have a friend whose son has just graduated from Berklee. If this kid is to be believed, awareness and love of Dilla up there is widespread. So...look out for that, whatever that might be.

I would like to think that since Osby knows that what he used to do was just as "right" as what he changed to doing that he might come on back to doing it. Whose Market Is It Anyways?

Me, I could care less any more about "jazz innovations". That war's been lost. If A ≠ B, then it cannot be allowed to be jazz, so, ok, go on with that, and treat your docent kindly.

AFAIC, and all conniption fits based on a superficial grasp of nothing but the most obvious commervial visibilities of LCD popular music pimped as "hip-hop" and/or "rap", it became evident pretty early on that things were going to have to change, that there was too much going on - not just in a brief little blow-up, but on an ongoing, evolving basis - in terms of redefining some pretty basic principles of what music was and what it could be and how it could be made that at some point too many people with good minds were going to have to stop and say, hey, this is probably at least as much a part of who we are as all this other stuff that was over before we were even born, time to get with it like that. Historical inevitabilty reaching critical mass, or something.

I'm making no claim to be "in on this" or anything, because as much as I dig what I do dig of it, I know full and damn well that it's not "my" music. It's just "music of my time". But that's important, because I figure that "my time still has another 20-30 years on it, and that's a long time to be looking at photo albums and nothing else, ya' know?

Besides - it really, really pisses me off when a young cat tells me how lucky "we" - as in us "older" people" - were to have had all this great music around back in the day. I'm like, hell, motherfucker, get out there and make your own great music, and don't waste your time trying to do what's already been done, because you will not be able to get there like that. Will not. And then when they start talking about ah, all anybody wants now is blahblahblah, I try to tell them, look, that's all anybody has EVER wanted, so get over it. Use your tools and make your blahblahbalh into more than just blahblahblah, That's all anybody worth a damn has ever done anyway, really, take a common language and.....TAKE it, ya' know? Take it and do stuff with it, all kinds of stuff, not just repeat it back over and over.

Anyway....

Sounds like Humpty Dumpty's finally coming out of his coma. That fall was a bitch. May he recognize that all the king's horses and all the king's men don't have his best interests at heart, and may he put his own self back together again the way he knows he wants to be.

Good luck!

[Joe]

And then when they start talking about ah, all anybody wants now is blahblahblah, I try to tell them, look, that's all anybody has EVER wanted, so get over it.

TRUTH!

[Clunky]

Robert Glasper frequently name checked Dilla at a gig several years ago.

Glasper was playing jazz at that point well before the recent experiments on "Black Radio". Back then his work seemed to have rhythmic influences coming from Hip-hop much in the same way that Vijay Iyer still does. Pretty refreshing I thought and hoped it might have attracted a wider audience to jazz. Personally I think Glasper should have stuck at that formula longer . I find his most recent CD a waste of talent and time.

[AllenLowe]

I am continually mystified by the mythology of these so-called new "beats." It's all simple patterns; this stuff wastes too much intellectual energy trying to justify itself. It's silly, and rhythmically less complex than, say, a Billy Higgins accompaniment.

[jlhoots]

I am continually mystified by the mythology of these so-called new "beats." It's all simple patterns; this stuff wastes too much intellectual energy trying to justify itself. It's silly, and rhythmically less complex than, say, a Billy Higgins accompaniment.

I agree. You can "like" J Dilla - that's O.K. - but "jazz's greatest innovator" - come on.

[Steve Reynolds]

Most jazz listeners never heard a deep Tom Rainey groove but we want call someone who might be a talented musician or performer in some other musical area and he is called a "the last great jazz innovator"

I ask again - has the person who said heard Tom Rainey live when he invents a new groove?

I say he is the most innovative and creative jazz drummer alive and yet....

Well u know......

Standing on a Whale Fishing for Minnows

As always the greatness of this music exists right besides our ears and so many will not or cannot hear it so we look for a crossover or pop record or hip hop record that may have some oblique reference to improv or jazz or gas some musician who used to care about "the music" and now cares about something else.

And Tom Rainey or Randy Peterson exist in this world of music and for their part play drums like no one now before or in the future.

True innovators both. And they play jazz

Well in Randy's case it is usually with Mat Maneri as even the great jazz musicians don't know what to do with him

But one day......

"It's gonna be huge"

Joe Maneri circa 2000 in front of Tonic speaking with me on the sidewalk

A true dreamer and the last great innovator in jazz....if it weren't for all the rest

Let The Horse Go

[Joe]

Well, I would say there's what's out there, generally, and there's what people hear and become influenced by and then, in turn, turn into something that influences others. We can complain about Glasper's knowledge and taste all we want -- and Dilla's, too -- but if that's what musicians are hearing, and that's the raw material they are working with... what are you going to do? No argument hear about Higgins' greatness, or that Tom Rainey is a fine, fine musician, but I don't believe that necessarily what's at issue.

It's sort of like the notion of "proper English". It would be great is there were universal acceptance of such a thing (though would the consequences be ideal / utopian? I somehow doubt it) and the reality is that usage rule, and it's dominion is a mess, with all the good and bad that comes with that chaos -- or ferment, depending on your point-of-view.

[.:.impossible]

I am continually mystified by the mythology of these so-called new "beats." It's all simple patterns; this stuff wastes too much intellectual energy trying to justify itself. It's silly, and rhythmically less complex than, say, a Billy Higgins accompaniment.

Allen, "beats" has a completely different connotation with regard to hip hop and r&b.

Glasper has been a "session" musician associated with the Soulquarians collective. Everything that y'all have responded to over the last few years has been hype. Most of these folks, Dilla included, never made any such claims, nor did they seem to care. They were just making their music.

To be clear, Allen, Dilla was not a drummer.

[JSngry]

Cary, what do you think of the whole Sa-Ra scene?

[Blue Train]

Loved Dilla's stuff. He was amazingly influential and innovating, but that was in Hip Hop. Like many others he was influenced by Jazz, but calling him a Jazz innovator, is pretty ridiculous. I actually prefer Madlib's Jazz influenced stuff better.P.S. Haven't heard a thing by Glasper that I liked.

Edited February 9, 2013 by Blue Train

[ElginThompson]

Loved Dilla's stuff. He was amazingly influential and innovating, but that was in Hip Hop. Like many others he was influenced by Jazz, but calling him a Jazz innovator, is pretty ridiculous. I actually prefer Madlib's Jazz influenced stuff better.P.S. Haven't heard a thing by Glasper that I liked.

Big fan of Jay Dee. As far as hip hop / jazz fusion (or whatever you want to call it), it goes back further to Guru/Gangstar, Tribe (with Lonnie Smith's Drive sample) and even more mainstream with Digible Planets in the mid 90s with "Cool Like That". If hip hop and jazz artists influence each other, that is terrific. I try not to get caught up in the labels as much as enjoy the artistry for what it is.

[robertoart]

Let's say yes and move on.

No

[robertoart]

Loved Dilla's stuff. He was amazingly influential and innovating, but that was in Hip Hop. Like many others he was influenced by Jazz, but calling him a Jazz innovator, is pretty ridiculous. I actually prefer Madlib's Jazz influenced stuff better.P.S. Haven't heard a thing by Glasper that I liked.

I take from the piece that the 'jazz innovator' tag, is being used in an oblique way.

Just the fact that so many other hip-op artists are being brought up in this thread already as an alternative story to Dilla seems to suggest the veracity of this argument.

This is a key quote I think,

"Jazz was born of a hybrid of folk musics," Osby says. "And for a long time, jazz has gotten away from that. It became so left-brain and strident, its purposefulness has been obscured. Hip-hop, with its loops and its emphasis on the low end, gives a healthy nod to the black mystique and the black struggle in the United States. A lot of intelligent jazz musicians have recognized that as something that they need to reinstate and reintegrate into the output, because it's been lost."

Edited February 10, 2013 by freelancer

[.:.impossible]

Here's a group of these guys at NAMM nerding out.

Chris Dave is the drummer and Thundercat is playing bass. I don't know who the other two are.

[uli]

Here's a group of these guys at NAMM nerding out.

Chris Dave is the drummer and Thundercat is playing bass. I don't know who the other two are.

Isaiah Sharkey is the guitar player.

[robertoart]

The nerd/geek turn in Popular Culture seems funny to an old fart like me.

'Pop Culture' - where were you when I needed you?

[.:.impossible]

Thanks uli. Any idea who the other musician is?