ep1str0phy

Considering starting a new topic for this, but considering the fact that this touches upon some of the discussion here, I thought I'd re-up this dead or dying horse- I was fascinated by the Terrace Martin article linked elsewhere: http://www.npr.org/sections/microphonecheck/2015/02/11/385218373/terrace-martin-everything-got-a-little-bit-of-funk-in-it (apologies to whomever found it, I can't seem to re-find the link at this hour). It's instructive in that it details the sort-of inner creative life of someone in Kamasi's extended community of musicians. This was pretty illuminating: MARTIN: Oh, yeah. Easily. Because I'm from South Central LA. So jazz — although my father is a jazz musician — but when you young, you not really into hearing John Coltrane. It sounds crazy to you. Crazy. So, it's just like, the Midnight Marauders album was the closest thing that I felt kinda familiar with as a kid listening to with my father, you know what I'm saying? As a saxophonist whose own music veers into dance music and R&B territory--and one of the more prominent among the younger set of jazz-informed LA cats to take an active role in the shaping of 21st century hip-hop--Martin is straddling multiple traditions. We often speak of the jazz tradition as something fluid but still monolithic, like a centipede in that it has a multitude of appendages but definable beginnings and ends. I know I'm preaching to the choir on the O board, but the aforementioned logic is peculiar in that it tends to ignore the idiomatic slippage and play that is in effect with regard to musicians who have come of age after the jazz "crisis" point of the 80's. A working knowledge of jazz may still be a cultural imperative for for the vast majority of young musicians working in black diasporic musics, but a practicing engagement with jazz is another story altogether. I've been listening to a ton of hip-hop lately--in part because it's become evident that (as both an LA cat and a musician of color) this is part of my embodied cultural heritage, in part because we've now reached a point with that music where we can look at it with critical and generational distance. In a weird sense, hip-hop has had it's "bebop" moment of superlative cultural achievement, and it's arguable that that it's reached a juncture of dissipating cultural returns and diminishing scope (e.g., "hip-hop is dead" as the new "jazz is dead"). This doesn’t mean that new epochal artistic statements under the hip-hop rubric are impossible (re: To Pimp A Butterfly), only that it’s now a “post” art and needs to be understood as such. I’m (really) not pointing fingers when saying this, but it’s sort of silly to yell at kids for “that rap shit” when NWA has a canonizing biopic in theaters. Coming back to Kamasi, we can now look at that music as not just commercial or mainstream jazz (or a facsimile of such), but rather the sound of a younger generation of musicians coming to terms with jazz as fertile--if secondary--ground for creativity. Kamasi’s links to the Tapscott ethos are as legit as it gets out on the WC, but it’s not a straight line from Tapscott to The Epic--it zips through both mainstream and alternative rap, contemporary R&B, electronic dance music, and so on. Dealing with Kamasi as jazz per se is kind of self-defeating, because this music is jazz in the same way that Jonny Greenwood’s soundtracks are Western New Music--that is, absolutely but also not really. Looking at this a different way, I decided to listen to some Blue Series music again (after Clifford’s mention and a long time in-between). Matthew Shipp’s Equilibrium was always my favorite. In retrospect, I like it only ok. I think--especially now, in the wake of guys like J Dilla, Madlib, and Flying Lotus--it’s a little irresponsible to be dealing only with the surface mechanics of hip-hop. Equilibrium came out the same year as Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which is mystifying to me. There is jazz all over The Love Below, but it gets at the root of that music in profound and meaningful ways. There are free jazz horns--used with effective context--on The Love Below. There is a cover of “My Favorite Things” that makes an earnest attempt at engaging with the harmonic reality of the Coltrane Quartet. Equilibrium has vamps, some sampled beats, and some hip-hop production. There is no exigency to this process. In the best contexts, beats are simultaneously fixture and firmament--their fixity and the creative undermining of said fixity is what makes that music work. Equilibrium strains at this repetitiveness even as said constancy undercuts the improvisers’ fluidity and power. This isn’t hybrid music so much as constrained jazz that wants to get at the sound but not the procedure of hip-hop. Some of Vijay Iyer’s (much more recent) music is like this--Steve Lehman’s too. While both of these guys have real feels for hip-hop and (I’m sure) know that music intimately, there’s something about how their musics engage with rap that feels more like NPR headline grabbing than organic musicmaking. Again, the problem isn’t with the musicianship so much as it is procedural: you can make the music using the techniques and the logics, but Wu Tang is not Coltrane and failure to bow to the nuances therein is creatively damning. To reiterate and clarify my point after this very longwinded post, appreciate (or don’t) Kamasi’s music for what it is--jazz that tries to get back to jazz way after half a century’s worth of alternative narratives. The critical and promotional agendas are something else entirely, and they’re tied into the physics of two genres (jazz and hip-hop) in respective processes of urgent, desperate survival. The “worthy” art in and among all of this chaos is maybe good but definitely far more complex than might seem evident.

The last I'll post on this, but the band is in LA and primed to play tonight (6/12) with Mr. Golia at Ham & Eggs Tavern. Doors at 7:30pm, show at 8pm. For obvious (communal) reasons, there has been this momentous, uncanny energy in the music over the course of the past couple of days, and I'm looking forward to engaging with it.

This band and its precursor (the trio with Denardo and Charnett Moffett--never got to see the band with Geri Allen) completely flattened me. The Charnett/Denardo band was muscular, dynamic, and strange, and witnessing this band's truly surreal not jazz/not electric hybrid (with Ornette on violin and Denardo in full John Bonham mode) was a formative experience. The second time I saw Ornette, it was the Sound Grammar band--Charlie Haden's Quartet West opened, and Haden actually joined Ornette for the inevitable encore of "Lonely Woman"--it was more subdued, and the crowd was almost openly hostile for the duration of the show, but Ornette's playing assumed this plaintive, evasive quality that I'd only rarely heard on record up to that point. The last time I saw him was almost an otherworldly experience--it was the three bass band (with Charnett in tow), and at that advanced stage, Ornette's playing had been reduced to a spectral murmur. All of the rhythmic momentum was in the hands of the younger cats (including Al MacDowell--who, in being saddled with playing all of the heads, was the night's secret MVP). The music itself was unbelievable--conceptually rich, sonically complex, and somehow (sounding) absolutely spontaneous. It was more thoroughly "avant-garde" than any Ornette on record: spontaneous group rhythmic displacement (i.e., the band coming together on these seemingly improvised streams of mixed meter), insane melodic communication, crazy juxtaposition of feels and sounds. Denardo took this post-"Wipeout"/pseudo-Mitch Mitchell drum solo that was absolutely out of this world--the maturation of a path that Ornette had set out on back when he and son first teamed for the audacious The Empty Foxhole all those years ago. I had a cold when I arrived that evening, and it was gone by the end of the show.

My Facebook feed is flooded with obituaries, and I’m reminded of the role Ornette Coleman’s music has played in the shaping and liberation of so much culture. The filaments of the 21st century are suffused with his aesthetic. There are themes and notions in Ornette’s music that would be relevant in any era: freedom, communication, coexistence, agency, authority (and the deconstruction of hierarchy), and so on. It’s mind-boggling to consider that for every great album issued under his name--and for every concert he played--there are thousands of artists whose whose work is charged by the atom of harmolodics. John Coltrane recorded with Ornette’s rhythm section. Dolphy edged closer to his mature music in commune with early free jazz. Roscoe Mitchell made his first “big” statement on an album that opened with a tune called “Ornette.” The musics of Miles, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, and other “pre-free” figureheads were upended by Ornette’s innovations. Early harmolodic music presaged the innovations of Albert Ayler, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, and AMM, and Ornette was part of the genetics of punk rock. Pop culture iconology from Lou Reed to Patti Smith to Yoko Ono owes obvious (and sometimes direct) debt to Ornette’s music. And this is the famous stuff- I (like many others) will probably be listening to the classics over the course of the next few days: The Shape of Jazz to Come, Crisis, Science Fiction, and so on. The microcosmic universe that Ornette cultivated with the likes of Cherry, Haden, Higgins, and Blackwell (all dearly departed, now each his own undeniable and monumental influence) is as much a triumph of genuine ingenuity and experimentation as it is (post hoc) a victory for innovation and the American spirit of individuality. The Ornette that has played the greatest role in my life, however, is the marginal one. I didn’t know him as a person and received the gift of his music decades after the initial flush of fury and awe--but listen to the wiry and chaotic violinist/trumpeter on “Snowflakes and Sunshine” (Live at the Golden Circle Vol. 2), the man who enabled and emboldened a 10 year old drummer on The Empty Foxhole, the daring and maybe even overbold auteur of Skies of America and Tone Dialing. Like the entreaties of some parallel universe life coach, Ornette’s musical life was an invitation (for many, like me, a dictum): ”don’t play like me, don’t live like this, do your own thing.” So today, and ever day after this, I’ll play my own shit. I’ll do my best to foster creativity in my friends, peers, students, and (even? hopefully?) my elders. I’ll make it out to shows, and I’ll let people know when there’s some “cool new music” happening. I’ll work hard at perfecting my craft, but I’ll make room for life, inquiry, and the invention of change. Maybe I’ll go left, but if I do it three times, I’ll be going right, too. To paraphrase Hendrix, Ornette was the first ray of a new rising sun. We are the change of the century. We are the shape of jazz to come.

This is hilarious to me in that I play with Jon Arkin semi-frequently, and though I've known that this collaboration was happening, he has been pretty quiet about it. I had know idea about the record, for one. Anyway, I've heard great things about this group, and the cast of characters is of very high repute (speaking more about the locals, which I know people are likely less hip to). Jon, for one, is a tremendously versatile player and (especially) a preternaturally sensitive drummer. It makes him both a really creative changes drummer and a joy to improvise with in freer contexts. I look forward to hearing this one...

But tell us how you really feel

In the interest of lifting people up rather than putting folks down, two names: Phillip Greenlief and Matt Nelson. PG is a West Coast guy, and he's simultaneously an tremendously deft free improviser (in the "classic" sense) and a very well equipped straightahead player. His understanding of the organic relationship between seemingly contrary improvising disciplines makes him a very interesting improviser regardless of the context. PG's band The Lost Trio actually essayed maybe the best Monk tribute I've ever heard (in that it both thoughtfully considers the compositions and sounds truly spontaneous), entitled Monkwork. Matt is from a newer wave of guys whose music I have a lot of affection for. Allen brought up the notion of post-postmodern music (sorry, I feel like I'm paraphrasing an entire hypothesis from weak memory), and I hear this in Matt's music (and that of his sometime associates Michael Coleman, Sam Ospovat, etc.)--it draws freely but unironically from a tremendous swath of history, and the end result is both deeply personal, lyrical as often as abstract. I think that Leeway's comments are dead-on in terms of finding new evaluative paradigms for creative music of all sorts. I may have more respect for Halvorson's music than I do excitement (again, my hang up and not hers), but there are "things" in her playing that are so valuable as points of critical and artistic reference--being non-egoistic, referentially "open," and so-on. The fact that this music is being received and understood is a testament to the fact that we're beginning to build a dialogue about things both unheard and as yet not known. Re: what Jim said--I'm of no mind that jazz needs saving in any institutional sense, and I think the mass critical preoccupation with not only survival but also evaluating precisely what makes creative music important is a big part of this. To reiterate (and more bluntly this time), I feel like modern jazz/improv "as it is" is in large part an exercise in staking louder claims on smaller and smaller parcels of land, and a lot of the most creative people have just moved out and beyond this dialogue into more fertile territories. I don't think that Washington will save jazz, but, again, Jazz will never die, and I'm just excited to see the spirit of the music live on in something different. I also have to say that everything that gets said on this board gives me more than enough to chew on out in the "real world" (where words are words and not binary code)--so thanks for that. I feel like these kinds of discussion have been crucial toward a personal turn in the past year or so, when I stopped wondering "what happens now" and started gearing up for "what happens next."

Thanks for the kind words, Steve, and I do agree that there is a degree of inaccessibility to Halvorson's music that I may have given short shrift. Hiding within the abundant critical praise for To Pimp a Butterfly was a sort of mass suspicion of jazz and experimentalism in general, though my point (and I think this speaks more to what Allen said) is more that there's fringe music and fringe music- Allen, I'm not sure if this was addressed at me, but I would never criticize anyone for not liking something on musical grounds--quite the opposite, in this case. I, too, would rather listen to Africa Brass, Charles Tolliver's Strata-Easts, McCoy on Milestone, etc. etc. than Kamasi, but the ennui that informs my feelings on Washington's music is not the same ennui that I feel upon ruminating the future of "the music." I'm fascinated by the phrase "crisis of the spirit," and while I'm not sure I agree, I can kind of see what you mean. A guitarist friend of mine once criticized Halvorson's use of distortion as disingenuous--as if she were a qualitative jazz guitarist "playing" at the sound of noisy rage. This criticism may or may not be fair--I get the sense that Halvorson's relationship with the sounds of indie rock is a real and honest one--but I know what he was getting at. I feel the same way when listening to Pat Martino's fusion music, and a lot of jazz guitarists in the wake of jazz-rock were guilty of this--using distortion as a sort of crass repackaging, rather than recognizing what it does to and can do for your instrument. In other words, the sound may be there, but not "the soul." This is why, although the music doesn't really excite me, I'm kind of rooting for guys like Kamasi. So much of the music from that LA scene is lacking in any sort of existential crisis, which is an absolute reversal of a lot of modern jazz and improvised music. Quite a bit of the music in NY is boundlessly virtuosic but (speaking to "crisis of the spirit") seems to be searching for a reason to exist. I'm squarely of the mind that the shape of (X) to come can and should arrive prepackaged with its raison d'etre.

Jazz isn't dying, but its (previous) fans are. Anyway, you guys have perked up my interest - will give it a listen. I think that the "don't hate the player, hate the game" adage applies here- The fact that there has been so much hoopla surrounding both Washington's album and To Pimp a Butterfly testifies to the notions that (a) jazz people and jazz audiences are receptive to the infusion of new blood and (b) there is nothing inherently inaccessible about jazz as a music, even if there is a degree of toxicity to "jazz" as both an institution and genre (in a mass appeal/populist sense). Yes, a lot of folks here may not find a lot to appreciate about Kamasi's music, but it's worth noting that so many people took the time to (bother to) listen. I sense that a lot of what makes it difficult to penetrate the "Jazz Market" in any meaningful way is couched in a degree of equilibrium. For any number of reasons, the market share of this music has decreased and continues to decrease in a very active way, and the end result is a lack of resources--compositions, styles, and people get regurgitated in jazz because the reach of the jazz press, the enterprising spirit of the musicians, etc. are overextended. Touring jazz musicians can't always book jazz clubs in the Bay Area anymore--two high profile ECM artists booked DIY spaces in Northern CA in the past few months alone. You wake up to discover that it's hard enough to subsist, let alone get over. This is why I bring up Braxton. The AACM guys who so many younger guys look up to comprise a sense of creative leftism that has been "left" for a very long time. Hendrix was still alive when the Art Ensemble and Braxton were cutting their first, epochal recordings. I've heard people call Rowe-ian EAI cutting-edge, but AMM was already making some aggressively minimal music (with at least similar operating procedures) as far back as the 70's, maybe 80's. Even if this music still has the power to excite and shock, I find it impossible to think of any of it as qualitative fringe music anymore--and if it is, why does that say about us as improvising musicians? In a way, that's why I kind of have to give it up to guys like Flying Lotus, Kendrick, Washington, etc.--not necessarily because their music does represent a kind of cutting-edge (an argument really could be made for Flying Lotus, in this regard), but because these are guys with definitive jazz roots and relationships whose creativity is unencumbered by the unbearable weight of its genesis. What if someone with Washington's resources and irreverence shows up and has the vision and technicality to back it up? The infrastructure can and needs to "be there." Mary Halvorson may be cutting some spectacular music these days, but I've long gotten the sense that the next sound to really jolt us to attention (in a "jazz" sense, at least) may arrive in a form none of us will have anticipated.

Didn't we have an iteration of this exchange the last time FlyLo came up? It's one of those discussions that can feel like playing Pong--the participation is there, but it's also dark and kind of lonely. This is a huge topic. I've been reading Charles Shaar Murray's truly remarkable Crosstown Traffic recently, and one of the points it makes is that critical, popular, and creative reception to Jimi Hendrix was a confluence of a multitude of attitudes, biases, and ideologies. I mean, Hendrix was one of the first real post jazz artists in that he engaged with critical parts of the jazz mythology (centrifuging race and improvised music) even while he was in the process of creating an entirely new set of musical categories. Are You Experienced is nearly 50 years old--why then is there so little critical discourse regarding "the jazz" of Hendrix? I think it's pretty plain that our shared categories are pretty limited. This says nothing about taste or the biases (imagined or real) of the listening audience, O board people included--by "our," I'm referring to the collective cultural consciousness (insofar as it exists). We don't talk about FlyLo (a relative of Alice and John Coltrane), Madlib (who is really just making "jazz albums" half of the time), D'Angelo, etc. etc. because, well, none of this stuff is "effectively" jazz--it may smell, feel, and for all intents and purposes be jazz, but none of this music has to deal with the parochial cultural geography of Jazz Music. Hip-hop is cut off from the lineage by virtue of the fact that it never succumbed to the question of its own validity. You can take or leave Kendrick, but To Pimp a Butterfly *should* be a big deal for "us." I cannot think of the last mainstream hip-hop album that waved the freak flag for jazz this emphatically and overtly. Madlib's Shades of Blue is cheating, since it's more of a boutique effort, and there are mostly "just" shades in MF Doom, Common, and so on. I feel really lame saying that A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory is the clearest point of comparison. In a time when jazz is starved for megastars, Kendrick making what is essentially a jazz/hip-hop hybrid is almost the equivalent of what would have happened had Hendrix lived to collaborate with Gil Evans. As sort of the heir apparent to Tupac Shakur, Kendrick taps into both the ethos of accessible, sensitive, alternative hip-hop and the WC gangsta rap lineage of the 80's and 90's--Kendrick's music is relevant precisely because it sits at the intersection of so many different methodologies. To Pimp a Butterfly is not just socially conscious--it's musically conscious, and that album's very existence and mainstream acceptance can be read as validation of the continuing importance of jazz as America's cultural totem. It's not a huge leap to see what this extraordinarily hyped music has in common with Hendrix's overtures to jazz (or, in a recursive way, Miles's creative resurgence after his godfathering of jazz-rock). What's fascinating about this discussion to me is that the dialogues about To Pimp a Butterfly's "hands across the aisle" genre conceits seem to be limited to pop, hip-hop, and more mainstream media outlets. It's like everyone is talking about this stuff except for jazz enthusiasts. One conclusion I've come to is that, even for jazz (which has been caught up in reports of its own death over the course of the past few decades), the time for seeking "validity" and "relevance" is just over. Maybe we can just get back to making music? As a musician and listener, I'm 100% in favor of just going back to making music--I only see a "problem" insofar as the "powers that be" take this as a tacit agreement that the jazz community is a country with closed borders. The moment that artistic independence becomes myopia--and when myopia becomes stagnancy, and when stagnancy becomes necrosis--that's when the cats start jumping ship on jazz as an entity. So dig, Kamasi Washington's music may not be good or even worthwhile jazz, and it definitely won't have a stitch on Coltrane in the same way that Mike Stern isn't a stone's throw next to Hendrix, but it just goes to show that even the mediocre guys (keep in mind I'm not even trying to level a value judgment against Mr. Washington here--this is purely rhetorical) find it more fruitful to play, eat, and smell like jazz--but not be "jazz artists"--than to go down with a sinking ship. Jazz will never die, but the jazz industry is already unviable. I don't doubt for a second that a lot of the people who dislike Kamasi are listening with their ears, that there's no real "but" there. Maybe Kamasi (and maybe Kendrick) just aren't very good music. At the same time, the next time someone invariably posts the "Jazz is the least popular genre in the U.S." thing, it's worthwhile to consider that it isn't a question of whether people are still making "good" or "bad" music--it's a matter of whether "being popular" and "being jazz" even exist in the same continuum anymore. Sooner or later we'll be sadly out of Braxtons and Braxton proteges, and then who will we listen to? And what are we going to play?

Ethan Iverson made an interesting post about the lack of attribution surrounding this release (not on the liners themselves, apparently--I haven't purchased a hard copy of the album)--apparently the personnel have been largely absent from the promotional discussion. There are reasons for this, of course--not least being a supposed desire to emphasize the "jazz auteur" iconology. If you look at the music within the framework of a heavily orchestrated Milestone album or even a Creed Taylor production, it makes slightly more sense. Two things that pop out to me in terms of this topic: (1) Although at times more subliminal than overt, there is some connective tissue between this music and the extended UGMAA community. (2) If you want to hear something from this cast that is harder and more ostensibly creative (but also waaay more stoned), check out Flying Lotus's album You're Dead. That's the sort of meaty, inventive-but-earthy "jazz" that might qualify as innovation in and among the mainstream. The press will treat Flying Lotus, Washington, and Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly as sort of a continuum, but it's with FlyLo and Kendrick that I hear the spiritual afterimage of the classic Strata Easts, vocal choir Max Roach, etc.

Right on, guys! It's going to be a killer run of shows. Of course, I can completely empathize with the hazards and stress of LA traffic--at this point, I just use it as an opportunity to give my car stereo a workout.

Absolutely understandable, of course. Thanks, Chuck!

Hey, all- I haven't made a post like this a minute, but I thought that this particular run of dates might be interesting to Organissimo-ites of the Southern CA persuasion- My art rock/psych trio Grex (http://www.grexsounds.com) has been in the midst of a very heavy regimen of recording, rehearsal, and giging, and whatever you wish to call the music that we've arrived at, I can say with some certainty that I've never been prouder of anything I've worked on in my life. It's the post-Hendrix/Dudu Pukwana/Deerhoof thing we've been trying to get to for ages. We're bringing this new round of songs to LA for a few choice dates--the 1st (on June 12) with a new configuration of the Vinny Golia Ensemble. If you don't know Vinny, he's the daddy of the Nine Winds label and one of the true living legends of the LA Jazz scene (having worked with the likes of Bobby Bradford, John Carter, Alex Cline, Horace Tapscott, etc.). On June 13, we're joined by a few LA experimental pop mainstays (Helene Renaut, My Hawaii) and a special duo of Steuart Liebig and Joe Berardi. Steuart has been bassist for Les McCann and Julius Hemphill (on the beautiful and atypical Georgia Blue), and Joe Berardi is an LA session heavyhitter (with the great band Non Credo and, surprisingly, Megan Mullally's group--he can actually be seen on a few episodes of Parks and Recreation). June 14 is our sole Long Beach date and features one of the great local psych/prog ensembles (Karl?)--it's an opportunity to stretch out at a venue that that is shockingly (1) clean and (2) very hospitable to adventurous music. The dates: Grex w/Vinny Golia Ensemble June 12, 8-10pm (7:30pm doors) @ Ham & Eggs Tavern 433 W 8th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90014 $5 Cover http://www.vinnygolia.com Grex w/My Hawaii, Helene Renaut, Joe Berardi/Steuart Liebig June 13, 8pm Doors/8:30pm Music @ Human Resources 410 Cottage Home, Los Angeles, CA 90012 $7 Cover http://myhawaii.bandcamp.com http://www.helenerenaut.com Grex w/Karl? June 14, 6pm-9pm (Grex on 1st) @ 4th Street Vine 2142 E 4th Street, Long Beach, CA 90814 Free/Donations Accepted http://www.facebook.com/karlqmark Of course, we'd love to see some O folks. There's great music happening everywhere--naturally, we're just hoping (and trying) to add to it. -K/ep1

The only credibility I can lend to these sentiments is the fact that I was there and am there for the "tail end" of this particular moment in the music. There's a phrase that I heard Evan Parker use that really sticks with me, and it's something to the effect of (I'm paraphrasing), "There are things that happen live that will not travel down a wire." There is some recorded music that is more magically live/alive than others, and the Nimbus West stuff must be counted in that number. Listen to the PAPA at Live at I.U.C.C.--you hear this simultaneity of rawness, passion, and rhythm. This is that "West Coast Hot" thing that is discussed more often than heard. The Giant Is Awakened has this, too--the music may not always have the finesse or casual virtuosity of contemporaneous East Coast stuff, but it has this rhythmic vitality and dark momentum that is both undeniable and irreplicable. There is a lot of music in and around this lineage that is happening these days, and much of it to very minimal fanfare. I haven't seen Sessions play for a while, but he must still be up to this. Vinny Golia, Steuart Liebig, the Cline brothers (though Nels is in NY now), Phillip Greenlief, GE Stinson, Ben Goldberg, Francis Wong, Jon Jang, Dan Clucas, Lewis Jordan, India Cooke, Ross Hammond--it is all very heavy music that doesn't hew cleanly into any narratives about free v. mainstream, in v. out, modern v. postmodern, and so on. And those are just some of the cats who have been around "for a minute."

I bought this one from Michael Session a few years back--there are some really thrilling moments (especially on the tunes with Horace), but it doesn't really compare to just how exciting Session was (and is) live. Back in my college years, I would spend summers with my family in Los Angeles, and I would catch incarnations of the Session band whenever possible. Much of this was either at LACMA or somewhere near Leimert Park (which was in the midst of a bit of a renaissance at the time)--I even hit some sessions at the World Stage, though I was never around long enough to visit regularly. For all the talk about live jazz being in a downward spiral since the 80's, there was a ton of "classic" legacy music going on in Los Angeles in the early 2000s--Gerald Wilson was still leading his big band, Charlie O's was still open in the SF Valley (saw a killer set with Azar Lawrence and Lorca Hart--:45-1hr version of "Impressions," just scalding music), the Jazz Bakery was bringing in Andrew Hill, Sonny Fortune/Rashied Ali, and so on, Bobby Bradford was regularly visible, and, of course the Session band. Of all of the guys I saw back when I was a resident, I now (even in LA) only really see Vinny Golia, Steuart Liebig, Alex Cline, and a handful of other guys who commute to the Bay Area for gigs. I will never forget the handful of occasions I actually got to sit through full concerts of the Session ensemble with Steve Smith and Nate Morgan, because that music was formative for me. That band stood in outright defiance of the notion that the shredding inside/out jazz of the 70's was a lost concept with the advent of Wynton. I've still never seen another live band that played gutsier music in this particular mode--the energy was insane, and much of that had to do with just how tapped into the community these guys were. I'd heard stories of the UGMAA in the old days, and this was exactly that: music happening among and feeding off of the people, participating in the performance of socialization rather than cloistering itself off into some hallowed realm. Every day seems to be a new RIP on the Artists page, and it reminds me of just how much of this stuff I can take for granted. It's easy to view this music as distant and historical, but it never really stops happening--jazz fights to the last man, and he's still there (if you're willing to look for him).

Have fun, Eric! BTW--last time I checked, Groove Merchant still exists, though it's one of the places I never hit (for some reason). Amoeba has been having a lot of ups and downs in the past few years. The last I heard, the LA store was the one doing the "best," and through various means the others have been able to stay afloat. There's been some diversification into books, collectibles, and so on, but the fact that those three shops have been able to retain such sizable and diverse stocks of both LPs and CDs is remarkable. The three Amoeba stores have the only jazz sections in close proximity that don't make me feel like I've been "cheated" by poor/rote selection. On that note, there truly are scarce few "big" CD outlets left. I could run down the literal handful (maybe 3-4 shops) in the San Fernando Valley (we're talking So Cal now) that still carry anything resembling a worthwhile CD selection. Meanwhile, there is still a brick and mortar Wherehouse Music closer to Palos Verdes--how this place survived (maybe it got franchised out?) is beyond me.

Those guys are great--I'm actually playing there in September, just did a hit last month. Not an enormous record selection, but a great supporter of the music--we definitely need more places like that.

Stranded is cool. It's a bit smaller than most of the others, but they do get some interesting new stock in fairly often. In LP terms, Grooveyard has all of them beat. It has an insanely fast stock turnover rate and manages to bring in rare stuff that I don't see anywhere else. It's not the best place if you're just looking to pick up an LP copy of a well known title (I'd say that the Rasputin in Berkeley is best for that), but it's the one that a visiting collector might want to check out. Grooves (in SF) is similar, just less extreme in how much crazy stuff comes in.

Just a tangential note to give props to the Trio Records album Kalaparusha, which features the eponymous saxophonist, Karl Berger, Ingrid Berger, Tom Schmidt, and mostly Jack DeJohnette on drums (w/Jumma Santons on one track). I think that Humility in the Light of the Creator is Kalaparusha's "moment," but Kalaparusha is just so good and unjustly obscure--it touches on many of the same beats as Humility but adds a degree of open-endedness that serves the music very well.

I just got that Kahil album in the mail (it's been reissued on CD on what looks like a "below board" label, but it could just be a budget/DIY-type situation on the part of whomever owns the rights). It's really great, with some ripping Lester and Malachi. That Braxton Antilles is indeed a major stretch, especially considering there's only one actual AACM member onboard (though I guess this could be said of most of Braxton's music?). The wild card is Ed Blackwell, who digs into this music with a pocket so deep--but organically integrated--that it's simultaneously a testament to the flexibility of Braxton's music and an essay on how to make absolutely anything groove.

Bay Area guy here. These are (in my estimation) the best ones: Grooveyard (Rockridge/Oakland) Amoeba (Berkeley) Amoeba (San Francisco) Everything else is a "Your Mileage May Vary"-type situation. These shops are all worthwhile in different ways: Rasputin (Berkeley) Rasputin (San Francisco/Union Square) Grooves (San Francisco) Recycled Records (San Francisco) Aquarius Records (San Francisco)

Ha! This is impossible. I feel like you can't take a fraction of the Art Ensemble back catalog (especially the early stuff) without taking all of it--it's so tightly packed chronologically, and there's such seamless conceptual continuity between all of those records. I feel this way about all of the "great AACM bands"--Air with Steve McCall, Braxton with Crispell/Dresser/Hemingway, and so on. I can't rightly stick with three, but these are most of my favorites. Some of these probably don't even rightly "count" as proper AACM albums (in terms of personnel), but whatever. Muhal Richard Abrams: Young At Heart/Wise in Time AEC: Congliptious AEC: Phase One AEC: Les Stances a Sophie AEC: People in Sorrow AEC: Nice Guys Air: Air Time Lester Bowie/Brass Fantasy: Twilight Dreams Anthony Braxton: New York, Fall 1974 Anthony Braxton: Dortmund (Quartet) 1976 Anthony Braxton/Max Roach: Birth and Rebirth Anthony Braxton: Six Compositions: Quartet (Antilles) Roscoe Mitchell: Sound Roscoe Mitchell: Nonaah Roscoe Mitchell: Snurdy McGurdy and Her Dancin' Shoes Revolutionary Ensemble (this is really stretching it): Vietnam Wadada Leo Smith: Songs of Humanity Henry Threadgill: Where's Your Cup? (w/special mention to Marion Brown's Afternoon of a Georgia Faun, since there are so many AACM guys involved) If I absolutely had to choose 3 (based on play volume), I would go with Phase One, Les Stances a Sophie, and People in Sorrow. There's enough music between those three to keep anyone occupied for a stretch.

I've been listening to this one nonstop since Wednesday. It's interesting to me that Uppercase historical legacy of the AACM will have much to do with the braided legacies of innovation and civil rights in jazz, because this sort of belies the fact that a lot of their operative contribution to the modern musical landscape has been multidirectional rather than strictly progressive. To put it another way, unlike, say, the music of Mingus, which was deeply social conscious but firmly embedded in the sonic iconology of its idiom--or, for that matter, the music of Albert Ayler, which takes the music to its formal breaking point even as it's intended to be socially visionary--I've understood the AACM's uniquest gift to be the way in which it expanded the possibilities of what can be done, where, and with whom. When I listen to Roscoe, Muhal, Threadgill, etc., I don't hear either terminal points or new beginnings--I see a lateral redefinition of what things are at a given point in time. You cannot understate the social value of this. Guys like Braxton and Roscoe have reconfigured what it means to be a Black American Musician--and, in turn, they have blown the doors completely away for many in subsequent generations. When I first "got" to the Art Ensemble, and when I began interacting with musicians who had come of age in the post-AACM climate of jazz, it actually kind of gave me (as a Filipino-American preoccupied with abstract improvisation) back to myself, whole. I imagine that my experience is not necessarily rare. I've listened to Made in Chicago a number of times in the past couple of days, and what sticks out to me the most is that this--in the broad strokes, at least--is what we need more of. Not necessarily by and from these musicians, who have given so much and will hopefully continue to do so, but by musicians and artists in a general sense. If the AACM is like NASA, we need more space explorers. None of this is to say that this is the greatest album of the year, month, or day--it's in fact alternately breathtaking and weirdly halting (the WSJ article is pretty close to my initial impressions). What really got to me, though, is just how deeply individualistic all of the voices on this record are. It is a real live document. Although many of the ensemble passages are ragged, you actually get to hear these august explorers negotiate their musical relationships in real time, and it's an essay in both musical risk taking and the boldness of exploded expectations. The closest comparison I can think of is Braxton's Ensemble (Victoriaville) 1998--similarly all-star, but also kind of unpolished and discursive--but this one is on another level. I'd love for someone to tell me about a recent album by a vetted and/or relatively mainstream musician (jazz or otherwise) that is so demonstratively searching. And then I'd love for someone to tell me why there aren't more examples. One illustrative moment really springs to mind, and that's right in the middle of the opening track ("Chant")--Roscoe is in the midst of this phenomenal circular breathing enterprise, with Muhal, Gray, and DeJohnette playing very coloristically behind (it's reminiscent, in the inverted rhythmic momentum of powerhouse saxophone + more textural rhythm section, of The Flow of Things), and then Threadgill jumps in for a sort-of solo. What do you do on top of this? And then Threadgill plays this deeply funky, Robert McCollough-cum-Albert Ayler shit (similar to his playing with Zooid), and it, again, recontextualizes the whole thing. Now it's not strictly what you expected--it's both a clashing and melding of identities, Roscoe +/vs Threadgill. That's a real collaboration, a real band hit. These guys, I hope they're here forever--if not here physically, then definitely here spiritually. I hope that Roscoe knows what he's done for me on a really high musical and personal level, though our personal conversations have always been either deeply casual or just nuts-and-bolts mechanical. This band DeJohnette put together--in the best possible way, it reminds me of both why I can and that I should create, and that's not a small thing.

Damn- I wish I'd gotten to this topic when more lucid. Daylight savings time and endless hours of rehearsal have completely sapped my sense of rhetorical cogency. As with any of us, I can only give a personalized "man on the street" perspective as to why jazz's recorded financial unpopularity may be the case, and I see a couple of notable issues- (A) Despite the subsistence of the artform and the continued vitality of younger jazz musicians, it's clear that (as many have stated above) the common wisdom posits musicians from a bygone era as the paragons of excellence. This has reinforced a secondhand buying culture (e.g., old records, burns, digital sharing, used CDs) that, if I understand correctly, is not properly tracked by Nielsen. If you compound this by the fact that many younger people listening to jazz are actual musicians, and that many musicians are broke, it only reinforces the notion that jazz operates more on the fringes of buying culture. (B) Much of the most vital jazz I've heard in the past few years issues from independent, artist-run labels with limited distribution and/or limited penetration into avenues that are tracked by Nielsen (e.g., in-person sales at gigs). These sales tend to account for the majority of "buys" from people at my local level. © The most creatively viable and genuinely original music I've heard as of late comes from musicians who are operating outside of the fringes of what is commonly understood as jazz (with a lot of overlap with avenues in indie rock, experimental hip-hop, etc.). What unifies this music is a certain degree of jazz literacy. In a "large scale" sense, if you filed Flying Lotus in the jazz section, you'd be forced to file a lot of other experimental electronic music there, too. This is not the case, but Flying Lotus's most recent album (You're Dead) actually has much sonic jazz cred and relevant personnel (Herbie Hancock, post-UGMAA guys) as your average Robert Glasper album--probably a lot more on certain levels. (If you're interested in this strain of thought at all, there is plenty of deeply creative music by thoroughly schooled jazz musicians that does not much sound like archetypal jazz. Naming a few names--all friends of mine, but a few of them reasonably successful in underground circles--Beep, Naytronix, Ava Mendoza, Jack O' the Clock, Black Spirituals, Bells Atlas, Gentleman Surfer... full disclosure-my own group, Grex, issues from this scene.) (D) I feel like everyone here is way ahead of me on this, but ultimately, this does not matter. I'm not even sure if this affects the relative toxicity of the genre--the upper echelons of jazz have penetrated the sanctum of funded art music, and the lowercase terrain of clubs and casual gigs is more rightly threatened by the relative cheapness of DJs--not by other genres. The creative fringes will, as they always have, persevere, and a lot of it will infiltrate more popular avenues in unexpected guises--certain indie rock bands with an intense amount of jazz/new music cred, like Deerhoof, Tune-Yards, or even Nels Cline, come to mind. I think the bigger question is whether we, as the intended audience, are still game for the sometimes bitter work of listening to and engaging with the increasingly volatile modern musical landscape, but I would imagine the answers to that one are diverse and often deeply complex.