I heard the future here and now — let’s call it the present! — in the form of trumpeter Igmar Thomas & The Cypher with MC Raydar Ellis the other night at a public party produced by Revive Da Live, which promotes the jazz-hip/hop mashup in realtime performances, and I was surprised — not bad at all, in fact it was a lot of fun.
The problems rap & hip-hop pose for those who privilege jazz styles from Jelly Roll and Pops through Duke, Count, swing and standards to bebop, modal jazz and 21st century global improvisation include the preponderance of mechanized sound, spoken word over melodic content, static harmony and unbending rhythms. Though rap & hip-hop emerge from the same multi-culti, helter-skelter cityscapes that have given rise to great black music since New Orleans circa 1917, rappers and hip-hop or acid jazz bands — according to many a “serious” jazz critic – abjure the advances jazz musicians over the decades have discovered and asserted in pursuit of transcendent glory, restricting their own efforts to tuneless chants over leaden beats that seldom go anywhere. And I’m characterizing the music here, not sending up the diverse poses and affectations rap and hip-hop artists aim at their hardcore audiences rather than produce for the comfortable consumption of mainstream types or even boomer hipsters.
y deejays with turntables and samplers so that it pulses with the deep breath and coursing blood of people interacting with each other through their instruments.
Nice to see some hip-hop in in the beyond, though it is worth noting that there is in fact a lot of hip-hop that is much more beyond, Mathew Shipp and his work with the very out, and quite aptly named rappers, Anti-Pop Consortium springs to mind, but there are lots of others.
We need to get away from our prejudice against samplers and drum machines in the same way that certain jazz spokespeople can’t understand wah-wah pedals. It is still a real live person pushing those buttons. There is a distinction between looping done well and done poorly and not unlike jazz, those that do it in the most bland and repetitive nature seem to get on the radio a lot more often. Those who do it well maintain a strong connection not just to the surface qualities of jazz via samples of hard bop tunes, but in the aesthetics of improvisation and freedom by radically refiguring the original sources like collage artist might do (which can be paired with similar aesthetics in improvised freestyle rapping, DJ scratching, etc. etc.)
Not only did hip-hop emerge from “the same multi-culti, helter-skelter cityscapes,” (brilliant way to put it!) it emerged from the same tradition that nourishes jazz. All these rappers worship Gil Scott Heron and the Last Poets, who worshiped Coltrane in the same way as those interested in jazz beyond jazz do.
At any rate, I enjoyed this post and wish I would have been there.
HM: Thanks for the wisdom of this note, Charles — I don’t mean to tag samplers, drum machines or turntables as the culprits in rendering new music inoperable for many listeners (even those who’ve grasped the wah-wah), just citing some of the superficial turnoffs (same as the wah-wah was. I still have jazz associates who think electric gtr *without” the wah-wah is a subversion of the jazz aesthetic!, excepting Barney Kessell and Wes Montgomery,) You’re absolutely right that it’s the skill of the manipulator and sensibility of collaboration which makes the difference, which gives the music it’s valued elements, whatever style.
Incidentally, I was lucky to hear the Last Poets and Gil Scott on a double bill produced by the Colgate Black Student Union in 1971. On that same daytrip from Syracuse U, where I went to school, I met and spent some time with Andrew Hill, which led to a long acquaintance and eventual friendship. That was a great day — the Poets were baaaad.