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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Digging Our Roots videos, speakers inspire engagement

Billy Branch watches Sonny Boy (Rice Miller) Williamson II. Photo by Alan Frolichstein
Billy Branch watches Sonny Boy (Rice Miller) Williamson II;
photo by Alan Frolichstein

Nearly 100 Chicagoans (maybe some visitors?) watched Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy and other heroes of the blues on videos at the Cultural Center Thursday night (5/23/19), with harmonica star Billy Branch and WDCB program host Leslie Keros telling stories and participated in lively interplay with knowing attendees. It was the fifth Digging Our Roots: Chicago’s Greatest Hits “listening session” this spring, co-presented by the Jazz Institute of Chicago and Jazz Journalists Association.

Full disclosure: I sit on the JIC board, am president of the JJA, curated and moderated this series. Let that not invalidate this report! Because since cold last January, our once-a-month, free, public music show-and-tells have drawn a steadily growing, diverse and highly engaged audience to both revisit and discover anew jazz/blues favorites of the distant and recent past, pointing to culture of this city now.

I don’t say that to brag, just to confirm that small budget, low cost, all-ages-and-sophistication-level presentations can raise the profile of local musicians and journalists working together, expose successful (entertaining!) if perhaps forgotten artists to awe and encourage younger music lovers, and generate fine content for posting, such as Mashaun Hardy does for the Jazz Institute’s social media streams by video streaming portions of the proceedings, live — like below:

The economical nature of the production is thanks to the Cultural Center (overseen by the Mayor’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events) providing space and staff, as well as the amazing banquet of video performances online (we watched clips selected by the panelists, including this dynamite performance by Billy Branch and Lurrie Bell with an early version of their band Sons of the Blues).

The Jazz Institute provides promotion online and a staffer or two who help with production, harvest attendee’s email address and sign up new members. I contribute my efforts on behalf of the JJA, and have enlisted members as speakers.

For instance, in April photographer/writer/visual artist and saxophonist Michael Jackson joined tenor saxist Juli Wood to celebrate the Chicago Tenor Tradition represented by Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin and Von Freeman (pianist Michael Weiss, at the Jazz Showcase that week with saxist Eric Alexander to celebrate Grif’s birthday, sat in). John McDonough, a longtime writer for DownBeat and the Wall Street Journal, created a medley of historic versions of “King Porter Stomp” for a presentation of Jelly Roll Morton’s classics in February with roots Americana pianist Erwin Helfer performing two of Jelly’s tunes.

Veteran broadcaster Richard Steele, just hours back from a tour of Cuba in company of trumpeter Orbert Davis, talked with saxophonist Eric Schneider about the collaborations and careers of Earl “Fatha” Hines (with whom he’d toured) and Louis Armstrong. Ayana Contreras, producer for WBEZ and Vocalo Radio, provided in-depth commentary about the jazz influences and nuances of Curtis Mayfield, Minnie Riperton and Earth Wind and Fire in the March Digging Our Roots, which climaxed gloriously: as keyboardist Robert “Baabe” Irving III played EWF vamps on the Cultural Center’s piano, audience members started singing along, Maggie Brown (Oscar Brown Jr.’s daughter) rushed to the stage, grabbed a mic and started wailing — dancing erupted! It was grand.

At the May session, Branch spoke admiringly of the musicianship of his elders he had known, especially including Sonny Boy Williamson II, as slyly understated harmonica man Rice Miller called himself while touring from the Mississippi delta to the capitols of Europe, having appropriated repertoire and reputation of John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson, who had hit records but was murdered in 1948. Keros introduced an excerpt of a film of Maxwell Street, Chicago’s fondly remembered outdoor market at which Blind Arvella Grey, guitarist Robert Nighthawk, Big John Wrencher (don’t the names summon their images?) held forth.

One fan corrected my impression that Bill Broonzy was playing from his own doorstep — actually the clip was from a film shot by Pete Seeger. Another suggested that the way to return blues to popular music today is have a deejay/producer grab it for presentation to the EDM audience. Apparently that gent was unaware of previous attempts to turn that trick, such as the Elektric Mud Cats — Chuck D and Common with guitarist Pete Cosey — doing a number on Muddy Water’s “Mannish Boy.”

The next Digging Our Roots session, at 6 pm on Saturday June 29, highlights Chicago’s singers, starting with Dinah Washington, Oscar Brown Jr and Johnny Hartman. The panelists are Aaron Cohen — former DownBeat editor and author of the forthcoming Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power — and singer Bobbi Wilsyn. The venue changes to the Logan Center, in Hyde Park on the edge of University of Chicago campus, which is hosting two free days of Jazz Institute programming, noon to 10 pm, as a 50th anniversary Birthday Bash reveling in the breadth of JIC and our local scene’s concerns and activities.

As part of the JIC’s year long 50th engagement and fundraising campaigns, a series of jazz movies programmed by the Chicago Film Society kicks off Monday, May 27 with Mickey One (starring Warren Beatty, directed by Arthur Penn, with music by Stan Getz, shot in Chicago) at the Music Box. Further flicks include Ornette: Made in America, Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues and Les Blank’s Always for Pleasure.

The drift is: Mutually beneficial partnerships for free or modest-fee events featuring local celebs at readily accessible venues can advance the mission of medium to small not-for-profit arts groups (like the Jazz Institute and the Jazz Journalists Association). Knowledgable people who have insights into pre-recorded media can offer curious listeners and viewers an interactive experience (all Digging Our Roots sessions included q&a time) that bonds most everybody present, like any successful performance. I’m thrilled to present music I love to anyone who’s got the time and inclination to enjoy it and hope to continue this series in autumn in Chicago.

Billy Branch, Leslie Keros, Howard Mandel;
photo by Alan Frolichstein

Might I suggest Digging Our Roots-like programs as a model for arts journalists and arts organizations spotlighting arts-near-us, contemporary or historic? All you need is a public space, time, date, and speakers able to be enlightening about great content. That last is the main thing. We’re lucky here to have such enduring jazz and blues.

Hyde Park Jazz Fest, summer’s last dance (photos)

Chicago’s Hyde Park Jazz Festival in the first days of fall (Sept. 23 & 24th) which were unusually hot, is an exceptional event, curated for creative artistry, local and otherwise, drawing a highly diverse crowd

Late afternoon jazz dance. All photos by Marc PoKempner unless otherwise credited.

to a fair that mixes popular and specialized performances at a range of boutique venues.

Produced by an independent 501c3, the 11-year-old Hyde Park Jazz Festival receives some support from the University of Chicago’s Office of Civic Engagement, and has co-founders in principals from the Hyde Park Jazz Society but relies for funding on grants it applies for on its own and solicited individual giving. The fest occurs mostly on the U of C campus, which strives to be more inviting to its surrounding black residential neighborhoods than it’s been for decades. The efforts seems to work — a racially integrated crowd of several thousand, skewing middle-aged but including students (the term had just started) and families with kids, attended, all free of charge ($5 donations were encouraged). Some set up discreet tents, inflatable loungers or camp chairs within hearing distance of the outdoor stages at either end of a pedestrian mall on the Midway, socializing while taking in sun and street food. Others took refuge in the darker, cooler venues of the Logan Center for the Arts, the DuSable Museum, the Smart Museum or the Little Black Pearl art and design center on 47th St. 

Hyde Park Jazz Fest audience in the Midway.

No way to be everywhere, hear everything. My idea of fun.

Beckoned, walking to the site, by the muted trumpet of Marquis Hill in drummer Makaya McCraven’s band with rare, pleasing vibes-guitar duo (Joel Ross and Matt Gold, respectively) and in-demand bassist Junius Paul. Glanced in on Thelonious Monk’s biographer Robin D.G. Kelley‘s talk, hustled to the premiere of the Bamako*Chicago Sound System, flutist extraordinaire Nicole Mitchell’s collaboration with Malian kora player Ballake Sissoko,

Bamako*Chicago Sound System, Nicole Mitchell sixth from left, Ballake Sissoko farthest right

balafon virtuoso Fassery Diabaté and singer Fatim Kouyaté with Chicago vocalist Mankwe Ndos,bassist Josh Abrams, percussionist Jovina Armstrong and former Chicagoan guitarist Jeff Parker.

Amina Claudine Myers

This was swaying, tuneful music, superficially light as a breeze but with transparent, undulating layers of activity. I presented Ms. Mitchell with the Jazz Journalists Association’s 2017 Jazz Award for Flutist of the Year — it is her eighth consecutive such honor — and she accepted it mirthfully before the performance. As always, her personal improvisations are melody-rich, and she performed one solo that was genuinely edgy, pushing her instrument and the song’s formal limitations, too. See Lauren Deutsch’s photos of Nicole Mitchell for apt visualizations of her music. The cross-cultural ease of Bamako*Chicago Sound System’s ensemble is heartening.

A few blocks away, at the Hyde Park Union Church, Amina Claudine Myers performed gospel songs from her childhood on piano. I only heard part of the performance, I think she played organ and sang, as well. Myers, a foundational member around 1965 of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians is still active in its New York chapter, though she’s less well-known than many of her AACM cohort. Her experience with her spiritual material is undeniable, and of course it imbues jazz.

Ben Goldberg, clarinet

Clarinetist Ben Goldberg, from the Bay Area, cast a secular if similarly ethereal ambiance in the Logan Center performance penthouse (9th floor looking towards the Lake) when night came on. He considered compositions of Thelonious Monk, 100th birthday boy/immortal genius. Almost a third of the full house cleared out after the second long episode in which he thoughtfully deconstructed such compositions as “Work,” “Ask Me Now,” “Mysterioso” and the hymn “Abide with Me.” Said Goldberg, “I understand, solo clarinet is not for everyone,” and when the room had re-settled, added, without rancor, “The lightweights are gone.” His evocations of Monk’s themes, phrase by phrase, started at high point of understanding and went up from there.

Bill McHenry and Andrew Cyrille, photo by Dennis McDonough

I missed a lot — hometown favorites Ari Brown, Dee Alexander, Tomeka Reid, too many others — but happily heard drummer Andrew Cyrille and tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry in a large hall in International House. A broadly-informed, highly skillful and imaginative drummer, Cyrille is still most associated with his 1960’s – ’70s collaboration with pianist Cecil Taylor, documented on the two masterpieces Unit Structures and Conquistador!, although prior to Taylor he’d supported Coleman Hawkins and Mary Lou Williams, among others. It’s less often recalled that he recorded what may be the first all solo drums album, What About? in 1971 (and another, The Loop, in ’78), the historic four-drummer album Pieces of Time (with Kenny Clarke, Famadou Don Moyé and Milford Graves in ’84), has

Andrew Cyrille concentrates on tom-toms with his mallets; photo by Dennis McDonough

led and recorded several distinctive ensembles from the ’70s through last year’s The Declaration of Musical Independence featuring guitarist Bill Frisell, synthesist Richard Teitelbaum and bassist Ben Street, as well as Trio 3 with reedsman Oliver Lake and bassist Reggie Workman, and this duet project with McHenry (recorded as Proximity).

I’ve known Cyrille personally since profiling him for DownBeat in the ’80s. I traveled with him briefly in the Soviet Union, invited him to address Jazz Journalists Association meetings at the New School Jazz program (where he’s taught for decades) and do lecture-demonstrations at my NYU classes. His distinctive strengths are embedded in the extraordinary range and responsiveness of his sensibility.

Cyrille can wield and drive a slashing attack or underlie a passage with sustained but muted drama. He is always structurally and compositionally aware, so purposeful, but he’s also quite willing to go with a collaborator’s flow. He tunes his drums carefully, yet will play anything — I’ve seen him stand from behind his kit, put his sticks to chairs,

Andrew Cyrille, NYC, 2012, photo by Sánta István Csaba

stands, tables, the wall and the floor until he returns to his stool without having missed a beat. He is a jazz master, if not yet acknowledged as such by the National Endowment of the Arts nonetheless known to fans of improvised music worldwide. Here he’s playing a snare with his teeth or tongue, like Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Guy mouthing guitar strings.

McHenry is a fine match, exploring horn motifs steadily, methodically, free to do anything/go anywhere but hewing to his own clear logic. Together, they exemplified a balanced partnership intent on physically generating and shaping sound.

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Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

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