Though I didn’t file an obituary for the late great Allen Toussaint, who died on November 27, I was as stunned and saddened as anyone by his death last month.
Pianist Jon Batiste‘s recent tribute to Batiste at New York’s City Winer gave me a chance to reflect on the brilliance of Toussaint within a long line of New Orleans legends and his indelible connection to New York City. And to return to the pages of the Village Voice.
You can find that piece here.
As I wrote: Continue reading “Allen Toussaint Deserves a Statue in New Orleans—And in New York City, Too”
Listening to the Women of Chicago's AACM
I can’t think of a better way for the Jazz Institute of Chicago to wrap up a year of programming highlighting the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) than with a free concert on Dec. 11 by the Voices Heard! ensemble. The event gathers women who have made significant contributions to the AACM and whose musicianship has been marked by the AACM’s influence: vocalist Dee Alexander, pianist and singer Ann Ward, flutist Nicole Mitchell, cellist Tomeka Reid, violinist Renee Baker, and percussionist, singer and songwriter Coco Elysses.
The promotional headline reads:
“Empowering Women, Spanning Generations: The Women of the AACM Unite!”
It celebrates an aspect of AACM’s legacy that deserves attention beyond Chicago.
Earlier this year, while researching a Wall Street Journal piece celebrating the AACM anniversary, I spoke at length with Mitchell, a perennial poll-topper as flutist and a real visionary as a composer and the leader of several groups (her Black Earth Ensemble performs at the Chicago event). Currently also Professor of Music at the University of California, Irvine, Mitchell arrived in Chicago in 1990, where she began playing music on the streets. She was drawn to the AACM, eventually serving as its first female president, from 2009-2011.
Here are some excerpts from our conversation: Continue reading “Listening to the Women of Chicago's AACM”
Chucho Valdés At 74 & Irakere At 40—Still Growing
“I was a privileged child because Havana was a center for both Cuban music and jazz when I was a boy,” Chucho Valdés told me several years ago, at his home in Havana’s Miramar section, where congas sit alongside the grand piano and photographs of Cuban musical heroes hang next to a 1998 proclamation of “Chucho Valdés Day” in San Francisco. “Cuban music and American jazz, that’s what we lived and breathed in my house. And to me they are different sons of the same mother: Africa.”
Valdés, who recently turned 74, was 4 when he sat at the piano with his own father, pianist Bebo Valdés, who was a central figure among the first generation of big-band mambo arrangers in Cuba. During his decadelong tenure as pianist for Havana’s famed Tropicana nightclub, Bebo led the island’s top players and worked closely with visiting American stars.
As was his father’s, Chucho’s embrace of Cuban music and American jazz is bold, without stylistic prejudice, and always marked by invention. Chucho may well have crafted his own towering legacy atop his inheritance from his father, but nothing could have prepared the world for Irakere, the band Chucho founded in 1973, in Havana, and which took the world by storm five years later.
Chucho has revived the spirit and format of Irakere, 40 years past its founding. I heard them recently at Manhattan’s Town Hall (set list below for notetakers), and was struck by how current the band sounds. That’s because, in the true spirit of Cuban music and American jazz, Chucho never sits still, always leans forward.
(You can find a video of the group at the Lugano Jazz Festival here.)
As I wrote in my Wall Street Journal review of Chucho’s new CD, “Tribute to Irakere (Live in Marciac)”:
Chucho has revived the spirit and format of Irakere, 40 years past its founding. I heard them recently at Manhattan’s Town Hall (set list below for notetakers), and was struck by how current the band sounds. That’s because, in the true spirit of Cuban music and American jazz, Chucho never sits still, always leans forward.
(You can find a video of the group at the Lugano Jazz Festival here.)
As I wrote in my Wall Street Journal review of Chucho’s new CD, “Tribute to Irakere (Live in Marciac)”:
When pianist Chucho Valdés presented “Irakere 40” at Manhattan’s Town Hall earlier this month, he rekindled the sound of a band with which he changed the course of Cuban music four decades ago. Older audience members might have attended Irakere’s U.S. debut at Carnegie Hall during the 1978 Newport Jazz Festival. Appearing unannounced on a program that featured jazz pianists Mary Lou Williams, McCoy Tyner and Bill Evans, Irakere stole that show.
Then, Mr. Valdés introduced New Yorkers to a bold and subversive music, both a response to Cuba’s post-revolution rejection of American jazz and rock and a seed for Cuban dance music now known as timbá. His tight band with a huge sound expressed a sweep of influences that ranged from Afro Cuban folkloric music to bebop, from Mr. Valdés’ father, Bebo (a towering Cuban pianist and composer in his own right) to Blood, Sweat & Tears.
and as I point out:
With this project, Mr. Valdés neither takes a victory lap nor looks back. At 74, he remains a musician of restless and searching ambition….
Mr. Valdés call this album a tribute to Irakere. It sounds more like testimony to the continuity and vitality of a vision that has always spanned borders and genres, conflated centuries, defied politics and, by now, having influenced generations, is bigger than any one band.
Chucho Valdes Irakere 40 at Town Hall
Nov. 10, 2015
set list:
Continue reading “Chucho Valdés At 74 & Irakere At 40—Still Growing”
Sonny Sharrock's Ask the Ages: One for the Ages Comes Back
The news of a reissue of Sonny Sharrock‘s 1991 album “Ask the Ages” made me feel nostalgic. I can only wonder how Sharrock’s searing sound will seem in a new “enhanced and re-mastered from the original,” as promised from M.O.D. Technologies, the label run by Bill Laswell and Giacomo Bruzzo. The press release tells me that “M.O.D. resumes and continues the legacy of Axiom, the timeless imprint established in 1989 by Bill Laswell with Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records,” which first released this album, and that Laswell, who produced it, “first heard Sharrock at fourteen.”
I was much older than 14 in 1998, but much younger than I am now. I was editor-in-chief of Jazziz magazine then. For the September issue, in celebration of the magazine’s 15th anniversary, I planned all sorts of special coverage. There were competing essays depicting the period from 1983-1998 as either a jazz Dark Age or a Renaissance. For the review section, I had critics select albums released in 1983 or later and destined to be memorable well into the future.
Among the albums I chose was “Ask the Ages.” Below is what I wrote. I like to think I’d express it better today—and maybe I will, upon listening to this reissue. (Not sure I still stand by my criticism of Laswell’s mix. Still, I stand by my enthusiasm. Everyone should own this album. Save for a few ripples here and there—the power trio Harriet Tubman for instance—I haven’t heard much that followed the path Sharrock was blazing.
Anyway, here’s that old review (sadly, the magazine is not online): Continue reading “Sonny Sharrock's Ask the Ages: One for the Ages Comes Back”
In William Parker's Words
I first put William Parker on the cover of Jazziz magazine in 1999, when I was editor-in-chief. I’ve since written about Parker—who is best known as a bassist, but whose sincerity is nicely depicted in Jack Vartoogian’s photo, above, of Parker playing a double-reeded horn—in many contexts, including the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
I returned to the pages of Jazziz for a long and, I think, meaty interview with Parker (you can find it here on pag 38; if you can’t access it, feel free to contact me for a file version).
Below are some excerpts, beginning with a section about the Vision Festival, which Parker helped found 20 years ago. Continue reading “In William Parker's Words”
A Trio Bound By Intimate Connections, Unbound by Style: Jack DeJohnette, Ravi Coltrane & Matt Garrison
The last time I heard drummer Jack DeJohnette, tenor saxophonist Ravi Coltrane and bassist Matt Garrison play, the trio did justice to the name of the Brooklyn venue hosting it (which is run by Garrison and his business partner, Fortuna Sung)—ShapeShifter Lab.
The music flowed morphed before us, changing hue and style and mood and form in often surprising ways. It sounded experimental in the best sense of the word—based on clear ideas and solid research but open to tinkering and unpredictable results.
The band returns to ShapeShifter for two shows on October 10.
This is a powerhouse band, led by one of the most kind-hearted and open-minded of jazz’s elder statesmen, DeJohnette, who at 73 is an NEA Jazz Master and a mentor to many. Continue reading “A Trio Bound By Intimate Connections, Unbound by Style: Jack DeJohnette, Ravi Coltrane & Matt Garrison”
New Orleans, Ten Years Past The Flood: Resilience Follies, Part 5 (Fresh Blooms, Dead Roses & Artificial Flowers)
Headline of the day: “Corps Ruled 100% Liable for MR-GO Wetland Fix”
As reported by Mark Schleifstein, in the Times-Picayune:
The Army Corps of Engineers must pay the full $3 billion cost of restoring wetlands destroyed by the agency’s improper construction and maintenance of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, a federal judge in New Orleans ruled Thursday (Aug. 27).
In a major victory for Louisiana, U.S. District Judge Lance Africk ruled the corps improperly tried to stick the state with 35 percent of the restoration cost. When the state declined to pay, the corps refused to begin the restoration program, all in violation of Congressional intent, Africk ruled.
“Ten years after Hurricane Katrina vital ecosystem restoration remains incomplete,” Africk wrote. “Rather than abide by the clear intent of Congress and begin immediate implementation of a plan to restore that which the corps helped destroy, defendants arbitrarily and capriciously misconstrued their clear mandate to restore an ecosystem ravaged by the MR-GO.”
Also today, the Times-Picayune ran a special section of front-page stories from 2005, with this introduction that explained, “Never before seen by many who fled.” Included were banner headlines like these: “”Underwater”; “First Water, Now Fire”; “Clear Out or Else”; “Help Us, Please” “7th Day Of Hell.”
Back at the Sheraton Hotel, I caught a “Katrina 10” panel discussion titled “The Prophetic City: What can New Orleans teach the nation?” Continue reading “New Orleans, Ten Years Past The Flood: Resilience Follies, Part 5 (Fresh Blooms, Dead Roses & Artificial Flowers)”
New Orleans, Ten Years Past The Flood: Resilience Follies, Part 4 (Barack and Brownie)
Headline of the day: “Stop Blaming Me For Hurricane Katrina”
Ten years past disaster, former FEMA head Michael Brown—“Brownie,” as we came to know him—paused to reflect. Here’s what he came up with, in Politico:
“Had I left the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the spring of 2005, my life would be very different today. And I really wish, in retrospect, that I had. But after the 2004 hurricane season, when FEMA’s excellent responses to hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne in Florida were widely praised, White House chief of staff Andy Card persuaded me to stay on as director through the 2005 hurricane season. I didn’t want to disappoint President George W. Bush. We’d developed a good relationship. Heck, he even gave me my own nickname: ‘Brownie.’
“By the end of the summer, it was a nickname the whole world would know. I, in turn, would have learned many lessons in how Washington fails—and how it assigns blame. People are still saying now, as they said then, that what went wrong in New Orleans a decade ago was all my fault. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now….”
You just can’t make this stuff up, folks.
Here’s another headline, from the blog of trumpeter and New Orleans native Nicholas Payton, whose independence and forthrightness with both his music and his words makes him an unconventional but also essential voice in both arenas:
“An Adversarial Katrinaversary And The Delusional Post-Diluvial New Orleans — A Manmade Disaster”
Payton effectively captures a sentiment that’s fairly widespread right now in New Orleans: Continue reading “New Orleans, Ten Years Past The Flood: Resilience Follies, Part 4 (Barack and Brownie)”
New Orleans, Ten Years Past The Flood: Resilience Follies, Part 3 (Masters of Disaster)
Readers of today’s New Orleans Advocate found this full-page ad in today’s front section, courtesy of Harry Shearer.
Shearer, who has a home in the French Quarter, has played many roles during his career: Spinal Tap’s affably insecure bassist, Derek Smalls; the megalomaniacal Mr. Burns of “The Simpsons”; and, on last year’s brilliant series “Nixon’s The One,” the 37th president of the United States.
He’s every bit as compelling in his roles as commentator of his syndicated radio program “Le Show,” and as New Orleans homeowner committed to both the ugly truths that underlie the 2005 flood and the beautiful truths that uphold the city’s indigenous culture.
I ran into Shearer a few years ago on St. Joseph’s night, when Mardi Gras Indians come out after dark. It’s my single favorite time to be in the city—for the mystery, odd pageantry and communal spirit of this annual event. And yet, this tradition, too, has met with serious tensions involving New Orleans police. On one St. Jo’s night, Shearer and I got to talking about the things that oppose or impede New Orleans culture—why, for instance, a brass band might get shut down on its usual corner due to a phoned-in complaint.
“This city doesn’t hand out a manual or an informational DVD when you moved here,” Shearer said. “But maybe it should. People need to understand what’s going on so they can learn to respect it.”
On Monday night, Shearer sat in the front row at the Basin St. Station panel discussion I moderated. When it came time for questions, he asked something along these lines (I’m paraphrasing, having not yet transcribed…): “Once these cultural traditions become entertainment commodities doesn’t it demean them or rob them of their spiritual and cultural purpose?” That made me think about a long list of jazz musicians—from Louis Armstrong though Miles Davis and on—who seemed to uphold both functions at once. Yet I’m still wondering if Shearer has a good point when it comes to stuff that grows from and is functional to neighborhoods first and foremost (Louis and Miles were onstage or in recording studios, after all).
Shearer created a documentary for BBC Radio, “New Orleans: The Crescent and the Shadow,” that reflects on the experience of the 2005 flood and its aftermath today: It airs Sat. Aug 29 at 3 pm ET, and can be found here.
On the website, Shearer’s comments include these: Continue reading “New Orleans, Ten Years Past The Flood: Resilience Follies, Part 3 (Masters of Disaster)”
New Orleans, Ten Years Past The Flood: Resilience Follies, Part 1 (Thank You, George W.)
On the plane to New Orleans yesterday, I spotted former New York Times reporter Gary Rivlin, whose book, “Katrina: After the Flood,” I’d just begun working my way through. I took a break from that to read a Sunday New York Times Magazine piece Rivlin adapted from his book, which focused on Alden J. McDonald Jr., president and chief executive of Liberty Bank and Trust Company, one of the Deep South’s first black-owned banks.
Rivlin’s story ends like this:
While much of New Orleans thrived, McDonald said he saw little hope of a better future for many of his customers. ‘‘The poor will stay poor and the middle class can never get ahead,’’ he said, revealing a rare flash of anger. He paused and added a phrase I don’t imagine he has used many times in his life: ‘‘And I don’t have the solution.’’