Jazz Meets Clave!

The Original CuBoppers

Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody And Cuban Congero Chano Pozo

 

The JALC Orchestra

Maestro Marsalis Strikes Up the Band!

The concert at Lincoln Center last Saturday night was aptly name Jazz Meets Clave; it was like a replay of that halcyon era in the 1940’s, when Dizzy Gillespie and Mario Bauza – Afro-American and Afro-Cuban master musicians – put their heads together and decided to experiment with a new sound that has become world famous as “Latin Jazz,” a distinct genre in the lexicon of Jazz music.  Since this music was a mixture of the musical traditions of the two cultures, the Son Montuno and Jazz, and was concocted by Afro-Americans and Afro-Latin’s in Manhattan when the Bebop style invented by Bird and Diz was au courant, this new synthesis became known as Cubop. The music played in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s beautiful Rose Hall by the great orchestra that resides there, on last Saturday night, can be considered an extension of that experiment.

 

Machito and his Afro-Cubans

The Cuban Side Of Bop

One of the highlights of the evening was a composition by Carlos Enriquez, the bassist in the Lincoln Center Orchestra, who is Puerto-Rican, or more accurately Nuyorican.  The piece was inspired by the Orchestra’s recent trip to Cuba. In his introduction of the composition Carlos explained how the trip to that culturally rich Caribbean isle was a musical and cultural revelation.  He was first of all surprised to discover the high level of musicianship displayed by the young musicians of Cuba, as well as the educational system that trains them.

Frankly I was astonished by his surprise, because all one need do is look at the musicians who have migrated from that Island to New York City, or simply come here to perform – like Chucho Valdez, whom I consider the greatest pianist in the world, to know that something rare and exciting is going on musically in Cuba.  Chucho is not alone at the top of his game; the same argument can be made for the contrabassist Carlos Del Pino, the multi-reed virtuoso Paquito de Rivera, or the trumpeter Autoro Sandoval – the only trumpeter in the world who can potentially rival Wynton Marsalis in his multi-lingual virtuosity. And there are so many great Cuban percussionists they defy tabulation.

In an eloquent and erudite monologue Carlos told us how the different movements of his composition were based on various rhythms and song forms that are integral to the Afro-Cuban style, and explained how they would alternate with the swing of Jazz.  Unlike some ill fated attempts to synthesize musical genres, this composition was a rousing success.  The result was a performance of great drama, as the musicians interpreted this inspired and original score constructed on complex poly-rhythms and poignant blues voicing’s of various shades. This composition also featured an extended solo on the timbales, and instrument that offers far less to work with than the drum set preferred by jazz drummers; yet it is critical to the Afro-Cuban rhythm section. Consisting of only two tom toms on a stand, with two cowbells mounted on it, plus a ride cymbal, the Timbales are a minimalist version of the Jazz drum kit.

 

David Hernandez Of Zon Del Barrio!

The Art of Timbales

 

The Jazz drum set is the most complex percussion instrument in the world, and by far the most difficult to play when performing in the modern jazz context.  While I am not prepared to say who played this instrument first, African American drummers in the United States created the great virtuoso tradition and are its greatest artists.

To understand the complexity of the jazz drummer’s art, let’s examine the art of precision rudimental trap drumming alone.  Here I am referring of the art of the snare, or trap drum.  This kind of drumming is common to military style marching bands, including high-school and especially the great college marching bands.  The rhythmic compositions to which the band marches called “cadences’ are constructed on twenty eight “rudiments.’  These rhythmic exercises, such as five stroke rolls, seven stroke rolls, flams, ratamacues, paradiddles, flam paradiddles, etc are very precise rhythmic statements, sort of like etudes for drums. A wonderful recreation of what it was like to try and make the great Florida A&M drum section can be seen it the movie Drumline.

 

A Grand Master of The Drum Set

Max Roach Playing Five Drums and Four Cymbals

Most jazz drummers had the benefit of this kind of rudimental training on the snare drum, having grown up playing in marching bands, but in the set the snare is only one of four or five drums, depending on the drummer’s taste.  It is however the lead drum from which all rhythmic configurations is initiated. The standard set is snare, small tom tom, and floor tom tom, plus the bass drum.  In terms of the human voice it would be like soprano, tenor, baritone and basso; if they were viols it would be violin, viola, cello and conta-bass.  When the jazz drummer tunes these drums – and some fine tune them to the pitch of the piano – a variety of percussive voices are possible.

That’s why the great Jazz drummers with musical imaginations – like Max Roach, Art Blakey or Jack De Johnette -sound as if they are playing melodically.  Aside from the drums however there are at least three cymbals.  Two are mounted on stands – some drummers prefer three – and the sock cymbal is played with the foot.  The essence of the art of playing the drum set is to be able to play a different rhythm with each hand and foot.  Hence the Jazz drummer creates a complex polyrhythmic statement by his lonesome.

The timbales are sparse in comparison, but unlike the jazz set the timbale player is not expected to carry the percussion rhythm alone; timbaleros are  accompanied by the conga and bongo drummers, guido or clave and the big cow bell.  When each instrument is in the groove they produce a poly-rhythmic sound that compels the listener to dance. Thus the timbalero usually has help from other percussionist while the Jazz drummer is expected to supply all the percussion functions in the band.  On this occasion the timbalero was a true master of his instrument and rendered an electrifying solo!   When I first saw Afro-Cuban musicians play at Florida A&M I wasn’t at all impressed with the timbales.  But that would change once I began to understand the nature of the instrument and the skill required to play them.  And when I started to study the congas I came to admire, respect, and even love them.  Part of the genius of the art of timbale playing is that they do so much with so little equipment.

Conga, Timbales and Guido

The Heart of the Afro Cuban Rhythm Section

 

The Bongo Player

The bongolero also doubles on the big cow bell

The Cow Bell Anchors the Rhythm

Everybody Plays Off The Big Cow Bell

 

Every part of the timbales can be played.  Whereas jazz drummers play only on the skins of the drums – with the occasional rim shots – the timbalero plays all over the drums; the rims and the sides too.  The skins are used accent the rhythms that are steadily played on the sides or the cowbells, and for dynamic solos.  The Afro-Cuban rhythm section is so precisely worked out that every rhythm fits perfectly in its “pocket.” Which is another way of saying each man to his station in the rhythmic jig saw.

JALC Bassist Carlos Enrique

 

After a swinging interlude in which Ali – the trap drummer with the JALC – announced his presence like rolling thunder,  Marcus Printup gave a solo of great sensual beauty, playing with a wide vibrato; the influence of his Cuban sojourn could clearly be heard as he conjured up memories of the great Afro-Cuban trumpeter Chaputin. The composition, and the set, ended with an impressive solo from Carlos on the bass.

 

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The second set began with the audience being shown how to clap the clave rhythm, and Ali soloed on the drum set as they clapped in time.  Then Carlos started walking the bass and Ali began swinging hard.  The music is a movement from Wynton’s Third American Symphony, and it is very modern.  Moving at the frantic pace of rush hour traffic on the West Side Highway, which is clearly visible from the piano where Wynton composed it, the influence of environment on the way musicians imagine music is very clear.  In any case it’s clear to me; I don’t know if Wynton thinks of it that way, which is to say that he is conscious of the influence…but it is there.

Ali Jackson

All around Musician and Virtuoso of the Drum Set

 

As in all of the performances the solo work was marvelous.  First there was a kind of rapid fire interplay between Wynton and the trombonist.  Wynton played magnificently, even though he had just been back in his dressing room suffering with aching eyes.  Walter Blanding Jr, my favorite tenor prayer of the younger generation, gave a spellbinding solo on the soprano sax.  Obviously by his choice of horns he is following in the footsteps of John the Prophet.

The next composition was also written by Carlos, who was obviously smitten with the great musical tradition of Afro-Cubans.  This composition is based on the Songo form created by the Cuban master musician Chungito. The tune utilized the 6/8 time signature which is the rhythm of the most sacred of Afro-Cuban religions societies like Santeria.  However being afro-Latin raised in New York he hears both traditions in a marvelous way. His orchestrations were fresh and highly inventive.

 

The Great Gerald Wilson Conducting His Music

The JALC Orchestra Saxophone Section

Carlos is extremely fortunate to be in a musical organization like JALC, because it allows him to fully exercise his musical imagination as a composer. Like the Ellington Orchestra, the gifted musicians around whom he is surrounded are capable of playing anything he can invent.  This gives all the members on the band an added incentive to write, thus contributing to the bands book of original compositions.  Again the solo work by the trombonist was breathtaking.  Surely when John Phillip Sousa chose trombonists for his band he never imagined anybody playing the instrument with such lyricism and imagination.

The next tune was a Cuban Standard – the Peanut Vender.  However Carlos explained the history of the tune then delighted the audience with the announcement that this particular arrangement was done by the great Duke Ellington. This further establishes the long standing  interest Afro-American musicians had in Cuban music.  To listen to the JALC perform this music with the standard Afro-Cuban Rhythm section was a wonder.  You could not tell they were not a Cuban orchestra.  Another trumpeter took an extended solo that captured the flavor of the tune. The Latin percussionists were right in the pocket all night. Dukes arrangement was intoxicating, with those unique Ellington voicing’s for the different sections.

The trombonist Vincent Gardner – a former member of the FAMU marching band – wrote the next composition titled “Afro and Cubans.”  A somewhat strange title, which made me wonder if it was a reference to the fact that race conscience black Cubans do not consider themselves “Hispanic,” which they see as the proper designation for those Cubans who descended from the Spaniards.  They are quite aware of the fact that they are neo-Africans of the west.  When I asked Vincent hom much is composition was influenced by the cultural redefinition that is occurring among black Cubans, which is rife among Cuban hip hop artists, he said it was this Afro-Cuban perspective that inspired the work.

The Conga drummer was featured in an extended solo on this tune. He was playing three congas, all tuned to different keys, and he sounded like he had six hands!!!  He was accompanied  only by other rhythm instruments. His solo was followed by an extended solo on the timbales.  It was an impressive demonstration of the art of Afro-Cuban percussion. I continue to be amazed by the level of virtuosity achieved by performers on these percussion instruments.

The final tune of this historic concert came from the song book of the late great Tito Rodriquez.  While its rhythms were typical Afro-Cuban and it was dance music, the horn arrangements display the advanced knowledge of blues harmonies and jazz ensemble arranging that is the hallmark of the New York Salsa sound in its big band Latin /Jazz expression begun by Machito and elaborated on by Nuyoricans.  Wynton soloed on this tune and he used a mute, which allowed him to scream, laugh and cry on his trumpet.  His sound was majestic!

The rhythm was an up-tempo Mambo of the sort made famous at places like the Palladium and all those fantastic nights at the Village Gate.  The bongo drummer got his moment on this tune and he thrilled the crowd with his virtuosity on those two little drums that look like toys.  I have watched bongo players for years – including the best ever, Mongo Santamaria – and it remains a mystery to me how they do what they do.  When the last note was sounded the audience rose to its feet in a prolonged and boisterous ovation!   Viva la musica!

 

Hangin With The Master Drummers!

Their Timbale and Conga Drumming Fired The Band

 

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Playthell Benjamin

Harlem, New York

November 29, 2010

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-mU08nKt9M

Double Click to cee the Jazz ay Lincoln Center in Cuba, featuring the Cuban flautist Michel Herrera soloing.  The artist of traditional Cuban percussion instrunebts are also native Cubans.

 

Double Click to See The JALC Orchestra  at “Jazz Meets Clave” Concert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnblSeb76L0

 

Double Click to hear Machito and his Afro-Cubans playing Cu-bop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqeks0gDaF8

Double Click for Dizzy Gillespie’s Orchestra play Cubop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nxthSkRT6g

This performance is at Lincoln Center in 1982,

Almost four decades  after he and Mario Bauza invented Cubop

An Evening Of Wynton Marsalis With Strings

The Best Ever! 

 Match 

 A Match Made In Nirvana

Of the many gifts that the beleaguered Crescent City has given to the world – Gumbo, Tennessee Williams and Ellen Digeneris among them – Louis Armstrong, who introduced the art of extended solo improvisation to the world, and Wynton Marsalis, multiple Grammy winner in Jazz and European concert music, holder of the Pulitzer Prize for composition, and Artistic Director of Jazz At Lincoln Center, are unique.  Not only do their life’s experiences demonstrate the claim that great artist can rise up from anywhere – Armstrong from the whore houses, dives and mean streets, while Wynton, like Mozart, was forged from an extended apprenticeship with a musically accomplished father, and later did stints at the prestigious Tanglewood music festival and Julliard School of Music – both of these New Orleans trumpeters extended the range of what was previously thought possible for performers on their instruments and enriched the vast tradition of western music with new ideas.

 This was, to say the least, no picayune accomplishment because the art of perfectly ordering and cultivating sound to produce the beautiful vibrations that we call music reached it’s apotheosis in Europe between the 17^th and 19^th centuries with the rise of peerless geniuses such as – Bach, Vivaldi, Hyden, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Chopin, Schubert, et al – who composed the European classical tradition of instrumental music which set the standards for instrumental virtuosity.

 After the achievement of the European masters many serious students of music thought there was little of value anyone could add in the realm of organization, esthetics, or creative ideas.  And since the European system of melody and harmony performed on piano, viols, woodwinds, brass, etc produced the most beautiful and versatile sounds ever heard on this planet, for a while they were right.

 Until the ascendancy of the African American musician in the twentieth century, the dominance of European classical music as the sole art music of the western world went unchallenged. As the mid-twentieth century New York Times music critic Henry Pleasants – who was based in Europe for most of his career – points out in his uniquely learned and insightful book Serious Music and All that Jazz, no one had even added a new term to the lexicon of western musical terminology, largely invented by the Renaissance Italians, until the jazzmen came along.  Although Pleasants was the first “serious music” critic to recognize that Jazz was the classical music of America – a new music for a new civilization – it should have been obvious to anyone who was learned in music and not blinded by artistic or racial prejudice. 

 Like American civilization itself, Jazz is rooted in the European tradition but flowered into something different in the wilderness of North America. It is the sound of a civilization whose character – as was shown by the innovative historian Frederick Jackson Turner – was formed in the experience of constantly expanding frontiers.  It was an environment in which improvisation, personal initiative, and democratic decision making were indispensable to survival and progress. 

 Thus it is in the logic of things that the quintessential art form of such a civilization would be democratic, value individual liberty, promote innovation, and pulsate with the clockwork poly-rhythms of a machine age milieu.  Having grown up under the roof of pianist Ellis Marsalis – a master musician and teacher of the genre – surrounded by virtuosi such as the great clarinetist Alvin Batiste and legions of others who dwelled in New Orleans, then attending finishing school in the  Art Blakey band, Wynton swings like jazz is in his genes.

 As one of the world’s foremost trumpeters in the European tradition – one need only listen to his recordings of the most difficult masterworks of the European classical repertoire in order to recognize that this is no exaggeration – he has performed with some of the greatest string ensembles of this era in western music.  Thus Wynton is ideally suited to perform jazz music with strings, an idea that was once considered blasphemous!   But the recordings of Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown with strings changed all that.  Yet as beautiful as these collaborations of idioms were, Wynton has taken it to a new level. 

            I think there are two reasons for the stunning artistic achievements we are treated to on Hot House Flowers and The Midnight Blues, the two Jazz albums that he recorded with strings.  First there are the superior arrangements; although “Brownie” and “Bird” sang with a soulful lyricism the arrangements were often corny and the strings were sometimes too loud.  But Wynton, in collaboration with his arrangers has solved those problems and given us some sonic masterpieces that entertains and enlightens, soothing the soul while stimulating the intellect.  

 Speaking of Hot House Flowers, Stanley Crouch, the peerless jazz critic and moving spirit behind the creation of JALC, obliterates the boundaries that separate prose from poetry in his description of the music.  “Yes, it all comes down,” he writes, “the harmonies full of idiomatic dissonance or siren sweetness, the notes that might as well have been stenciled with stardust on the night sky, the rhythms so celebratory, then the conjoined memories and dreams of the magic at the core of intimate majesty.”  Here we have art as critical statement, a comment worthy of its subject.

 As I listen to The Midnight Blues I hear a unique technical brilliance and the sensual eloquence of the blues moan unite in the service of song. The plaintive wail of Wynton’s trumpet on After You’ve Gone conjures up memories of the bitter sweet passion and pain of lost loves, I Got Lost in Her Arms inspires me to dance the Tango, It Never Entered My Mind makes me want to squeeze somebody gently and shower them with kisses, and The Midnight Blues makes my spirit strut.  It is my fondest hope that you will feel these things too when Maestro Sadin strikes up the band and we join Wynton in celebrating a quarter century of  accomplishing great things in this tempestuous business of music.  It is with but little alteration and no exaggeration that I paraphrase Shakespeare’s description of Othello “The elements so blended in him that all the world could see here stands a trumpet master.” For my money no one has ever done it as well, never mind better.

 

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Jazz At Lincoln Center

New York City

 

The Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra!

The Great Gerald Wilson!

 

A Swinging Octogenarian  Leads the Band!

 

 Avatars of a Great Cultural Tradition

 Born in a period when the last radio station devoted to  programming classic acoustic Jazz, WRVR, had unceremoniously gone off the air  and replaced with Country Music here in the Big Apple – the jazz capitol of the world – and the art form itself seemed in danger of going the way of the dinosaurs, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has been the vehicle by which the Jazz department at Lincoln Center assumed it’s place as the pacesetter and savior of this quintessentially American art form. 

Thus it is no exaggeration to say that this aggregation of virtuoso musicians have served as the avant garde in the effort to rescue American culture from drowning in a sea of esthetic mediocrity and commercial banalities.  From the outset the mission of the orchestra was to breathe new life into a grand musical tradition that had evolved to a stage where it could rightfully take its place among the great art music of the world; but, alas, was being slowly starved to death by a lack of institutional support from the American cultural establishment. Who were far too busy genuflecting before the cultural artifacts of Europe to notice the impending death of the great American contribution to the classical culture of mankind.

Not only dose Jazz music require the highest standards of technical virtuosity from those musicians who aspire to master the form, but unlike the symphonic musician, who plays musical ideas notated by their composer, the jazz musician must also create the score as he conceives it at the time.  Hence the musician that would master the art of Jazz must be prepared to conjure up complex musical ideas – “blues and the abstract truth” as the great arranger Oliver Nelson called it – at the speed of thought. 

Furthermore, Jazz is the only arena of American culture that embodies the fundamental values of American civilization.  Jazz is democratic, values individual freedom, promotes innovation and invention, swings to the clockwork rhythms of a machine age world, and is infused with a sensibility shaped by the tragi/comic sensibility of the blues; that most American of musical modes.  Such a marvelous art is certainly worth preserving and taking its place as an integral part of the heritage of all mankind. 

There are special moments in the history of art when the birth of an important aesthetic movement can be traced to a specific time and place.  For instance Da Da, which emerged in the aftermath of the disaster of World War I and reflected the disillusionment of the European intelligentsia with modern technological civilization and the way it resolves international conflict, was born in the Café Voltaire in Zurich Switzerland.  And New York will surely be remembered in the history of art as the City in which Jazz was reborn.  Jazz at Lincoln Center will be remembered as the venue in which this act of cultural heroism occurred, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will be duly noted as the band of cultural warriors who rescued American culture from ignominy with their swinging axes.                                             

The Greatest!!

 

 Master Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis

At the opening ceremonies of Jazz at Lincoln Center Manhattan Congressman Jerome Nadler celebrated the importance of the occasion with the pronouncement: “If Yankee Stadium can be called “The House that Ruth built, Jazz At Lincoln Center shall henceforth be known as: The House That Wynton Built!”   And the centerpiece of Wynton’s handiwork is the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, of which the great  multi-Grammy wining bi-lingual trumpeter and Pulitzer Prize winning composer is Artistic Director and Conductor. 

 Wynton Conducting The Boys In The Band

 

 The Lincoln Center Orchestra and Ghanaian Percussionist

Deep In the Groove Soul to Soul!

 This band of peerless jazz virtuosi are the reigning masters of what the great cultural historian, theorist and musical critic Albert Murray -author of the seminal study “Stomping the Blues” and a artistic consultant to JALC at its inception – called “The fully orchestrated blues statement.”  From the outset the mission of this band of cultural warriors was not only to make great music, but also to do battle in defense of the art of jazzing by institutionalizing the mysterious alchemy by which the Jazz tradition has been able to produce world class musicians in the absence of musical conservatories. 

After correctly analyzing the process of educating the novice jazz musician by placing them under the tutelage of masters of the genre, much as master craftsman tutored apprentices in medieval guilds, they created an institution to accomplish this: the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.  Aside from its incomparable musicianship this Orchestra is distinguished by its ability to play Jazz music from any era or style with authenticity.  I heard the Ellington Orchestra many times, and Basie too, and the Gerald Wilson Orchestra, to name a select few.  But none played this music better than the JALC Orchestra.  For my money they are the best ever:  the Muhammad Ali of Jazz bands: The Greatest!

 

Playthell  Benjamin

Winter Season, 2009

 * Photos - by Frank Stewart