Blog News

It is probably impossible to discuss Kamasi Washington’s new recordâ��”all three impressive hours of itâ��”without copping to at least some awareness of two extra-musical truths. The first of these holds that, as a member of the studio wrecking crew that brought Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly into being, this saxophonist-composer is unusually well poised to secure the attention of listeners who have previously been uninterested in jazz. (This past spring’s celebration of all-things-TPAB was sufficiently strong that Billboard even published a well-reported piece that detailed exactly how Lamar’s album came to feature so many jazz figures, including Washington.)
The second truth is that jazz could use a few more people with Washington’s cachet in the wider worldâ��”touring with Snoop Dogg, or putting out albums on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder imprint. Admitting this is not tantamount to saying that jazz is in some unhealthy creative state (it isn’t), but rather that the music currently faces an uphill struggle in the marketplace (as it often has).
You can see hints of these outside considerations in some of the pre-release writing around The Epicâ��”virtually all of which cites Washington’s hip-hop associations as a reason to pay attention to his big debut as a jazz bandleader. (Washington cut one prior album as part of a collective, in 2004, but this set is his real coming-out party.) One can imagine other elite contemporary jazz artists grinding teeth while checking Twitter, muttering to themselves: if anyone paid attention to me, they’d notice the post-turntablism beats in my music.
Given all this, it’s something of a gobsmacking paradox to discover what a hip-hop-free zone The Epic is, and how enamored of jazz’s past it turns out to be. This triple-album set is an extravagant love letter to (among other things): soul jazz, John Coltrane (various periods), and 1970s fusion leaders like Miles Davis and Weather Report. The Epic’s Disc 1 opener, “Change of the Guard”, might as well be titled “We Love All Kinds of ‘Trane”. Its ringing opening piano chords sound almost entirely lifted from the playbook of McCoy Tyner, the pianist in Coltrane’s so-called “Classic Quartet.” (That’s the group responsible for A Love Supreme.) The opening theme in the saxes is something that could only have been written after “Impressions”. And the harmonious writing for Washington’s string section recalls posthumous Coltrane releases like Infinityâ��”tracks from which featured orchestral overdubs supervised by Alice Coltrane (who is, as you may have read, Flying Lotus’s aunt). Toward the end of the 12-minute tune, Washington’s tenor sax solo veers off into flights of screeching intensity that were the hallmark of Coltrane’s later groupsâ��”specifically the ones that also included Pharoah Sanders. (Who is, by the way, still activeâ��”and still great, on the evidence of last year’s record with the SÃ�o Paulo Underground.)
What The Epic does come to sound like, over the course of its significant running time, is a generational interventionâ��”an educational tool that widens the definition of styles that fall under “jazz classicism.” With his writing for string sections and chorus, Washington even flirts with that most dreaded of appellations: smooth. But these specific choices also wind up paying dividends: The calmly spiritual voices and Washington’s wailing playing during the back half of “Askim” feels novel.
Three hours is a lot of music, and Washington uses the space to range freelyâ��”the R&B vocals of Patrice Quinn crop up roughly once per disc, and there are long sections that feel indebted to grittier funk and soul. Washington has a healthy sense of melodrama, which is especially clear whenever the chorus swoops in with open-hearted “ooohs” and “aaahs”, aiming straight for the listener’s gooseflesh. Meantime, some of the longer, less ambitious instrumental tracks (like “Isabelle”) play things much safer, in a kind of chill-jazz mode that features greasy-soul-organ and tasteful solos from Washington’s large cast of skilled supporters (like electric bassist Thundercat and trombonist Ryan Porter). While faultlessly executed, these are the only moments across the music’s three-hour sprawl that resemble padding. On the uptempo, high-energy music, like the updated Miles Davis-isms of “Re Run Home”, as well the potent Disc 3 closer, “The Message”, Washington and his band truly excel.
The big news is that The Epic actually makes good on its titular promise without bothering to make even a faint-hearted stab in the direction of fulfilling its pre-release hype. If you came for the hip-hop associations, and can’t listen for anything else, you will surely be disappointed. But to listen like that is to cheat yourself. If you want rapping over contemporary jazz, you can find it elsewhere. If you’re in the mood for acoustic adaptations of electronic-music practices, look to Vijay Iyer Trio’s recent Break Stuff (specifically, the track “Hood”, which is a shout-out to Detroit DJ Robert Hood). You can find more studiously contemporary R&B vocals on Robert Glasper’s recent Black Radio series. Kamasi Washington’s epic isn’t the place for those thingsâ��”though it is also a zone of surprise. Instead of a self-conscious attempt to seize someone else’s idea of the zeitgeist, it’s a large and generous canvas, clearly created in the hopes of attracting new visitors to the post-Coltrane wing of the jazz museum. At this point, that project is its own form of radicalism.
Source link