By
Senyo
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| photo by jakina ado photography |
I can see it now.
The old cats in pool halls and jazz clubs - you know, playing it cool - enjoying their relative solitude and taking long drags from their Marlboro Lights with ashes that hang off each stick at least an inch and half long - muttering unmentionables to themselves, something about how today’s music has lost its way.
“I just don’t understand the kids these days, where is the substance, what’s the message?”
Say hello to the microwave era where everything is processed from our food right on down to our music.
The name of the game is sell, sell, sell and you better damn well sell it fast!
Our predecessors in jazz, whether active contributors or mere fans have found themselves looking at a large part of contemporary music, collectively scratching their heads and wondering, “How the hell we got here?”
Or an even more exacting question, “How the hell do we get out of here?”
Now with the 60s and 70s, music was indelibly earmarked with some of the greatest contributors to the field of popular music and as well jazz.
Miles Davis and Charles Mingus both exhibited mastery and improvisation. Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone were in historic form.
Even the lesser discussed like the Herman Poole Blunts, who was one of the more prolific musicians in jazz history and band director of the famed Sun Ra orchestra - made supreme strides in composition and raising public consciousness and imagination with his “cosmic philosophy.”
Other greats like Rashaan Roland Kirk and Ornette Coleman were also forces to be reckoned with in many circles in that day. Even master theorists like Hassaan Ibn Ali who only cut one record in his career did much to push bounds of musical phrasing and instrument-to-instrument conversation.
One more question, “Where is all the real music?”
Enter one of Chicago’s best kept secrets, the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. This eight brother brass band, is comprised of Smoov (trumpet), Baji (trumpet), Hudah (trumpet), L.T. (Sousaphone), Yoshi (Trumpet), Rocco (Baritone), Clef (trombone) and SId (trombone) with Gabriel Wallace on the drums....
You know how we do...saving the best rest for print!
