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Crossing over again
Joshua Redman and Me’Shell NdegéOcello make jazz pop
BY JON GARELICK
Related Links

Joshua Redman's official Web site

Jon Garelick reviews Joshua Redman's Elastic

Me'Shell NdegéOcello's official Web site

Christopher John Treacy reviews Me'Shell NdegéOcello's Comfort Woman

Jazz’s failure to gain traction with a mainstream pop audience has been a regular hobbyhorse of this column — and will continue to be. To wit: several weeks ago I moderated a Jazz Journalists Association Boston chapter panel discussion. The posited topic was "Jazz Criticism and How It Affects Audience Development," but as the inevitable hand wringing became more general, the equally inevitable question arose: why isn’t jazz more popular? Michelle Mercer — Wayne Shorter biographer and NPR correspondent — offered the popular perception of not only jazz but jazz fans. The story comes from Sex and the City. Carrie Bradshaw accepts a blind date. The blind date turns out to be a jazz fan. Carrie thinks, okay, jazz is a little strange, but she gives the guy the benefit of the doubt. Turns out the guy is a bit strange in other ways. Turns out the guy is a paranoid schizophrenic.

I always date my own jazz-is-dead persecution complex from the awful 1955 movie Blackboard Jungle, itself notorious because Bill Haley’s "Rock Around the Clock" playing over the opening credits was said to have provoked riots in movie theaters. But the film’s most salient scene for me comes when bespectacled English teacher Richard Kiley brings in his sacred Bix Beiderbecke 78s for the enlightenment of his rock-and-roll-loving juvenile delinquents. The class proceeds to smash them all.

Why isn’t jazz more popular? First, it’s instrumental music, and these days, that makes it about as popular with a mass audience as the BSO. Second and more important: it’s the rhythm, stupid. Rock and funk rhythms have subsumed all else. The mainstream pop audience doesn’t want to hear walking bass accompanying the ching-chinga-ching of dotted rhythms on the ride cymbal. And it doesn’t want to hear ballads with brushes. That’s technically swing rhythm, and that’s about two thirds of the modern jazz repertoire down the toilet. Exceptions are made for Afro-Latin rhythms (still tied closely to the dance floor) and African polyrhythms, which are often the fundamental beats for jam bands.

There are other hopeful exceptions. Almost from the beginning of his career, Joshua Redman has been able to court — by jazz standards, anyway — a large popular audience, filling venues like Sanders Theatre and the Berklee Performance Center. In the beginning of his career, he did it with good ol’ walking bass and ching-chinga-ching. But he also knew how to shape songs and solos for dramatic impact, creating long arcs of tension and release that were accessible to a broad audience while still packing musical content. He got "contemporary" with Freedom in the Groove, but the results were a bit slick. He made an album of unlikely "new" standards by the likes of Bob Dylan and Prince that was a bit sleepy. Still, his live performances were exciting. And he was a good-looking young man with a DKNY endorsement deal.

Then came Elastic (Warner Bros., 2002), and Redman seemed to have found the golden mean — one that’s been struck occasionally by Medeski Martin & Wood, Kurt Rosenwinkel, John Scofield, and, oh heck yes, Pat Metheny. Redman wasn’t content to set up a groove and plug it; he wrote arrangements. His tunes had all sorts of funny little parts, textural and melodic, and even that groove shifted under your feet. Plus, the Elastic Band upheld one of the verities that’s lost on lesser jazz-funk crossover types like Soulive: the improvised solo. Redman, keyboardist Sam Yahel, and drummer Brian Blade were capable of infinite variety. The band breathed collectively, like a real jazz band, with constant give and take — and individual players who could sustain and develop interesting solos.

The Elastic Band’s new Momentum (Nonesuch) works the same affection for ’70s funk, but with the band’s usual twists and turns. Redman alternates Blade with drummer Jeff Ballard and brings in guest guitarists (including Rosenwinkel), guest bassists (Flea!), even the Roots’ ?uestlove on drums.

That looks like a recipe for artistic compromise, but the Elastic Band maintain their jazz integrity while reaching out to a booty-shaking audience. On the opening track, Redman’s slithering echo-laden tenor lines come in over backwards tape; that’s followed by a fat bass line and Ballard’s hard backbeats. Redman’s tenor turns thick with chorused effects; then there’s a short questing melody with keyboards before a quick fadeout at 1:26. These teasing tunes are scattered throughout the album, like interstitial chapter breaks between the longer tracks. Redman’s "Sweet Nasty" is built on Yahel’s stuttering syncopated repeating bass-pedal figure and the techno-fast patter of Ballard’s snare and kick drum. Redman joins the stutter step, then brings the melody, a bridge section, and an improvised solo that exploits his flexible tone, long-breathed deep-register runs, and top-note riffing. There’s continuous rhythmic and textural variety and detail on top of that non-stop groove. There’s even a short drum solo.

It’s with this variety and attention to compositional detail that Redman avoids the jam-band blahs, and it’s this degree of improvisation that differentiates the Elastic Band from instrumental pop. Sheryl Crow’s "Riverwide" enters on a soft cloud of "In a Silent Way" organ chords before Redman returns the tune to its gospel roots. When the band (with Stefon Harris playing vibes) tackle Ornette Coleman’s "Lonely Woman," they take the signature ballad on an extended free-form exploration. You could say they’re not being true to the mournful original. Or you could say Redman is arguing that a great jazz composition can stand up to multiple interpretations — a spur to further creation.

Moving from Momentum to Redman’s work with the SFJazz Collective on their homonymous Nonesuch debut requires a perceptual adjustment that only dramatizes the difference between progressive mainstream jazz and pop. The San Francisco collective is one of the most idealistic organizations in jazz, crossing styles and generations, with several Ornette Coleman covers and a pervasive hard-bop tunefulness (hard bop being the return-to-basics crossover jazz of its day). A live recording, SFJazz Collective is admirable in every way. But it’s still very much the jazz that other people don’t get.

One of the bassists on Momentum is Me’Shell NdegéOcello, a singer-songwriter who debuted on Madonna’s Maverick label with Plantation Lullabies in 1993 and scored a few hit singles, one a duet with John Mellencamp. NdegéOcello has always worked with jazz musicians (she’ll be joining Redman and the Elastic Band at the Paradise this Saturday), but you could say the new The Spirit Music of Jamia: Dance of the Infidel (Shanachie) is her first real jazz album. It’s mostly instrumental, it has plenty of fine improvised solos, and even the vocals are sung by people other than NdegéOcello. No, you won’t find walking bass with swinging ride cymbals, but there’s a loose-limbed jazzy approach to R&B, a trip-hoppy elegance in the electronic effects. When she writes for Cassandra Wilson on "The Chosen," she plays to the strengths of Wilson’s smoky Mississippi contralto, even bringing in long-time Wilson guitarist Brandon Ross.

At times the session has the feel of one of Miles Davis’s ambient early electric jams — trumpeter Wallace Roney is even along to provide the proper Milesian mise en scène. But the album is too quirky to be a cop. NdegéOcello prefers arrangements — form — to mere jams. So the North African lilt of "Luqman" ambles along on the leader’s supple bass lines, buzzing low notes from Gregoire Maret’s harmonica, and Ross’s very banjo-like guitar, with a horn chorus of Roney, Oliver Lake’s alto, and Don Byron’s clarinet. Maret and the three horns give superb solos.

On Dance of the Infidel, NdegéOcello is making utterly contemporary jazz that deserves to be popular. But we’ve all felt that way before.

Me’Shell NdegéOcello + the Joshua Redman Elastic Band | June 25 | Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm Ave, Boston | 617.228.6000


Issue Date: June 24 - 30, 2005
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