Expanding jazz horizons with rock and pop

Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 07:49:35 +0900
Newsgroups: rec.music.bluenote
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Interesting bit about the Bad Plus' pianist, who never heard of Kurt Cobain
until a couple of years ago.
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http://www.sunspot.net/features/arts/bal-as.jazz25may25,0,6418004.story?coll
=bal-artslife-society
Expanding jazz horizons with rock and pop
With old standards sounding stagnant, musicians explore, from metal to rap
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By Rafer Guzman
Special To The (Balitmore) Sun
Originally published May 25, 2003
NEW YORK - On a recent evening at a Manhattan nightclub, a jazz trio is
onstage with the traditional lineup: piano, upright bass and drums.
The tune, however, is anything but traditional. That menacing, repetitive
melody isn't Miles, Mingus or Monk.
It's ... Black Sabbath's "Iron Man"?
The trio, known as The Bad Plus, is famous for skewed covers of rock and pop
songs. Also included in tonight's set: a cubist version of the Police's
"Every Breath You Take," the old disco chestnut "I Will Survive," and a
rendition of Aphex Twin's techno-dance track "Flim."
"It has a more edgy feel than traditional jazz," says Sebastian Krueger, a
20-year-old New York University student in the audience. "They capture
something very current."
For Jim Niss, a 50-year-old computer programmer wearing a Bob Dylan T-shirt,
the band recalls the energy and musicianship of classic rock acts. "They
just blew me away," Niss says. "I tell people these guys really rock."
The insular, elitist world of jazz is being rocked in more than one sense of
the word. Young musicians, and even some old ones, are thumbing their noses
at jazz purists and exploring popular forms of music, from grunge to
indie-rock to rap. Flip through your local record store's jazz bins and
you'll find pianist Jason Moran covering the rap classic "Planet Rock" and
the veteran organ player Dr. Lonnie Smith tackling an entire album of Beck
songs. Some jazz artists are even borrowing a page from hip-hop, packing
their discs with guest appearances by rappers.
"It's an attempt to broaden the base and also be interpretive at the same
time," says Gary Walker, music director at jazz station WBGO-FM. "They're
trying to gain exposure without compromise, and there's nothing wrong with
that."
Others call the trend a crass marketing gimmick, saying rock and rap are too
juvenile to translate into real jazz. "The record companies, there's always
pressure from them to do something they think can sell," says Stanley
Crouch, co-founder of Manhattan's Jazz at Lincoln Center program.
"Throughout the history of jazz, people have made popular songs for a couple
of reasons: One was money, and two was money."
Artists and their record labels say they're not consciously chasing the
youth market. But with jazz sales lagging far behind rock, labels are eager
for artists who can draw younger audiences.
"Certainly, that is a hope," says Eli Wolf, director of A&R for Blue Note
Records. "Most college kids today won't be acquainted with old Tin Pan Alley
songs. I think they'd find it more intriguing if someone's recording a
Nirvana song."
Pandering to the low
Jazz and rock have long co-existed, though not always comfortably. As
recently as the 1970s, jazz artists could cover rock and pop tunes without
sacrificing credibility: Wes Montgomery, the great jazz guitarist, covered
the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'." Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard
recorded John Lennon's "Cold Turkey" on his 1970 album Red Clay, considered
the highlight of his career.
In the last few decades, however, jazz turned inward. Even as Miles Davis
and Herbie Hancock lent their illustrious names to the jazz-funk "fusion"
genre, critics accused them of pandering to lowbrow tastes. More recently,
traditionalists found a hero in trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who helped point
jazz back to its pre-rock days of Duke Ellington and early Miles. Meanwhile,
the popularity of "smooth jazz" has made it even more difficult for serious
jazz artists to risk tackling popular music.
Brad Mehldau, 32, is one of the first to cover an alternative-rock tune
(Radiohead's "Paranoid Android," on his 2002 album Largo) and still be taken
seriously. The song's novelty helped land him on the cover of Downbeat
magazine and in mainstream publications.
"The prevalence of the subject makes it seem like jazz needs to trade on
contemporary pop music to seem relevant," Mehldau writes. (The reclusive,
Hollywood-based pianist answered questions via e-mail.) "The mere act of
interpreting music from a time period closer to one's own generation doesn't
strike me as particularly subversive."
Still, numerous other jazz musicians, eager to stretch their musical
boundaries, have followed Mehldau's success. The Bad Plus, which formed in
2000 and released its major-label debut, These Are the Vistas, last year on
Columbia, consists of two former rockers - bassist Reid Anderson and drummer
David King - with jazz pianist Ethan Iverson.
Reaching for Nirvana
The combination has proved to be the band's secret weapon. King, who shaves
his head bald and sports multiple piercings, says he and Reid were bouncing
around ideas for rock covers one day when Iverson, a self-professed jazz
snob, admitted that he had never heard of Kurt Cobain.
"We were like, 'Wait a minute. How do you not know that person existed?' "
King recalls. " 'Nirvana. Smells Like Teen Spirit. You've never heard it.
You don't know who Kurt Cobain is. OK, we are playing that song.' "
The trio has experimented with hip-hop covers in the studio with less than
stellar results. But Jason Moran, a 28-year-old pianist from Houston, found
inspiration in "Planet Rock," the 1982 rap classic by Afrika Bambaataa that
appears on his latest disc, Modernistic (Blue Note).
To turn rap into jazz, Moran transcribed Bambaataa's vocal track into
pitches, providing a sort of melody that could be used for improvisation.
Next, he stuffed paper into the piano's innards and deadened some of the
strings with clothespins. The result: a percussive sound that recalls the
heavy beats of the original.
"The point is to actually try something, whether it succeeds or fails," says
Moran. "That's how you keep the repertoire alive."
Other black jazz artists are taking the hip-hop connection a step further,
recruiting rappers to rhyme over jazz compositions. Bassist Stanley Clark
recently released 1, 2 To the Bass, featuring rapper Q-Tip on the title
track. Roy Hargrove, the trumpeter, also put Q-Tip on his new album, The RH
Factor: Hard Groove (Verve) along with hip-hop stars Common, D'Angelo and
Erykah Badu.
The 33-year-old Hargrove says the album is partly a tribute to the hip-hop
music he grew up with and partly a reaction to the stagnant state of modern
jazz.
"You have to be able to do everything to keep people interested, because
nobody's coming out to hear jazz anymore," Hargrove says. "People's
attention spans are getting shorter. You have to grab them by the first
note, or at least in the first five minutes."
Does this mean we'll see Wynton Marsalis pairing up with Eminem anytime
soon? Unlikely. But as King of The Bad Plus says, "There's no difference to
me between Kurt Cobain and Keith Jarrett. There's no snobbery, we're free
from that. And if you have a problem with it, bring it on."
Rafer Guzman is a reporter for Newsday, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.
Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun