street music
(an occasional series)
It ain’t just the beats—it’s the show.
drummers, Chicago (Michigan Ave.)
#1
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
#2
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
Drum mashup?
Start the first clip.
Then start the second.
Whatever I’d say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I’ve ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.
—John Coltrane
Eric Dolphy (alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute)
June 20, 1928-June 29, 1964
John Coltrane Quintet (JC, tenor saxophone; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Reggie Workman, bass; Elvin Jones, drums), “Impressions,” live, Germany (Baden-Baden), 1961
Vodpod videos no longer available.(For whatever reason, this clip sometimes seems to play better, on my Mac, with Safari than Firefox.)
More Eric Dolphy? Here. And here.
More John Coltrane? Here.
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lagniappe
reading table
Leviathan
Truth also is the pursuit of it:
Like happiness, and it will not stand.Even the verse begins to eat away
In the acid. Pursuit, pursuit;A wind moves a little,
Moving in a circle, very cold.How shall we say?
In ordinary discourse—We must talk now. I am no longer sure of the words,
The clockwork of the world. What is inexplicableIs the ‘preponderance of objects.’ The sky lights
Daily with that predominanceAnd we have become the present.
We must talk now. Fear
Is fear. But we abandon one another.
Listen yesterday; go today.
Burkina Faso: Life & Music in West Africa (2007)
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
According to the guidebook, Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world, but in our experience its people seemed confident and proud of their culture in this 50th anniversary of independence from French colonial rule. Deep red dust carpets the country, kicked up by the mopeds that crisscross the rutted ground and buy markets lining nearly every street. Yet through the coating of dust the people always look impeccably elegant.
***
In Burkina, the sun drops away at 7 p.m. sharp. When we returned for the concert, we saw scores of parked mopeds glistening under the full moon., and hundreds of people queuing outside the high crumbling walls enclosing the open air theatre. Inside, beyond the light cast rom the state, a huge crowd bustled quietly in the darkness otherwise shrouding the vast auditorium. Families with children of all ages filled the wooden benches, and here too traders plied bronze jewellery and leather goods around the perimeter.
—Trevor Watts, The Wire, 3/11
We are all from everywhere . . .
—Mai Lingani
Burkina Electric (with Mai Lingani, vocals; Wende K. Blass, guitar; Pyrolator [Kurt Dahlke], electronics; Lukas Ligeti [son of composer Gyorgy Ligeti], electronics, drums)
Live, Middletown, Connecticut (Wesleyan University), 2010
#1
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
#2
Vodpod videos no longer available.More? Here.
When I was in my 20s, this wouldn’t have appealed to me at all—
too “light,” too “cool,” not “adventurous” enough. But to borrow from
Bobby D., “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” Most of what I liked then I still like. But I like a lot of other things, too. It helps,
I’ve found, if you listen, closely, to what is there—not what isn’t.
George Shearing, August 13, 1919-February 14, 2011
George Shearing Quintet (GS, piano; Chuck Wayne, guitar; Joe Roland, vibes; John Levy, bass; Denzil Best, drums), 1950s
“Conception”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“I’ll Be Around”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“Swedish Pastry”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“Move”
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
reading table
Dean and I went to see Shearing at Birdland in the midst of the long, mad weekend. The place was deserted, we were the first customers, ten o’clock. Shearing came out, blind, led by the hand to his keyboard. He was a distinguished-looking Englishman with a stiff white collar, slightly beefy, blond, with a delicate English-summer’s-night air about him that came out in the first rippling sweet number he played as the bass-player leaned to him reverently and thrummed the beat. The drummer, Denzil Best, sat motionless except for his wrists snapping the brushes. And Shearing began to rock; a smile broke over his ecstatic face; he began to rock in the piano seat, back and forth, slowly at first, then the beat went up, and he began rocking fast, his left foot jumped up with every beat, his neck began to rock crookedly, he brought his face down to the keys, he pushed his hair back, his combed hair dissolved, he began to sweat. The music picked up. The bass-player hunched over and socked it in, faster and faster, it seemed faster and faster, that’s all. Shearing began to play his chords; they rolled out of the piano in great rich showers, you’d think the man wouldn’t have time to line them up. They rolled and rolled like the sea. Folks yelled for him to “Go!” Dean was sweating; the sweat poured down his collar. “There he is! That’s him! Old God! Old God Shearing! Yes! Yes! Yes!” And Shearing was conscious of the madman behind him, he could hear every one of Dean’s gasps and imprecations, he could sense it though he couldn’t see. “That’s right!” Dean said. “Yes!” Shearing smiled, he rocked. Shearing rose from the piano, dripping with sweat; these were his great 1949 days before he became cool and commercial. When he was gone Dean pointed to the empty piano seat. “God’s empty chair,” he said. On the piano a horn sat; its golden shadow made a strange reflection along the desert caravan painted on the wall behind the drums. God was gone; it was the silence of his departure. It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night. Dean was popeyed with awe. This madness would lead nowhere.
—Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957)
Comedy, like jazz, is an art of syncopation.
Lenny Bruce, 1959 (with Cannonball Adderly, saxophone; Bill Evans, piano; Teddy Kotick, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums)
Vodpod videos no longer available.(Yeah, I could do without all the extra blah-blah-blah, too.)
More Lenny? Here.
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lagniappe
radio
Today WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) is remembering George Shearing, who passed away Monday at the age of 91, with a memorial broadcast that runs until 9 p.m. (EST).
My favorite tenor player?
A while back, I said that if I had to name my favorite alto player, there would be days where I’d say Art Pepper.
Tenor players?
Some days this’d be the guy.
Like Pepper, he has a sound that’s immediately identifiable. It’s a sound that, like Pepper’s, holds both joy and heartbreak. And like Pepper, he’s hard—no, impossible—to pigeonhole. Swing, bebop, free: the label that’s capacious enough to contain him hasn’t been invented.
Von Freeman, “Lester Leaps In,” live, Chicago (New Apartment Lounge), 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.More? Here.
The other night, near the end of his big show at Madison Square Garden,
after bringing his opening act back onstage, the little guy played this.
Prince & Cee Lo (Cee-Lo?) Green, “Crazy,” New York, 2/7/11
Vodpod videos no longer available.Like a lot of great music, this song first reached my ears (shortly after its release) through my younger son Luke, who, one day as I’m driving him across town to a friend’s house, says he has something to play me and slides this into the CD player, cranking the volume way up.
clear, adj. bright, luminous; transparent; free from obscurity. E.g., alto saxophonists Rudresh Mahanthappa and Bunky Green.
Rudresh and Bunky, talking and playing (with Jason Moran, piano; Francois Moutin, bass; Jack DeJohnette and Damion Reid, drums)
Vodpod videos no longer available.Listening to these guys, who’d ever guess that one is nearly twice as old as the other? (Rudresh is 39, Bunky 75.)
*****
Here’s a track from their recent album (Apex, 2010), “Playing with Stones,” featuring Rudresh (Bunky sits out).
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
My favorite moment in this next clip comes at 2:24, when alto saxophonist Greg Osby, listening to Bunky, tilts his head, as if to say, “Did you hear that?!”
Bunky Green (with alto saxophonists Greg Osby and Steffano di Battista), “Body and Soul,” live, Germany, 2008
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
reading table
In the is-this-a-great-country-or-what department, how delicious to learn
that two great American artists—trumpeter Roy Eldridge and poet Elizabeth Bishop—were born, one hundred years ago, within days of each other. (Eldridge was born on January 30, 1911, Bishop on February 8th.)
Sandpiper
The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.—Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. The tide
is higher or lower. He couldn’t tell you which.
His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.—Elizabeth Bishop
music clip of the day 