Si Se Puede

As I was watching Barak Obama speak to an audience in Texas last night, I noticed several banners among the audience which read "Si Se Puede". From what I gather, that is the Spanish translation of Obama's now famous "Yes We Can" mantra. It is also, incidentally, the title of one of the tracks on Matt Lavelle Trio's Spiritual Power, one of my favorite jazz records of 2007 (Plus, the motto of the United Farm Workers). This provides me with the opportunity to not only big-up that record, but also to post this suprisingly good Will-I-am/Obama/superstar collab.

Oh, this is bullshit.

I shouldn't really respond to this, but I'm going to anyhow. BBC's pop music coordinator Lesley Douglas claims, according to Idolator, "that men respond to music on an intellectual level, whereas female listeners have an emotional reaction to songs". Despite it being a stupid generalization of archaic proportions, I bulked at what Mrs. Douglas thinks of as the intellectual side of music, i.e. "the tracks, where albums have been made, that sort of thing". Trivia, in other words, is the intellectual response in question and not e.g. thinking about what the music means, the lyrics, the interplay between the two, it's place in society, historically or contemporary, everything that the EMP Pop Conference stands for, themes that in turn cannot be so easily removed from emotional responses as Douglas seems to think.

No Depression shuts down

Via Christgau. Never read much in it, though I know several people who are, or at least were, very fond of the magazine.

Xgau sets the record straight

The anti-Vampire Weekend backlash got a lesson in Afropop from the one crit that actually knows something about it a few days ago. In his new blog (he has a new blog?), Robert Christgau attacks several bloggers for getting VW's Afro-tinged references wrong. Several others have chipped in with similar sentiments (see links in Xgau's piece, and also Zoilus). Take that, naysayers.

What's interesting to note is that, apart from their ill concieved idea of calling their music Upper West Side Soweto, both those positive and negative to VW's schtick seem to have blown the Afro-bits of their music out of proportion. In reality, only a few songs have a clear Afro-tinged sound, and as has been noted by others that sound is more like some of the Afro-influenced American pop/rock music of the 80s than that of their fellow African musicians. They are interpretations of those sounds rather than copies. Plus, it sounds pretty clear to me that VW use the Afro-interpretations as deliberate tools, as in the trying-to-pick-up-a-freshman-girl "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa", where they state "This feels so unatural / Peter Gabriel too", which pretty much says that they're very much aware of the fact that they may not get afropop right themselves (much less getting nookie) as well as an awareness of the issues that trying to play it at all may raise. If there is a solid afro-influence to VW's music, it's more to do with what SFJ claimed was lacking in current indie rock/pop; you know space, bass and all that (their geekie Ivy-league influences notwithstanding).

Reissues

Two great albums have been reissued this February. Just as The Feelies' pre-indie/post-punk/new wave classic Crazy Rhythms from 1980 is about to hit the store, I recieve a notice through SquidCo's mailing list that Touchin' on Trane, the gloriously careening racket made by Chales Gayle with William Parker and Rashied Ali in 1991 and my favorite jazz record of that decade, is being reissued by the German label Jazzwerkstatt, albeit with a different cover image. Great news, indeed.

Big list update. Now for coffee.

What it says on the tin: I've updated my lists of favorites from 2007 if anyone is interested. Still have a few records pending and/or falling between the 6+/7- (or B+/A- if that's your bag) bracket that may or may not be added later.

Packaging

Seriously, if you're in a record company and worried about increased downloading, illegal or otherwise, why on earth would you wanna make listening to music even more difficult by wrapping a piece of cardboard around the CD that cannot be removed by any other means than brute force, as is the case with the packaging of the delightful-though-not-terrible-different-form-the-EP-that-was-leaked-last-year-even-if-I-wish-they'd-kept-that-song-"Ladies of Cambridge-which-is-ace new record from Vampire Weekend. (And if you're able to read Norwegian, let me point you to this write-up of the album from Platekompaniet's on-line shop, which is a much better take on the album than any other review I've read so far in the Norwegian press).

Reissues + Idolator's thing-a-ma-jig

Forgot to list reissues (jazz) yeaterday, 'though in my defence I've not made enough of an effort to follow the flow of reissues this year, jazz or otherwise. In some cases I've not even listened to the reissue if I own an older issue of the album. Out of those I have picked up, they would rank something like this:

1. Thelonious Monk Trio: Thelonious Monk Trio (1952-54, Prestige)
2. Charlie Mingus: Tijuana Moods (1957, RCA Victor/Legacy)
3. Alber Ayler: The Hilversum Sessions (1964, ESP)
4. William Parker & Hamid Drake: First Communion + Piercing The Veil (2000, AUM Fidelity)
5. Andrew Hill: Compulsion (1965, Blue Note)

As a side note, I just want to mention that Black Saint relaunched their online music store last year, and while they are not actually reissues, many of the records in their great catalogue have not been widely available for some time (The same is true of a few other lables as well, e.g. Candid).

I also noticed that my 2007 list is part of Tom Hull's Year End Mop Up, which I take as an honor and proof that someone is still reading my blog. Thanks, sir.

Idolator's 2007 Poll.

Jazz in 2007 + the Village Voice's Poll

A tad bit late, but a post that was meant to coincide with and comment on the Village Voice's 2007 Jazz Poll. My initial reaction after seeing the list was to question whether I was completely out of touch with the knowledgeable people polled. My second reaction, after reading Francis Davis' enlightening comments, lessened that feeling but rather mirrored some of the reactions to Destination-Out!'s 90s Poll, strengthening the contention that we are indeed in an age where there seems to be less and less consensus about what good jazz is. Nonetheless, the top of the list is filled with old timers (Mingus (!!!), Brecker, Lovano/Jones, Hancock, Lincoln). No harm in that as such, but most of those records operate in fairly safe waters, in my opinion (and some of them I don't think are all that good). It leaves me with the feeling that the real winner this year were those who feel that jazz was better "back in the day" and/or played by those old enough to remember "how to". The first album on VV's poll to appear among my favorites is Andersons/Drake's From the River to the Ocean at 16. My list would look something like this:

1. (((Powerhouse Sound))): Oslo/Chicago: (((Breaks))) (Atavistic)
2. Assif Tsahar/Cooper-Moore/Chad Taylor: Digital Primitives (Hopscotch)
3. Adam Lane/Ken Vandermark/Markus Broo/Paal Nilssen-Love: 4 Corners (Clean Feed)
4. Mostly Other People Do the Killing: Shamokin'!!! (Hot Cup/CD Baby)
5. Billy Bang Quintet Featuring Frank Lowe: Above & Beyond: An Evening in Grand Rapids (Justin Time)
6. Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake: From the River to the Ocean (Thrill Jockey)
7. Tyshawn Sorey Quartet: That/Not (Firehouse 12)
8. Matthew Shipp: Piano Vortex (Blue Series)
9. David S. Ware Quartet: Renunciation (AUM Fidelity)
10. Kahil El'Zabar's Infinity Orchestra: Transmigration (Delmark)
    

Happy to see Tyshawn Sorey do well both in the main poll and getting top spot for best debut. He would get my vote for debut of the year.

Honorable mentions to:

• Matt Lavelle Trio: Spiritual Power (Silkheart)
• Jewels and Binoculars: Ships With Tattood Sails (Upshot)
• The Claudia Quintet: For (Cuneiform)
• David Murray Black Saint Quartet: Sacred Ground (Justin Time)
• William Parker: Corn Meal Dance (AUM Fidelity)
  

Matt Lavelle is probably the one record out of those most likely to push for a top ten spot. Murray and Parker both made good but slightly disappointing records (even having a similar post-bop-with-vocals starting point). Yet to hear Happy Apple's Back on Top - praised by Tom Hull - in any length, but it does sound promising.

I Told You So + Happy New Year

Every year people seem too eager to review the year in music, and every year I get asked to submit top 10s as early as November. Similarly, every year good records pop out from nowhere late in the year or sometimes even well into the following year (which is what happened when I discovered This Moment in Black History's It Takes a Nation..., released in 2006, as late as January 2007).

The best late comer last year was Shamokin'!!! by the splendidly named Mostly Other People Do the Killing. May even crack the top ten, but even if it doesn't, it's still a highly enjoyable, hard swinging bop record.

I don't have internet connection at home for the time being, but hopefully more regular blogging will resume in a short while.

Dissensus, jazz style-e

In discussing the results of Destination-Out!'s 90s jazz poll to which I contributed earlier this year, a friend and colleague noted that although he found it a fun and interesting exercise, he was a bit disappointed in the lack of consensus among the contributors; very few records got more than one vote. If I understood him correctly, he felt that this made it difficult to find a common base to work from when discussing music, in this particular circumstance 90's jazz.

Why do I mention this? Well, PopMatters have posted their Best Jazz of 2007-list, and none of their top 12 (!?!) records are similar to my picks of the year. 'Though I'm certainly going to give the Robert Glasper record another spin, and the Joe Lovano and Hank Jones collab is fine enough, but the other records failed to grab my attention this year (sorry, Mr. Cline). Let's agree to disagree, then.

Talent Alert: Tyshawn Sorey

Tyshawn Sorey Quartet: That/Not (Firehouse 12, cat.no. FH 12-04-02-oo5, 2007)

Tyshawn Sorey is a young (b. 1980) multi-instrumentalist and composer who has been making a name for himself playing with such notable figures as Butch Morris, Dave Douglas, Muhal Richard Abrams, Hamiet Bluiett, and Anthony Braxton, plus as a member of Fieldwork with pianist Vijay Iyer and saxophonist Steve Lehman. I first noticed him drumming on the Sirone Bang Ensemble's Configuration from 2005, and doing a pretty decent job at that.

Sorey has just released his first record as a leader. It is called That/Not and is released by Firhouse 12, a New Haven label which also functions as a live venue. Sorey says about the album:

"This record is very different from the work that I do with other ensembles, (...) I am a drummer who composes music; the function of this album is not a demonstration of my abilities as a drummer, but my interests as an artist. My objective with this music is to question who and why we are, to question the very nature of what it means to perceive something. The music here is our life and soul expressed in sound."

Ambitious fella, but the record is very interesting indeed. It explores the use of space, minimalism and repetition in a way that makes me think of Steve Reich. In between are dynamic bursts of more songlike structures - mostly quiet and sombre, others more forceful - that hints more than it plays to the jazz tradition, much in the same way William Parker's excellent 90's records did. Well done, and I'm looking forward to hear more from mr. Tyshawn Sorey.

The album can be streamed in it's entirety from the label's website (follow the link above), and purchased from Amazon and Downtown Music Gllery among others.

Get the vote out!

The non-Pazz and Jop part 2. December 21 is a bit early, no? Any guesses for the top spot? M.I.A.? Arcade Fire? Spoon, even?

Duke Ellington - Afro-Eurasian Eclipse

Duke Ellington - "Chinoiserie" from Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (Fantasy, 1971)



Duke Ellington, via Marshall McLuhan:

"(...) the whole world is going oriental, (...) no one will be able to retain his or her identity".

For "oriental" insert "miscegenated", if you will. Judging by the recent discussions concerning indie, it didn't quite work out that way, did it?

Last Friday I sat down to write what I had hoped would be my final thoughts on the subject, but computers being the mischievous things that they are, this one decided to delete the whole thing, and stupid me had made no back up of the piece. Infuriated, as you may expect, I let it be. But I still have a few more thoughts I'd like to jot down - among other things the problem of defining indie or any genre for that matter - and will hopefully do so in the next few days. In the meantime, enjoy the fabulous piece of "oriental" music posted above, and note in particular the kicking tenor solo by Harold Ashby.

It’s Not Only Rock ’n’ Roll

In case you missed it in last Sunday's New York Times, John Pareles on Tom Stoppard's play "Rock 'n' Roll" and the Plastic People of the Universe.

Point of Departure

I have to tip my hat to Point of Departure, an excellent online zine which has covered jazz and improvised music in bi-monthly issues since September 2005, though I only discovered it earlier this year. It is run by one Bill Shoemaker, who also contributes reviews and columns. Issue 14 (November, 2007) was just posted, and contains a column by Art Lange on Gunther Schuller, plus reviews of Muhal Richard Abrams and Albert Ayler's Hilversum Sessions. Go read and update your links!

Zoilus on the problem with indie rock

Carl Wilson (Zoilus) has an article in Slate in response to SF/J's much debated article in the New Yorker, and I for one think he nails the issue of indie rock's retreat into, eh, "whiteness" better than SFJ did. (Note: there are two pages). Key points:

• the excision of blues-rock from "underground" rock goes back to the '70s with the demise of top 40 radio, and '80s origins of American punk and especially hardcore (though, there are exceptions here too, of course)

• SFJ cherry-picks exceptions selectively, overlooking several important ones

• "if gangsta rap marked a break, it was because hip-hop became coded to reflect the retrenchment of the "Two Americas""

• the "trouble with indie rock" may have far more to do with the widening gap between rich and poor than black-white

• while it may be a cliche, "the particular kind of indie rock Frere-Jones complains about is more blatantly upper-middle class and liberal-arts-college-based, and less self-aware or politicized about it"

• their music is bookish and nerdy rather than body-centered, and "shows off" "its chops via its range of allusions and high concepts with the kind of fluency both postmodern pop culture and higher education teach its listeners to admire"(side note: don't mistake bookish and nerdy for smart and intelligent, and also note that it does not necessarily have to be one or the other. Both rap/soul and indie artists have shown admirable "chops" in both body and mind at the same time.)

• "this university demographic often includes a sojourn in extended adolescence" where the "musical consequences might include an open but less urgent expression of sexuality, or else a leaning to the twee, sexless, childhood nostalgia that many older critics (...) find puzzling and irritating."

But go read the whole thing. It holds together much better than I could ever hope to summarize in bullet points.

Update: a few quick things before I lay this topic to rest, at least for now:

a). although like SFJ, I tend to prefer music with "swing, some empty space and palpable bass frequencies" i.e. the American tradition, I don't necessarily see that as absolute necessities, and like Carl Wilson, I like some of the bands SFJ points his finger to.

b). I'm no apologist for indie. There's plenty of bad music out there, and not just indie. But I also think the reason why is not solely down to a lack of "miscegenation".

c). I agree that indie has a problem - culturally first and sonically second, perhaps - but as you may have figured out, I think some of SFJ's examples are off the mark and also that Wilson did a better job of figuring out what the problem is.

Idolator gets cranky, then mocks some more

More on SF/J in a post on Idolator today, where Jess Harvella answers some worried readers.

"People thinking this is me saying that indie rock should somehow be held exempt from its often dodgy racial politics--this wounds me. Forget indie rock, there's not a single aspect of white--and especially white male--culture that doesn't need to be mercilessly picked apart for both the covert and overt, conscious and unconscious racism that it perpetuates every day! This seems self-evident, but you'd be surprised how many white men are content to let their privilege go unchecked. (Wait, no you wouldn't.) And indie rock is a subset of white maledom that's notorious about letting its cultural assumptions go unexamined.

So I understand why Frere-Jones wrote the piece. I just happen to think the piece was bullshit, especially his bizonkers internal inconsistencies and wild generalizations over genre. Indie rock's race issues are more cultural than sonic, and though musical choices are always tied up with a musician's social outlook, someone choosing to emulate Bruce Springsteen rather than Larry Blackmon hardly constitutes a cultural crime. Indie rock's cultural, social, racial, and sexual hangups are not going to be resolved via the forced "miscengenation" Frere-Jones is looking for." (More here).

Agreed, and see my previous post for my comments on the inconsitencies and generalizations of SF/J's article.

Ps.: Gotta love the mocking 1-100 SF/J-score, too. Here's one of the rules: "- Subtract 15 points for slap bass. (That's a red herring.)". Big laugh.

Everybody's talking 'bout....

...S/FJ's piece in the New Yorker, where he laments the lack of soul in indie-rock. While it took some time before any reaction to the article appeared on the net, these last few days discussions have been fierce in this I love Music-thread, and yesterday Idolator picked it up, albeit half jokingly, by giving a SFJ-score to bands on the on-going (and largely indie) CMJ-fest.

Now, I admire a lot of SFJ's writing. I think he is a good critic, and some of our tastes are similar - he loves the Minutemen, as do I. He loves the Clash, ditto. We share an affinity for a lot of post-punk (which, btw, I refuse to give up on. I liked Gof4 before the post-punk revival, and I'll continue to do so. Get off your "that's SO yesterday" horse already).

One of the reasons I like these bands, and the reason I mention these bands right now, is their prominent use of the bass. The propulsion, juice, pulse, and ooomph of the bass, the way it can make the music swing. This prominent use of the bass may have its roots in largely black American strains of music: jazz, soul, dub, and funk. Their use of the bass is just of of several signs that these bands mixed a whole set of different influences, both "black" and "white", to create their sounds and music. SFJ notes that this mixing (I'll come back to his term later on) is part of what made these bands and other music that he loves so important and he thinks it is sadly lacking in modern indie-rock. Indie-rock, he says, has since the 90's strayed away from the African-American influences and instead turned to "whiter" influences making it "soul-less" or "less interesting". (Norwegian readers, note the similarities to some of Ole Martin Ihle's critique, but also note the significant difference: SFJ loves punk and early indie, which I fear Ihle isn't open enough to appreciate. To SFJ, indie doesn't mean "soul-less", it's just become soul-less).

Some of the discussions on SFJ's article has been about this point: indie's lack of "black" influences. On the basis of the article, that's an obvious thing to discuss. If you listen to the podcast which accompanied the article you get the feeling that he also thinks it is lacking the other way around. There is no mixing of sounds in neither indie nor hip-hop these days. Also note that he says that the sounds of "black" and "white" music used to be more difficult to pin down before, especially in the 60's and 70's, rather it was an American music where influnces had been fused over the years albeit with a distinctly rhythmic influence from Africa. To this point I agree, but it seems to have escaped the vast majority of those who have engaged themselves in the discussions over the article.

I feel that on one hand the article is just SFJ saying that he misses a Minutemen or a Clash in modern rock/indie. Fair enough, but there are several problems with the whole thing. I'll go over them one-by-one.

• His word for mixing of styles or influences is miscegenation, a highly loaded term originally intended to be derogatory.

• Taking a few current indie bands to mean all current indie is reductionist and false. Suerly there are exceptions to the rule. Also, what is the rule, or, what is indie?
  

• SFJ traces the problem as he sees it back to Pavement. Now, I love Pavement for several reasons, but my main point here is this: Can it not be said that Pavement's odd twists and turns, pauses and off notes are not so much a sign of lack of ability (you'll never convince me that Malkmus is a bad guitar player), but may rather be attributed to a delibertate choice of style and moreover be seen as an influence of Thelonious Monk (which has also been pointed out by Christgau, among others), a man who used odd twists and turns himself to create a very personal voice within jazz?

• It's difficult to understand why SFJ uses a band he likes, Arcade Fire, as proof of the problem. By doing so he freely admits that this mixing of styles that he misses is not the be-all of rock/indie, thereby making me think the "problem" - sonically - is not as big as the article, all four pages of it, would suggest.

• The article is not well written. SFJ's point comes across better in the podcast, where he explains, as I noted above, that American music didn't use to be "black" or "white", but a potent mix of both and that this is something he misses.

All this makes me think that made SFJ just wanted to cause a stir, to start an argument. It seems to have worked. He has answered a few e-mails on the blog on the online edition of the New Yorker. I've mentioned the I Love Music thread and the Idolator-thingy. Tom Breihan has a conversation with Rob Harvilla on his blog for the Village Voice, and Carl Wilson has announced that he'll have a response in Slate today, where he'll pull class into the argument. And now there's me, of course.

Everyone should get a copy

The new Oxford American's 9th Annual Music Issue comes highly recommended from fellow bloggers and knowledgable book store clerks alike. Judging by the table of contents, there's no reason why one shouldn't go get a copy. Off course you want to read in-depth pieces on the Clovers, Dwight Yoakam, and Thelonious Monk. Add to the writing a pretty decent twenty-six track CD, and you know you have to order your copy right now.