You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Jazz Ahoy!

Episode Date: June 15, 2022

Adam and Peter talk where the future of Jazz is headed!Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Yo. Where are you going? Um, I don't know. Where are you going? I honestly don't know. Well, I've got a bigger question for you. Yeah.

Where is jazz headed? I don't know that even more. Well, you will in the next 17 minutes. I'm Adam Anis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Jazz explained. Okay, so I'm going to hold you to 17 minutes.

I'm looking at the timer right here. We're going to try to time this. That includes the intro. Right? Yeah, it does. You can't shout out a specific time, Peter, before we've recorded the episode. It was an aspect. It was an estimate.

It sounded oddly specific. It's actually a good average. I feel like it's probably the total average. I'm not looking at the time like you, but when we hit 16, let me know. That'll help, please. Okay. I'll be able to wrap things up by then. That's right.

I'm going to fix that for you right now. Thank you so much, Harry. Thank you. Okay, so what are we talking about today? We're talking about where we think the jazz world is headed. I'm glad we put that in the title where we think. I have no idea. Could you imagine if we're like, this is where the, because look, we never know.

We're talking about the future. Oh, you say you're glad you put we think. Right. Where we think the jazz. the jazz world is headed and what to do about it. And we didn't say, and what we're going to do about it. It's what for all of us to do about it. The jazz community. Okay. Listeners, players, producers, yeah. Impressorios. Do those still exist? I don't even know what they do. Sounds European. I feel like that's someone who's like in charge of a lot of stuff. You're so flamboyant with your arms.

Winton Marcellus is a jazz empressor. Right? Is he? Yeah. There's a jazz trumpeter. Well, yeah, but he's so much more. Present. Yeah, I guess so. That's true. That's, that is true. And we may talk about Winton as well because he certainly had a big part of where we are now and certainly has a lot to say about where the jazz world is headed, I think, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, full disclosure here. Yeah. Right before we started this episode, um, when I brought up this possible topic to you, you were a little bit reticent to go with this. Because you were like, I have no idea. That was your exact words. I have no idea. I have no idea where the jazz world is going. I don't think I would have predicted where it is now 10 years ago accurately. Okay. Also, you know what? Where is it now? I don't know.

Oh, that's another thing. How do we know where we're going? If we don't, well, if we don't know where we've been, but if we don't know where we are. Yeah. We need that you are here. No, we, I mean, we definitely know where we are. But I think the hardest thing is that with this question is that jazz means the word jazz is,

first of all, changing and almost in some circles fading away completely. Exactly. Exactly. But, but also it like, it means several different things at one time. So, you know, are we talking about, you know, scary pockets. Are we talking about Jacob Collier? Are we talking about Robert Glasper? Are we talking about Melissa Aldana? Are we talking about Artemis? Like, are we talking about... I think those are all jazz. Right? You haven't named one yet. What about Def Leopard?

Camasi Washington? Yes. No, not Def Leopard. Okay. See, it's easier to go to the far edges to see, you know, what's harder. I think what you're trying to do is name people. And I think for Christian Scott, Bill Sharlap, all those people are making like relevant jazz albums, right? Right, but at first you were trying to name people that some folks might say that's not jazz. I mean, I think like of those that you name, Melissa Aldana, Bill Charlap, is there anyone that says that they're not playing jazz? That's like stereotypical. Right, but somebody might say Kamasi Washington is not playing jazz. And in a sense, it is more playing jazz than almost anybody else or what the history of the music has done where it's propelled forward. I don't know. That's why I'm like a little perplexed by the question.

Well, I think that it's always fun to have, and I think furtile, to a genre to have folks that are maybe playing in a way or looking for something, and maybe they found it, maybe they haven't, more likely they're kind of halfway finding it, but that are possibly where jazz is headed, but they're already doing that.

You know, you might think of that as kind of, I mean, I guess avant-garde is the easiest sort of before-your-time type of, you know, literal, literal translation. Justsue de Mexican. There's a lot of cultured languages happening here. Right, but I mean, so, Maybe some people that at the time, they're like, that's not jazz, but is that going to be jazz? Nobody knows.

We just comment on how you kind of got a sleazy tone to your voice when you were in French a little bit. Like Pepe le Pipe Le Pue. Pepe le Pew. Pepe le Pew has not survived the Me Too movement. Let's just talk about that. He's not stood up to the test of time. No. No.

But you know what I'm saying? Like certain artists play in a way that I like to be, I give them the benefit of the doubt and not be like, that's not jazz. Everybody that you mentioned, that's the rich tap. of this music. I love that. Okay, so maybe the first place that we can definitely predict it's going is into many different little buckets, like many different pockets of its own thing, which it always has. There's always been several different different varied, wildly varied sounds. So I wonder if we could talk about media for a second. Yeah. Like, you know, I remember when I first started listening to jazz and playing the music, I had a friend who was like, who was a drummer and we were in all state jazz band together and he was like, I don't really want to play jazz. jazz, less than one percent of the population listens to jazz. And he's like, I want to be a commercial success, right? And I was like, oh, and for me at the time, I was like, oh, cool. Like, that makes me even cool.

Right, right. To be into it. Right. It's not for everybody, you know. But I'm wondering, like, I don't know if that's true anymore just because it seems to have, like, the lines between genres have been so blurry. Yeah. You know, where, like, it does, it seems like jazz or black American music or whatever

you want to call it has crept into so many different other like definitely like clearly delineated pockets of music that I just don't think that's true and also I think like because jazz musicians have historically done a lot of work within the pop and film and and very broad genres of music we've put our little spices in there right and they've become addictive to the general public who are we just talking about John Clayton the national anthem I know I just did that arrangement of the national anthem I borrowed heavily from John Clayton as you do because it was so good yep but that was for a NASCAR thing and the NASCAR fans haven't pushed back on any of the weird chords that's right you know have you gone on the the the NASCAR subreddit I did music thing

it was okay it was okay yeah good yeah actually someone out to the to the giant bomber fighter jets that flew overhead during your most um your most chromatic section I was they missed a lot of juicy chords. But actually, you know, someone on the YouTube video of this, this version of the National Anthem I arranged with all the weird chords, actually commented like, I want Adam Neely to break down this arrangement. And I was like, that was my proudest moment. That was awesome. That means it's like, someone is a NASCAR fan who enjoys weird. You know what? Actually, Adam Neely don't break that down, because I don't think you can handle it. Stay away from that. It's way too complex for you. He's just going to be like, oh, this guy likes John Clayton. But I mean, this example of the influence of jazz being

beyond the 1%. I agree. I think. that that's a very limited way to think about it because you have these quite often break out or breakthrough kind of expansive phrase that the jazz sense about sensibility or the jazz aesthetic really permeates the kind of worldwide consciousness. Oh man and in all different ways. And it's been like that for years. That's not a recent thing. No, it's been like that for a long, long time. I actually just played this show too in Florida and here at Jazz St. Louis with this an amazing saxphonist an educator down in Ford

and Pete Carney put together this show of called Radiohead Jazz and it literally breaks down from interviews with the band Radiohead who had a lot of commercial success in the early 2000s

but like they're borrowing heavily from like Alice Coltrane like speaking of like different pockets of jazz like the sort of psychedelic jazz movement and Alice Coltrane's music might have been accused at the time of being not jazz or not where jazz is headed

totally. Totally. But you can hear these like direct influences between you know Miles and Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson and Radiohead and Alice Coltrane in Radiohead. And then now it's like jazz musicians like Brad Meldow and Robert Glasper in the Bad Plus are like doing Radiohead songs. So it's kind of like a feedback loop on itself.

That's great. You know what I mean? Well, and you mentioned Bitches Brew. Like that's an example of a jazz record. And again, some people would be like that at the time, they're probably like, that's not jazz like a real dogmatic approach. But that has been more influential probably outside of the jazz world. Totally.

Well, certainly like if you look at my. houses recordings that have influenced jazz music, trumpeters, perhaps. That's probably one of the least influential. But in the rock world, the fusion world, you know, all the general, that's like usually impactful album. So we did another thing with Jazz St. Louis where we did Bichesbury, which how do you do bitches brew? We tried our best with the sketches that we had.

But we put together this big group of people. Our friend Montez was on that gig. It was so much fun. And it was packed with people I've never seen at Jazz St. the list before. Yeah. It was not the straight ahead jazz fans. And they were ravenous for the tune.

Like, they loved the music so much. Right. So that, that does, it does go beyond the scope of what we think. Well, okay,

so I think that we've come to our first possible answer to the question of where we think jazz, the jazz world is headed. By the way, we have less than eight minutes. Okay, good. No, thank you for that for that update.

We are on schedule. Okay, we have come to our first answer here. Okay. Ding, ding, ding. So I would say that, you know, what you refer to as the feedback loop.

Like the, impacts that jazz has made on other genres and really on kind of using more kind of pop culture you would say or whatever over the years. And this could be going back even further than that. And to more recent things like you mentioned. And then sort of recycling that, not necessarily the thing of like, I'm going to do a crossover jazz record. To me, that's never been that interesting. Like artists that do that, like I want to do something. But ones that like come up with the vision that pushes things and attracts things beyond just the typical jazz.

audience and brings them into the fold that's a very interesting thing it's always sort of happening but i think the jazz world may be headed there even more a better acceptance of that as opposed to us looking at like oh we've lost one of our own robert glass but a great example you know did some fantastic like what would be considered kind of straight ahead ish jazz records for bluna when he first was signed when i first met him yeah when he first was doing records up in new york those are good records too they're great records yeah but then like once he started doing other things and he did a little bit of crossover between them, but there was kind of a point where he was like, I'm like, I can't remember if that was like black radio or what are the experiment records. I mean,

I guess the experiment was more Robert Glassberg's or whatever it was. I always tease him when I see him. I'm like, you know, you're going to recycle your own names over and over again, what's going on? But I mean, like those where you're starting to say, you know, invite the audience to go somewhere else. Maybe you lose some people. Maybe you gain some more. But is your artistic vision strong enough to have that the common denominator between whatever you do? Because most, listeners, that's what they care about. They're not looking for you to check some historic box or not. Most listeners don't care. Yeah. That's so true. And so I think that that's kind of where things are headed or maybe maybe I'm cheating on this one and saying that they're already there. And I would say

in terms of what what do we do about it, that would be, you know, kind of latching onto that. And being expansive, not trying to be like, oh, I'm going to go chase more more views or more listens, but saying how can I, you know, look to broaden my appeal. And we will be right back. And we are right back. Sorry. I almost came. I almost cut off the swoosh. I didn't know we had an entry swoosh too. We got to have, we exit in doublee swish. But is it the same one?

Because it should be like laughter rhyme. Shush. Hush. Come on, man. This guy's criticizing my shooosh. I'm not, I'm saying, be expansive. We're going next level. I mean, just play the right.

I don't have enough swooshes to do that. So I wonder, too, if we could talk about like, you know, one of the things that's happened over the last couple years, like, what do you think about like, so, JD Beck and Domi Domi and J.D. Beck. Yeah. You know these crazy kids who are like insanely monstrous talents.

Right. They finally are releasing their first album. Yeah. But they've been like super famous now for years. Right. YouTube famous. Instagram famous. Or Instagram.

TikTok famous. Like it's not even YouTube. Tickety talkity famous. It's these like 20 second clips. I'm thinking of like Corey Wong. I'm thinking of, you know, like Jesus Molina And Jacob Collier started on YouTube

And with these like he's kind of old He's kind of old to be part of the tiki-talkie crowd He finally started making like Like albums that people would listen to But I wonder if this is going to become more of a trend Where like what's your favorite Jesus Malina album? No one knows but I mean not no one knows Does he have a record?

I'm sure he does but I'm sure he's more known For videos of him at NAM You know where he's like just slaughtering This incredible music on a Nord or whatever, right? Like, so that begs the question is like, for the younger crowd, what's our, what's our,

what's our awesome, uh, funny jazz YouTuber? Hello, foe. Hell, oh, you know what's the guy? I'm gonna put it out that. I don't like that guy.

You don't like, you like him? I think it's clever. Yeah, that's good. I think it's clever. His content. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. But like, those kind of like digestible 45 second clips. Yeah. Of music or, or content shorts, essentially. Yeah.

And do you think those are going to factor in more and more and more and more. to where we have artists where we like like I was wondering like is as do me and jadey beck ever going to make a song you know like right is on a record or is it just always going to be videos that are on YouTube and and Instagram don't get me wrong I love those Instagram videos but I think there's a difference between that and the hell what's it hello foe I think so yeah because sorry hello foe we love you no we don't I mean we don't know you I mean I'm said because he hasn't put like that I've seen like an artistic vision out I think the platform I'm not agnostic to all these different platforms.

It's kind of like, you remember when the dat came out in the minidisc and they're like, this is the new thing and CD and the LP instead of the, that was a little before my time. But you know, I mean, like, to me, that's fine and that's a whole interesting thing to be like, is it better on this? But ultimately, you have your music, you and then you get it to people. You deliver it somehow. And so to me, TikTok, whatever else, they may have better audio, worse. I mean, you can argue about those things, but you're getting it there. But it is like, but to be just the joke part and you're like just a little bit of shit. with it. To me, that's, and it's not about, oh, jazz is a serious thing, but it's got to have

something, even if it's short, even if it's not an album, it's got to have some kind of artistic merit, something that's uplifting your soul. To me, that's what, where jazz has been, where it is now and where it's going, great music. It's not about like, what's the groove, is it at vocals, is it rock, or who cares? Like, do you listen to it? Is there freedom in that music? Does it elevate your spirit as you're listening to? I'm sorry, am I getting too high-minded, Sue me? No, I love it. Sue me. I like it. Usually, like, at least three episodes in, before you get this dogmatic. Keep going.

But I mean, dogmatic, not, but, but in an expansive way. Like being like, you know, what makes this music, like, is it touching people? If that's, it doesn't matter. Like, the better the quality, I think, of the connection with the artistic vision and the generosity of us, of any artists to put their stuff out there. And I don't care. It's great. It's not great.

If you don't think it. But like, is there one person that needs to hear this? And did you get to them somehow? Then you're doing a good thing in the world. You know what? I mean. And it might be able to uplift a million people and it just needs to get there. That's when like the platforms and stuff become interesting. And I do think that these new platforms, we have the chance, who is the vocalist, a really good young vocalist that I actually played with

recently. I'm just spacing on her name who does a bunch of TikTok and Instagram stuff. I mean, she's really, she's legit. She did a record, I think on Mac Avenue. I'm just, I'll find her in a second because she's, uh, I'm just her names is she's like one of the great, you know, but she's really young, like 21, 22 years old. Excellent singer. But she's definitely like leveraging some of these new platforms to reach younger people, but she's a jazz singer. There's no doubt about it.

And she's singing great stuff. And I love that because it's not just about like, let's go play the crusty old performing arts centers, which are good. And I think she's doing that too, which is of course. But like reach people, if you want a younger audience.

Shout out to the performing arts centers. No, I mean, look. We're booking the podcast tour. No, I love the crusty performing art. And there's a place for that for sure. And, you know, it can make them less crusty. It's not so much the presenters. It's us, the artists.

Like, let's have these young singers. They're great that are reaching people on TikTok. And then invite them to show. They'll come to the performing arts centers. It's our fault as artists if they stay crusty. It's not because they're beautiful places. I mean, Carnegie Hall is crusty much, you know? Well, Peter, I don't know if we've answered the question, but we are at 17 minutes.

Okay. Well, I got to find. I apologize. It's not. I'm just, my brain is somewhere else. We're out of time. Oh, he's going to, he's going to Google that. fix that for you.

Yeah, I'm going to fix it, but you got to give me a chance to here. Yeah, yeah. And of course, Cecil Solvant, who's not what I was thinking about, I don't know if you've heard her record, the ghost record, or I think that's her. I've heard all of her records. Man, I mean, that, talk about where is jazz going. She's already there. But to me that and Solvon.

And it's not that it has to just be like that. But I think that's the best example of kind of that. And they're both probably like 30 young 30. Like that's a sweet spot, I think for anybody to really hit their stride. And I'm so proud of 40s to, you know. No, no, absolutely. Absolutely. Look, I mean, Herbie Hancock is pushing 80, right? And he's, he's hit his, he's still hitting his stride. So, I mean, it's not the end, but I'm like, if you're, if you're doing something around that time, you know, like Jonathan Batiste, like, are we, are we crusty because we only talk about like these, these couple of 32-year-old artists that we think are great. We're definitely a little crusty. We have to embrace that a little bit. Yeah. For sure. Okay, I have to find, okay, can you talk for 30 seconds while I find this, please.

I can talk. So, hey, if you would like to leave us a question, like, where do you think jazz is going? You can leave us a speaker. but go to you'll hear it.com and leave us a voice message. We want to hear from you. So leave us your speakpipe at you'll hear it.com. And don't forget to leave us a rating and review. That's anywhere you get your podcast. We only accept seven star ratings. Now that is impossible technically, but you'll figure it out. You'll see other people that have left seven stars. Leave us a seven star rating. Leave us a review. Peter promises at some point he's going to start reading reviews out here on the on the pod. Well, you know what? Why don't you make up a review that I would read while I'm trying to figure this out here.

Okay. These guys are absolute nerds. This is from Janice in Rhode Island. Janice says, I can't believe I wasted 17 and a half minutes listening to these two dingbats. What? Where are we now? This is Janice's words. Now, my lady.

Ding bats talking about where they think the future of the music is going when they don't have any solid evidence, any of it's actually true. That's pretty good. Right? It's not bad. Is that a good Rhode Island accent? Read one more. This is from Dwayne

Oh, I got it. Phoenix Arizona. Samara Joy. Samara Joy is great. Samara Joy is great. Big shout out to Samara. I'm sorry. It took me so long.

I was like picture where I got a chance to just do a couple of duo things with it recently. And she just blew me away. I mean, she's the real deal. And talk about another place that jazz is going. But big shout out to Samar. We do this podcast in real time. 17 minutes, right? You cut off Dwayne from Phoenix.

Well, we have to stop not because we're at 19 minutes. Anyway, I won't listen to anything over 19 and a half minutes. So got to go. Until next time. You'll hear it.