From the Archives: The Power of Suggestion/The Pleasure of Groove: Robert Glasper’s Post-Genre Black Radio Project, Part 3

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Amber Strother, Anita Bias, Bilal, Black Radio, Casey Benjamin, Chris Dave, Chrisette Michele, Derrick Hodge, erykah badu, Jahi Sundance, Lalah Hathaway, Ledisi, Lupe Fiasco, Meshell Ndegeocello, Mos Def, Musiq Soulchild, Paris Strother, Robert Glasper, Robert Glasper Experiment, shafiq husayn, Stokely, Yasin Bey

I never expected the Robert Glasper Experiment’s project Black Radio to be nominated for a Grammy in the R&B category.  Everyone knew that the project was special: its blend of generic codes from jazz, R&B, hip-hop, gospel and rock defied industry logic in bold ways.  Comprised of musicians who’ve made names for themselves in jazz but who capably crisscross boundaries, the group has, perhaps, forecast the gradual demise of traditional categories. By winning the Grammy—something I first learned from Angelica Beener’s (writer of the project’s liner notes) Facebook post because it wasn’t televised.  When the CD first dropped, it inspired lots of digital ink to be spilled, including my own.  We circle back this week by reposting my three-part essay series about the importance of the Black Radio project and as a hearty congratulation to the band.  –The Editor.

Part 3–toward inspiration, Salamishah Tillet and Mark Anthony Neal

Photo: Mike Schreiber

In my previous two posts on the Robert Glasper CD Black Radio (Blue Note) I laid out some broad ways to think about sound organization in the project, the notion of branding in today’s music as well as some ideas about how we can begin to think about it as “post-genre” black music.  As the cultural critic Mark Anthony Neal has written in his insightful review of the CD, my usage of this term might seem like an oxymoron.  What he is indicating, of course, is that the concept “genre” operates as an index of sound and the social ideas assigned to it.  In other words, people socially agree on what sounds mean, to what community they “belong,” and what extra-musical connotations they might convey and so on.  So, if it’s post-genre, where does the idea of black fit in?

One of the things that’s got me going about Black Radio (particularly after Neal’s meditation of it in the context of historical “black radio” (yes!) is that it reminds me of growing up listening to WVON (Voice of the Negro).  Leonard and Phil Chess of Chess Records owned the Chicago-based AM station for a time in the 1960s.  We heard it all: gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, pop, and because it was Chicago, some more blues. (And if you were a churchgoer and fortunate enough to employ a “note-reading” musician, you heard classical anthems on first Sunday, too.)  A musical eclecticism defined this community of listeners, linking the generations with an “open-eared,” aesthetically patient temperament: one of your songs was coming up next.  Interestingly, when I visited Houston, Glasper’s hometown a while back, I noticed the same historical consciousness on its radio stations.

Photo: Mike Schreiber

Somehow we lost that.  (Program directors under corporate pressure are primarily responsible, I think).  And that’s the reason I’m digging this project’s look back to that moment and why I’m, at the same time, thinking about the forward-looking term “post-genre” to capture Black Radio’s pulse, contour, and impact.

Let’s go to the music.

For my money, every track is rewarding, and that’s hard to find these days particularly with projects of this size.  To my ears, the most attractive sonic features, as I’ve stated in Part 1 of this review, are (1) how the digital aspects of the recording are foregrounded and (2) how Glasper’s signature harmonic approach shares equal sonic footing—but with an ideal that heroic virtuoso solos need not dominate the message.

It works well and makes the recording sound fresh.  Glasper’s proclivity for a progressive post-bop vocabulary—close, infectious harmonies that pivot around common tones and shifting tonal centers is instantly recognizable.  The project collapses this approach, however, with another aesthetic: gospel music.  One can’t help but associate the way that his talented band—Derrick Hodge (bass), Casey Benjamin (vocoder, flutes, saxophone) and Chris Dave, (drums)—hit strong pocket grooves with all the deep soul of a good Pentecostal sanctified band.  They languish over the rhythmic and harmonic possibilities of these grooves, subtly twisting, turning, and burning as if this was the point of the whole matter.  With all the dramatic innovations that have occurred in gospel music of late, one thing has held strong: the love of repetitive grooves that work the spirit, providing a platform for some of the most moving singing and instrumental improvisations in the industry. This CD brims with this aesthetic. (If you want to hear an example in contemporary gospel, check out a Fred Hammond track—groove city).

Soul’s Child, Lalah Hathaway

Take “Cherish the Day,” the cover from the chanting, groove-tress herself, Sade.  The song, released in 1993, is emblematic of a core aesthetic of styles that have occurred in the last, say, twenty years in urban pop: verse/chorus song forms that are built on identical chord structures.  This quality has become ubiquitous in R&B/urban soul song writing because of the spillover effect of hip-hop’s cyclic loops.  What separates this band’s take on this overused technique, however, is that they’ve taken the concept—an analogue interpretation of a digital concept—and injected the improvisational freedom of jazz/fusion/funk sonic complex. It sounds like a very hip church fanning up some community spirit.  Why rush through it for radio’s sake?  Moving something up takes a little time.

I’m partial to female singers, and it’s great to hear Ledisi (firebrand with riffs and range), Me’Shell Ndegeocello’s (whispering, warm molasses), Chrisette Michele (breath/croon/sigh), Erykah Badu (Badu-ism, ‘nuff said), and the Lalah Hathaway—yes, Lalah.  Her reworking of “Cherish the Day” features everything that’s appealing about her vocal presentation: an open-throated, well-supported, and sultry alto voice that the engineer captures excellently.  Breathy vowels abound as she moves through tasty melodic lines, working over chords like her Daddy but with more economy. Lesser-known female singers, sisters Amber and Paris Strother and Anita Bias provide a neo-soul-ish warmth to the project.  One more note on “Cherish the Day”: Mr. Benjamin’s synth solo—doubled in parallel intervals throughout is a gutsy statement reminiscent of Chick Corea’s Elektric Band in the 1980s.  And how the band keeps the groove pitched just above simmer beneath it? Wow.

I’m laughing to myself because I have to stop writing about this project for now. Once it’s nominated for a Grammy and is mentioned as one of the most important “post-genre” projects to appear, I’ll get with it again).   For now, just a few other highlights, quickly—Scouts honor.

I dig how the drums were recorded in some places to sound as if they were from an early 1990s hip-hop track.  The lavish background vocals on the old school slow jam “Oh, Yeah” featuring Musiq Soulchild and Ms. Michele demonstrate that the world still needs a duet—thinking here about Donny and Roberta but with the complexity of a Jaguar Wright multi-track vocal symphony. And Glasper’s acoustic solo after minute four of the track—a tasty ride over a Fender Rhodes drenched soundscape—suggests how this recording would have sounded if long instrumental solos had been the emotional focal point of this project.  (I sure hope one day they release the modulating sequences that begin during the fade out: more, more!)

Vocalist Bilal, featured on the CD and in live performances

Male voices—Lupe Fiasco, Bilal, Shafiq Husayn, Stokely, Mos Def together with the turntablism of Jahi Sundance—are showcased in the most experimental tracks that crisscross generic makers with dizzying aplomb.  Scattered unusual mixes, spoken word, electronic effects, stylistic juxtapositions, fade-ins, oral declamations and rhythmic chants, and so on, combine to frustrate efforts to “place” this music.  Coupled with a written statement in the CD by writer Angelika Beener—less liner note than manifesto—this project announces itself as something new, a turn toward breaking out of sonic/marketing formulas so prevalent in today’s industry offerings.  The most important aspect of this “announcement,” however, is this important idea. For the most part, Black Radio allows the sonic to do the preaching.  Thus, we hear their “post-genre” move as a suggestion and not a mandate.  In other words, only the music in the totality of our experience, music that is boundary-less, market-resistant, artistically adventurous, and conceptually focused can take black music back.  Free Black music!

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From the Archives: The Power of Suggestion/The Pleasure of Groove: Robert Glasper’s Post-Genre Black Radio Project, Part 2

Tags

Black Radio, Blue Note, Grammy's, Hip-Hop, Jazz, Nate Chinen, New York Times, Robert Glasper, Robert Glasper Experiment, Robin D.G. Ke, Scott Devaux

I never expected the Robert Glasper Experiment’s project Black Radio to be nominated for a Grammy in the R&B category.  Everyone knew that the project was special: its blend of generic codes from jazz, R&B, hip-hop, gospel and rock defied industry logic in bold ways.  Comprised of musicians who’ve made names for themselves in jazz but who capably crisscross boundaries, the group has, perhaps, forecast the gradual demise of traditional categories. By winning the Grammy—something I first learned from Angelica Beener’s (writer of the project’s liner notes) Facebook post because it wasn’t televised.  When the CD first dropped, it inspired lots of digital ink to be spilled, including my own.  We circle back this week by reposting my three-part essay series about the importance of the Black Radio project and as a hearty congratulation to the band.  –The Editor.

In a recent interview with Nate Chinen, Robert Glasper detailed an aesthetic strategy that would position him to assuage traditionalists’ criticism of his dual pedigree in hip hop and jazz as well as provide him a space to experiment.  Beginning with an impressive set of trio recordings in the tradition of bebop pianist Bud Powell (always a litmus test for the modern jazz pianist), his recorded work gradually moved into other conceptual and sonic territories.  His CD Black Radio is the latest iteration of this on-going journey.

Brands are powerful entities, particularly in the music industry.  Although he claims roots in gospel, R&B, jazz, and hip-hop, Glasper broke into the public consciousness as a “jazz pianist” and it’s hard to break away from that rubric once it sticks.  The same is true for any artist whose work is marketed in a system that makes money from rigid predictability.  This “agreement” becomes a social contract that ultimately seeks to discipline what artists produce, how companies sell it, and the spending and listening habits of specific demographics.

Let’s think about the musical side of all this.  The historical idea of the jazz musician’s art in which Glasper began his recording career coalesced into its present configuration in the years following the 1940s bebop movement.  As historian Scott DeVeaux explains:

“In the wake of bebop, we no longer think of jazz improvisation as a way of playing tunes but as an exacting art form in itself that happens, as a rule, to use popular music as a point of departure.  In the hands of a jazz improviser, a copyrighted popular song is less text than pretext.  Its crucial identifying feature—melody—is erased in the heat of improvisation, leaving behind the more abstract and malleable level of harmonic pattern.  Out of the ashes of popular song comes a new structure, a new aesthetic order, shaped by the intelligence and virtuosity of the improviser; and it is to that structure, and that structure alone, that our attention should be drawn.”

The new aesthetic order, one grounded in the idea of virtuoso spectacle, has been both blessing and curse, an ideal that has, on the one hand, created expressions of sublime beauty, and on the other, eroded the economic base of the once popular music with exercises in abstraction that some claim are too difficult to decipher.  (Sidebar: thanks, in part, of course, to an educational system that’s tying teachers’ hands behind their backs as they are bullied into teaching to standardized tests and thus denying a generation of potential audience bases access to the idea of sustained artistic engagement on a wide range of expressions. But I digress.)

Another one of Glasper’s pedigrees, the sonic world of hip-hop has its own social contract. Indeed, some of its themes of nihilism and confrontation have tended to eclipse the dynamism of its sonic tendencies. Nonetheless, as a system of sound organization it has (like contemporary gospel music) flaunted an irreverent and irrepressible voracious muse, absorbing sound elements as quickly as they appear in the public sphere. Historian Robin D.G. Kelley traces this tendency—one that reflected the portability, reinforcement and transcendence of ethnic identities as they have been bound to specific sound organizations—back to the early days of hip-hop:

“From the outset, rap music embraced a variety of styles and cultural forms, from reggae and salsa to heavy metal and jazz.  Hip Hop’s hybridity reflected, in part, the increasingly international character of America’s inner cities resulting from immigration, demographic change, and new forms of information, as well as the inventive employment of technology in creating rap music.”

Glasper’s Black Radio project indexes and then tackles all of these histories, including the contested complaints from both sides of the river: that “real” hip-hop and “real” jazz should/should not have greater commercial viability.  Indeed, all of the sonic and social agreements of hip-hop, jazz, and gospel congeal in thoughtful, art-full, groove-based arrangements on this recording (and in the live shows, though in different ways).  When one sinks into the crafty details of the songs, into their conceptual and technological framing, into their harmonic environment and relationship to popular song, and into the ideas of virtuoso performance, accessibility and even spirituality, we can better understand this work as an example of “post-genre” black music.  The project plays with sonic, social, and iconic symbols in a way that recalibrates calcified, boring ideas about genre and turns them on their head, all with a good sense of funky adventure.

Next time, I’ll discuss how all of this works in some specific songs.

Dr. Guy

From the Archives: The Power of Suggestion/The Pleasure of Groove: Robert Glasper’s Post-Genre Black Radio Project, Part 1

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A Tribe Called Quest, Black Radio, Blue Note, De La Soul, Grammy's, Herbie Hancock, Jazz, Meshell Ndegeocello, Miles Davis, Nate Chinen, New York Times, Ramsey Lewis, Robert Glasper, Robert Glasper Experiment, Roy Hargrove, Twinkie Clark, Wynton Marsalis

I never expected the Robert Glasper Experiment’s project Black Radio to be nominated for a Grammy in the R&B category.  Everyone knew that the project was special: its blend of generic codes from jazz, R&B, hip-hop, gospel and rock defied industry logic in bold ways.  Comprised of musicians who’ve made names for themselves in jazz but who capably crisscross boundaries, the group has, perhaps, forecast the gradual demise of traditional categories. By winning the Grammy—something I first learned from Angelica Beener’s (writer of the project’s liner notes)Facebook post because it wasn’t televised, Black Radio’s mix was celebrated as a true hybrid.  When the CD first dropped, it inspired lots of digital ink to be spilled, including my own.  We circle back this week by reposting my three-part essay series about the importance of the Black Radio project.  And we offer a hearty congratulations to the band.  –The Editor.

“Changing the game,” exclaimed the press photographer to one of the fans at Robert Glasper’s recent standing-room-only appearance at World Café Live, Philadelphia.   “Yeah, no doubt,” the middle-aged man shot back in agreement.  The room was filled with an interracial, inter-generational crowd of listeners enveloped in the mesh of sound worlds being served up with both commitment and ease.

The show was part of the promotional tour for Glasper’s new release Black Radio (Blue Note).   As New York Times music critic Nate Chinen wrote recently it’s “the rare album of its kind that doesn’t feel strained by compromise or plagued by problems of translation.”  That’s quite a feat given that jazz and hip-hop have supposedly operated under different social contracts since the emergence of hip-hop as a musical commodity in the 1980s and the contemporaneous “young lions” movement that shot Wynton Marsalis’ generation to jazz stardom.

Robert Glasper’s Black Radio Project, live in Philadelphia

Public discourse pitted the neo-classicist hard bop “analogue nation” against the sample-filled digital soundscapes of hip-hop producers (they’re not even “real” musicians) and their spiting, rhyming counterparts (they’re really not musicians). Although many people could actually find something to praise or disdain in both streams it was easy to find oneself wedged between the polarizing aesthetic/political rhetoric.  That was then.

Changes in the way the “recording” revenue stream of the music industry operates have opened up new creative opportunities for artists.  And musicians are taking them.  Talented engineers and producers—and high quality recording opportunities—abound in all areas of the country.  Many musicians have become equally as astute in engineering, composition and performance, as well as in marketing and promotions.  The clever ones are pushing out the box and crafting projects that are conceptually adventurous.  Some of them purposely share their work around social media sites before they actually “drop.”  Thus, a new kind of art world is emerging in which the shots are not solely being called by “the suits.” Musical collectives that work across the genres lines (those imaginary sonic boundaries that exclude more than they invite) are creating new audience alliances as well.

Although he has a Blue Note record deal, Glasper is on the avant-garde of this new wave.

That is not to say that one cannot find sonic precursors that equally portray what makes Black Radio so appealing and timely.  Chinen mentions a few milestone performers in this regard: Miles Davis, Guru, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and Roy Hargrove.  Each produced projects that blended elements of jazz with that of other populist styles.  We can name others.  Let’s push the list back a bit to include someone like Ramsey Lewis who has continued to build a vibrant career sliding easily around the jazz/pop continuum.  And, of course, the clear-headed and creative optimism of Herbie Hancock should certainly count as an important inspiration both in spirit and in technical execution.

MeShell Ndegeocello: Musician Supreme

And we must not forget the important women contributors to this aesthetic sensibility—an oversight that happens a lot.  Gospel great Elbernita “Twinkie” Clark’s songwriting, singing, and instrumental work set that genre on an unapologetic and sonically ecumenical path.  Patrice Rushen’s work as a songwriter, arranger, vocalist, and keyboardist boasted an eclecticism that surely provided neo-soul rhythm tracks some of its harmonic approach.  Bassist and songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello’s virtuosity in funk, soul, and jazz—and the singular and courageous way she combines them—must be considered a particularly salient and challenging guidepost.

But what’s going on in the Black Radio project that makes me wonder if we are in the midst of a post-genre moment, a realignment of the traditional social contracts governing music creation, dissemination, and consumption in the industry?  I’ve experienced this project as a subject of written criticism and promotion, as a live performance event, and as a recording.  There’s a lot going on that deserves attention.

Black Radio’s sense of aesthetic balance—of getting it just right—may be derived, in my view, from two provocative musical choices: (1) a self-conscious foregrounding of digital technology in the soundscape that includes tricked out mixes and effects, among other techniques; and (2) a harmonic palette drawn from the progressive post-bop vocabulary—close, infectious harmonies that pivot around common tones and shifting tonal centers.  The songs are otherwise characterized by the careful alignment of sonic symbols from across the historical black popular music soundscape.

Check back in for Part II when I’ll show how these techniques, among many others,  animate the songs on this great project.

Dr. Guy