A Letter (or Riff) on the Occasion That We Choose to Believe that Nathaniel Mackey's Angel of Dust Exists

     Nathaniel Mackey's Bedouin Hornbook defies easy summary, though its parts are easy to enumerate. 1. It is written as a series of letters. 2. The letters are written by a musician named N. 3. These letters cover a three year period and ostensibly document the various developments of N's band, the Mystic Horn Society. 4. The reader is only privy to N's side of the correspondence. And 5. His recipient, called the Angel of Dust, takes on a sort of spectral presence throughout the text.  These are the basic parts of what any reader will encounter. 

     And, yet, to merely list these parts is to leave out the force through which Bedouin Hornbook proceeds: the role of structure/tradition, as both a necessary and limiting force, within African American music. In lieu of attempting to parse the difficult logics of Bedouin Hornbook, I offer a riff of my own, writing as if I were the Angel of Dust.*

Dear N,

I was happy to hear from you after so long a silence, but there is no need to apologize. These gaps, like gasps for air in between a complicated set of notes, give me time to consider the myriad implications that unfurl from both song and letter. Think of them—these gaps, that is—as our command of time and not the inverse. And now that I have taken time, I will respond thusly.

            In reading through our correspondence I find myself most interested, at least as a place of beginning, in your dream. The disassembled clarinet is a powerful image, one that offers a complex and nuanced metaphor for how one should understand music as a whole. And for that, I praise your decision to relay it. I am, however, unconvinced that you are being honest when you say that you have abandoned the idea that the image suggests a desire to reconstruct “a way.” But for now let me abandon my five-dollar Freud and pretend that we both agree that the instrument refuses permanent reassembly. Most obvious, of course, is that the clarinet acts as a metonym for music. In this sense, any analysis must abandon the idea of individuality and, instead, focus on the implications it has within free jazz.

            With that out of the way, may I suggest that the deconstructed clarinet takes its central analogy with that of collage?  It is not so much a puzzle, with each note locking into a specific rounded groove, but, rather, a collection of disparate and jagged images that when placed in a specific order only seem to be a fixed and unmovable whole. Thus, deconstruction—the very act of scattering these parts—becomes the way in which all assemblages are revealed to be unnatural. I do not mean to say that order is unnatural; our want of it belies how natural it may be; rather, the assumption that organization—as we see in more traditional musical compositions—is never more than a cobbled form, sewn together by composers whose ideological location affords them specific connections.

What is important, then, is not so much whether or not a work sounds complete, but whether or not the composition allows for one to see the possibility of possibilities. I am reminded here of Hans Hoffman’s insistence that “the ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”  In both cases, the purpose is to abandon traditional technique so to foreground the myriad possibilities caught underneath, to pry lose the manhole cover. But does this reduce the form? Does such an understanding imply a stumbling onto meaning, an accident by which only the absence of playing signals the whole that exists in between the silences?  More clearly, are your songs only songs because they begin and end? Have we, like that sentence written on the San Francisco wall, been given too little and too much credit?  And could any collection of atonal, dissonant noises expose the issues at hand?

            I’m not sure. But what I do know is that our pasts fold into the present like flour, leaving us with nothing to grasp, no material to which we can return. And so evidence of a time before our time, before now, does not exist. And, yet, I know—have faith even—that there is no present free from what has come before. We each exist in a series of moments organized and justified by unavailable dates, but their disappearance into the batter, so to speak, does not negate their existence. And so we search because we must. Resurrection is, as you say, a phantom limb. From dust to dust and then dust again, it would seem. It is not so much a past known in the way a photograph taken in childhood and seen when older has the power to catalyze memory, but, rather, it is a revelation, such as the first moment the child realizes a parent was once as young as he. It is a past not known but felt.

And so what the uninitiated may first hear as a collection of strangled notes, with no more ability behind them than that which a child could produce, I know—we know—that free jazz attempts to organize itself around disc(h)ord rather than disorder. It pries apart notes and chords, even modes, and what appears to be the scattered detritus of hacks reveals itself to be the crumble of a cake, which cannot return us to the initial ingredients by which it was made but which allows us to see that all wholes are made up of disparate elements awaiting construction.

This much I know: Deconstruction in all art always assumes a previous assembly. One cannot take apart that which was not once assembled. And, thus, the tradition upon which those notes were born still exists—whether in phrases that have survived the dismantling or even in the theoretical space that attempts to justify the discord—and this is what makes all the difference, what separates the child’s scribble from the artist’s stroke, or the honk from the howl.

            Nowhere, of course, is this argument more compelling than in your use of the palimpsest.  I must say that I am quite moved by the implications therein.  If I must be completely honest, I was forced to look up the term, and I have learned that a palimpsest, in its most general sense, is a sheet of paper upon which texts are continuously erased so to make room for new words. The idea, of course, harkens to that ever-long debate concerning the domination of one voice over another. But where the palimpsest becomes most interesting is in the fact that the act of erasure is never fully complete; former texts linger, as if awaiting a spontaneous recovery. They are, I suppose, those phantom limbs about which you write so eloquently.

And it is in this spirit—that of the endless heteroglossiac possibilities within any utterance—that I arrive at your concept of duende. Before I add my own meaning to the term, it is helpful to remember how Lorca defined it. “The duende,” he writes, “ . . . is a power not a work. It is a struggle, not a thought. It’s not a question of ability, but of true living style, of blood of the most ancient culture, of spontaneous creation . . . Everything that has black sounds in it has duende.”  How convenient for us that Lorca chooses to use black as one of his primary descriptors. It is as if he knew that this moment would arrive, that our use would play with both the intended connotation of “emotional darkness” and a bit of old fashioned signification that allows us to lean in on the phrase, to push heavy with our shoulders until the meaning has shifted so to include something of race. I suppose that it’s your turn to scoff; and I can already see your smirk. After all, neither you nor I have ever seen each other, so how could I know your race. How could you know mine?  And more broadly, what does race have to do with deconstruction? Is not the point to dismantle these ideological and historical snares that bind us?  I suppose the answer lies in my hope that the purpose of deconstruction is to reveal the possibility each of us has to become builders.

And so I ask you: have I pushed Lorca’s phrase too far? Bullied an elegant definition across the Atlantic? Have I, to be indelicate, enslaved it for my own purposes? Before you say yes, remember duende’s most popular iteration is tener duende, which loosely translates to having soul. Can we not hear Bobby Byrd’s “I Know You Got Soul” each time the phrase is uttered? Have we not happened upon a parallel desire for a positively constructed subjectivity? Isn’t my act just a matter of reconstruction? And can we not see that looking at how race informs jazz is about giving voice rather than excluding it?  Knowing that one man has soul does not mean that another cannot. Duende, thus, is not so much racially determined, as it is aware of the implications that exist within each note. It is about tradition. At stake is how one documents the moment. To have duende and to have soul find their parallel not merely in their semantic pairing, but in how the practice of both disrupts dominant culture.

But if we are to accept this, and I hope we are both in accord, I am most troubled by your use of fallow in one of the more recent letters. At first glance, the metaphor appears to be incongruent with all that we have said before. As indicated by the phrase “accretional yes,” which you use in the same letter, you clearly continue to believe in the present moment as a space built upon the varied layers of history. But how is one to understand the two concepts together?  Is fallow to be understood as a critique of the collective unwillingness to, if you’ll allow me to push the metaphor, plant meaning within the rhetorical soil?  Are we just too lazy to confront the invisible past? Or is what you call the “unavailable heaven” the site of the unconscious, a space unavailable to the waking mind but no less an influence?  And if it is the latter, how am I to understand what you call its annexation?  Annexation is, of course, a loaded term; both my agency and yours rest upon our ability to not merely apprehend this space—which I cannot tell if I am even capable—but to plant within it the concepts upon which our notes will signal. And so the image of a fallow, unavailable field leaves me troubled. 

Before I continue, let me say that I fear the frustration these questions will raise in you, and I apologize in advance for it. Know that they—and all my points—are not meant to manipulate your intent. Neither are they meant to correct.  Despite your accusations to the contrary, I have never told you so. Think of my responses as feeble attempts to apprehend not a fallow space but, rather, the fecund space, rich with both intention and meaning.

But if you still find yourself angered by my questions, understand this: your frustration betrays the purpose of deconstruction. For if we are to understand the potential of free jazz to be that which ungirds the moment, then even it must be turned to dust at some point. This may sound strange to a man trained in archeology, but the sort of sonic sites mined in free jazz differ a great deal from those of archeological digs. On their surface, they seem similar. The archeologist digs up the earth because he or she hopes to uncover artifacts from an earlier period. In this sense, the soil acts as a metaphor for all structures; it is both that with which we steady ourselves and the substance that obscures what lies beneath. But unlike artifacts dug up by archeologists, the disruption sought within free jazz is necessarily ambiguous. It requires a rhetorical looseness that leaves all ideological constructions vulnerable to future disassembly. Your concept of “graspability” seems to admit as much.  But I fear your hesitation is not quite reflexive enough. The sort of deconstruction you claim to support is not merely subversive, it is asymptotic.  To look singularly backwards---to fix your construction—is not to investigate the past but, rather, to become of it. It represents a death, with the fixed structure acting as a tomb. One need only look at my initials for evidence. When inverted, A.O.D. foretells the fate of those who attempt to laminate any particular ideology or moment. And thus every strategy is only liberating insomuch as it offers others the tools by which they can reassemble the elements needed to include their voice. Risky as this is, even our own work must be flung into dust—because, after all, it is not merely from dust to dust in free jazz, but dust to dust and then dust again.  

Yours sincerely,

A.O.D.

*For a more complete--and infinitely helpful--reading of Bedouin Hornbook, see Herman Beaver's "A Space We're All Immigrants From" Othering and Communitas in Nathaniel Mackey's Bedouin Hornbook."  in Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies 

-Lokee

Bless Les

There are always certain elements that I seek when listening to my daily dose of jazz.  First and foremost, the trap kit and optional percussionist have to chug steady while switching up little by little on the offbeat stabs and shadow notes. The piano, of course, must be lush, spaced out (literally and figuratively) and harmonic, but also rhythmic at the same time, and the bass line has to walk the whole thing through. And anything on top of the rhythm--like the horns or vocals--has just got to be right. But you just know when it is--right, that is.  In the case of Les McCann's music, it always seems to have all the right elements, regardless of era.

And the more I listen to him on various sittings, I see how much of an influence he's had on jazz bands, hard bossa groups and even up to the most recent producers sampling the classic breaks found on so many of his LPs. So for my first post, there is no better musician to highlight than Les McCann.

For me, the best thing about Les's albums are that each one takes you on a rhythmic and melodic quest, and in doing so, he liberates you from labels and preconceived notions of what jazz music should and shouldn't be. "Layers" is one of those albums that is funky as hell, but at the same time incredibly introspective, and, dare I say, spiritual? It speaks to me differently with each listen.

I'm still learning about all the sounds of Les Mc Cann, but the more I speak to friends, record diggers and jazz appreciators about his music, the more I see how underrated the man is as an all around artist and musician. So the next time you're in a record shop and see one of Les' records, pick it up and get familiar. It might speak to you.

-KidGusto

In Search of the B in R&B

     It is inevitable that with every R&B release someone will question whether or not the genre has moved too far away from its blues roots. While the question can be--and often is--a desire to search out the particular sonic logic of an album and artist, it always risks denying R&B the possibility of evolution. To question the presence of the blues in R&B is to understand both it and the Blues as static, knowable and permanent forms. This is particularly problematic in a genre that has traditionally found its greatest strengths in its ability to cultivate an aesthetic that responds to both the circumstances of the current moment and the tastes and interests of the Black community in the present.

    I suspect much of the problem lies in definition. Questions of this sort often conflate two distinct usages of the term Blues. Namely, genre is understood to be the same as practice. The mistake is easy to make. After all, the blues as practice and the blues genre share the same name. Worse yet, they are intertwined in such a way as to appear--at certain moments--indistinguishable from one another. Thus, a certain amount of parsing is necessary. Most generally, the blues as a genre refers to a particular form most often associated with cities and areas like Memphis, Chicago, the Delta and the Piedmont in the first half of the 20th Century.  In contrast, the blues as a practice describes a method by which a musician enters into an on going dialogue with the past so to articulate his or her present. Of these two meanings, I want to suggest that the blues in R&B functions as a practice rather than a reiteration of the genre.  To not distinguish between practice and genre is to continually search for traces that may or may not be present.

     Historically speaking, even the earliest forms of R&B did not require direct links to the blues proper. Listeners to this era will often find a unique synthesis of Gospel and secular sounds.


The Caravans:

Ray Charles:

Charles distils The Caravan's 1955 performance to its purely sonic qualities in "This Little Girl of Mine." 

And listeners to later R&B are more likely to hear allusions to songs from the era just proceeding the song than they are to hear songs that quote directly from the blues.

The Persuaders:

Lenny Williams:

R. Kelly:

Kelly takes the chords and general phrasing from The Persuaders and both quotes Lenny Williams (Oh Oh Oh) and makes use Williams' talk-over bridge (3:39 in the Williams and 1:43 in the Kelly) 

Even when songs do reach back to the blues era, however, their primary importance is the way in which they make use of the song. 

Roberta Flack: 

Eugene McDaniel's lyrics allude to the African American folk song "'Twas One Sunday Morning." 

Oscar Brown Jr.: 

From 1960, Brown's "Bid 'Em In" makes use of both sparse instrumentation and cadences that recall both the auction block and field calls.

Matana Roberts:

And in the fifth section of 2010's Coin Chapter One: Gens de Couleur Libres, Roberts quotes from "Bid 'Em In."

Each of these artists offer easily identified analogues to past works. Yet, it is not their source material that place their songs within blues practice--at least not singularly. Rather, the earlier songs serve as points of reference and show how the present and the past both overlap and diverge. More pointedly, all of the artists use the discursive space constructed by their respective sources as the foundations upon which they build the realities of their current moment.

 

      In contrast to the blues as genre, then, blues practice does not oblige a direct, one to one connection to past iterations of the form. It merely demands that one employ a method and perspective that knows and responds to the proceeding tradition. In other words, whether a song responds to Gospel, as Ray Charles does in the 1950s, or to 70s fusion and funk, as Mary J. Blige does in the 1990s, the R&B perspective is grounded within a particular set of sonic, cultural and political concerns linked to the African American community. How these responses make use of previous works varies. One can counter a past work.

Roy Ayers:

Mary J. Blige:

Blige's "My Life" complicates Ayers' relatively hopeful "Everybody Loves The Sunshine" by confronting the ways in which the expectation of happiness elides more important issues.

 Or one can agree.


Ohio Players: 

Mary J. Blige:  

 The competing boasts of Puba and Blige at the beginning of "What's The 411" update The Ohio Players confrontation of the ways in which "Pride and Vanity" serve to distance men and women. 

     Like Flack, Brown, Roberts and Kelly, Mary J. Blige enters into a particular discursive space. That is to say, her use of 70s music responds to the questions, concerns and styles put forth by the artists from which she borrows by extending the conversation to her particular moment. And just as Stesasonic reminds us that "a sample is a tactic/A portion of my method, a tool," the blues as a practice uses the past as a tool through which the current moment can be articulated.  Consequently, as the temporal distance from the blues genre widens, so too do the variety of techniques that are available to current musicians. 

     This ever widening pallet does not dilute the tradition, as this post's initial question would imply; rather, its dynamic nature evidences the wide variety of conversations, concerns, disagreements and values within the tradition. What one chooses to respond to functions as an orienting force, and one's sonic and aesthetic decisions locate him or her within a particular politics. Thus, Mary J. Blige's use of samples and rappers makes clear her recognition of rap's role, value and relevance to a particular population within the African American tradition. Her choices, however, do not foreclose the possibility of other forms. In fact, Blige's synthesis of Rap and R&B construct a sonic space upon which female artists could begin to use both forms to confront and subvert misogyny. Of this, Erykah Badu's work provides one of the genre's most powerful examples.

Aaron Neville:

Biggie: 

Erykah Badu:

 Badu's chorus (0:48) quotes from Biggie's "Warning" (1:27),  which, in turn, has quoted from Neville's "Over You" (0:08).

Badu's use of Biggie on "Fall in Love (Your Funeral)" transforms the threats issued in both "Warning" and "Over You" from assertions of violent and misogynistic masculinity into a confrontation of the limited and stereotypical identities available to Black women in a post-Moynihan world. In doing so, she offers a response that negotiates a position that both refuses the identities offered by Biggie's Ready To Die--and much of rap--while also recognizing rap's political and social space as one she not only values but of which she understands herself to be member.

     In light of this, I want to suggest that the blues as a practice recognizes--responds to--the dialectical nature of both tradition and art. More plainly, R&B is a constantly evolving form that is always in a state of becoming and discarding. And one is neither obliged to make obvious references nor is he or she required to formulate a sound that is completely--and impossibly--divorced from influences outside of previous Black musicians.  Rather, an R&B artist metabolizes the full spectrum of styles in order to speak to his or her moment, to his or her demographic. Thus, a contemporary artist like Miguel can traverse a variety of sounds not immediately associated with R&B and still be firmly rooted in the R&B idiom. Indeed, his interpolation of The Zombie's "Time of the Season" on "Don't Look Back" requires listeners to ask "who's your [sonic] daddy." The question of musical parentage is at the core of blues as practice. As Miguel's allusions make clear, it's not merely who we choose that aligns us; it is also why and how we choose to use particular sounds. As such, it's not only the listener that asks Miguel who his daddy is, it is also Miguel who demands that we begin to identify the reasons and logics that go into those we name as musical foremothers and fathers.

The Zombies:

Nirvana:

Miguel:

Robert Glasper Experiment:

Miguel's interpolation of The Zombie's 1960s hit "Time of The Season" is proceeded by Miguel's decision to phrase the first 3/4s of the song in a manner reminiscent of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," a song that R&B singer Bilal and Jazz pianist Robert Glasper have also recently covered.

     This question of sonic and political inheritance is not easily answered, and asking it requires one to interrogate a variety of accepted ideas about the parameters of R&B--and, for that matter, how each of us approaches music. For example, does the continuum that connects The Caravans to Miguel allow room for The Zombies?  At what point does R&B and its requisite "daddies" [and mommies] atomize to the point of becoming something else? Or, more pointedly, is somebody like Miguel more pop than R&B? This last question, I suspect, is at the core of any search for the Blues in R&B. Nevertheless, it is problematic for three reasons.

     First, it attempts to frame pop as a distinct and aesthetically identifiable entity. Under this design, pop music possesses a common sound that unifies all its members and makes them distinct from other genres. Unfortunately, such an understanding ignores the fact that pop music is neither distinct nor aesthetically identifiable. Rather, it is a term that describes its selling potential. As such, any form of music, from Heavy Metal to R&B, has the potential to also be pop. 

    Second, even if one ignores the fluidity of the term and focuses on pop's tendency to favor an easily and immediately accessible sound, a song's generic location is far more complicated than the mere order of notes. As Jazz has demonstrated endlessly, how one interprets those notes is even more important. Thus, what is called pop in one iteration can be and often is transformed into something decidedly different in the next. 

Julie Andrews:

 John Coltrane 1961:

John Coltrane 1965:

Coltrane's transformation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "My Favorite Things"
 into an ever more complex exploration of modes is one of the more famous examples of presentation determining the generic status of a song.

 Etta James: 

Avicii:

Flo Rida:

Inversely, Avicii's "Levels" makes use of Etta James and manages to create one of the biggest pop songs of 2011. And Flo Rida then shifts Avicii's track toward rap.

What is and is not considered pop can even be determined by contexts outside of its sonic qualities. 

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles:

Smokey Robinson on Sesame Street:

 Robinson's mere presence on Sesame Street shifts the meaning of the song.  

     The third reason concerns the implied racial status of pop music. When used to question a song's membership into R&B, pop music becomes an accusation and invokes the pernicious idea that any song that resonates with and speaks to white consumers--and particularly white, teen consumers--is necessarily outside R&B's ken. Such an outlook amounts to little more than cultural segregation. It implicitly posits the Blues as an essence rather than a practice. The consequence of this idea is twofold: it, at once, reduces the blues to some instinctual artifact, and, at the same time, it reduces the African American community to a monolith. If we are to follow the logic of this formulation, Black musicians and Black listeners understand the blues due to birthright rather than the discipline, practice and perspective that the blues both obliges and evidences. 

     Additionally, what accusations such as these fail to consider is that Black art has always functioned within a public space made private. That is to say that the Blues, Jazz, Soul, Rap and R&B have always been available to listeners at two vastly different frequencies: those who have taken on the challenges of learning the traditions upon which the styles are built hear something different from those who enter the styles blindly. Thus, these songs, to use Henry Louis Gates' term, signify upon the various tropes and techniques within the African American tradition. That is, the blues practice is fundamentally a method that constructs a sonic terrain in which entry into the blues, so to speak, obliges fluency.

     Nevertheless, framing both entry and membership within the blues terrain as a matter of frequency and fluency is dangerous. Most immediately, there is the question of what constitutes fluency. Does one need to know that R. Kelly signifies on Lenny Williams in order to enter the blues terrain? To this, I remain ambivalent; that R&B--and Black music as a whole--possess the complexities and dynamics necessitating rigor is, for me, indisputable. However, how that rigor manifests is up for debate. Most certainly, the ability to produce a catalog of an artist's source material can be helpful, but it is ultimately insufficient.  And, at its worst moments, it can be the means by which erudition is used to elide both emerging and discordant concerns located within the very terrains R&B constructs. As such, I would say that the blues as a practice is one that is critical rather than dismissive; and one that obliges its members to invest in perspectives located within the African American tradition. That is to say, one need not know the whole of Black music (even if it were possible), but there is an obligation to recognize that the B in R&B places the form within a particular historical and social context.

-Lokee

3 Songs on My Mind

Art Farmer Septet’s “Mau Mau:" From Farmer’s 1953 session in NY, “Mau Mau” marks one of the most profound—and audible—examples of the ways in which the Jazz tradition functions as a Janus head, simultaneously looking to the past and the future. In this case, Farmer’s composition constructs a Latin Jazz track out of what would become the central blues riff used by John Coltrane for “Part I: Acknowledgement,” on his landmark album A Love Supreme. Recorded 12 years prior to Coltrane’s use, Farmer’s recording does not evidence a direct relationship as much as it shows how the Blues pallet acted as the initial voice to which Jazz would not only respond but respond to with endless variety. (The full phrase comes in around 1:43, but it can be heard throughout)

  
John Coltrane “Part I Acknowledgement:” What is endlessly striking about this song is the way in which Coltrane manages to construct something with all the requisite parts expected of a Jazz song all while constructing something entirely new. The opening fanfare recalls Armstrong’s cadenza on “West End Blues;” Garrison’s 3-note phrasing seems to mouth “A Love Supreme” in the same way that Bill Evan’s piano spoke “sooooooooo what” on the Davis classic “So What;” and the use of the blues riff mentioned in my previous post provides the foundation upon which improvisation could manifest.

And just as the Quartet has seemed to prove Jazz capable of an articulation free of words, just as the song seems to fully realize a speech that can’t be spoken, Coltrane speaks and completely upends arguments that demanded the emerging sound of Jazz be in opposition to spoken language. The simple act of speaking the lines “a love supreme… ” forces the listener to recognize that any expression is a matter of both artifice and technique; thus, to refuse a technique is never a matter of purity; rather, it is always a matter of limiting one’s self the full possibility of expression. To this, Wayne Shorter has said that Coltrane “was going back to square one where the voice is the first announcement of your humanity—your humanity is your instrument.”

Cecil Taylor Quartet “Luyah! The Glorious Step:" There’s really too much going on here to cover anything in full, so I won’t even try. What continues to baffle me, however, is the way in which Taylor’s piano and Earl Griffith’s vibes play in total opposition to each other while somehow forming a whole. Taylor’s attacks have all the threat of the dissonant and classical techniques he would fully unleash in subsequent recordings; and Griffith plays as if charged with corralling the Quartet’s leader, which he does with all the aplomb of a police line. The result is a song in which the two play in counter point, as left hand and right hand, and in much the way we see classical masters like Chopin purposely instigating a conflict between two sounds in total control of their respective voices.

-Lokee