Category: "Interviews"
Revive Da Live: Live Music Advocates Reshaping the Northeast's Soundscape
Tags: Concert Reviews, Jazz, Jeru da Damaja, Large Professor, Music
"I listen to a lot of music y'all, don't mind me," announced Large Professor two Thursdays ago from the stage of New York City's Le Poisson Rouge. The noted producer and rapper co-headlined Revive Da Live's inaugural flagship concert series and when not dropping a few bars of rare jazz and hip hop sample sources, repeated variations of this statement. "I be listening to a lot of music," he'd note, wipe his brow and segue into another record. Few in the crowd of mostly eighties babies could have heard Large Pro's hits in their heyday but even for those present who could recall first hearing "Criminal Minded" in seventh grade or outside of church doing the wop with some girl, the archaeological playlist demanded attention. Hustling back and forth between turntables and laptop, he commanded stares and digital camera flashes, but was only able to get one intrepid b-boy to get down, the lead-footedness, not a product of indifference, but a bit of wonder.
Learning is a linchpin of Revive Da Live, a two-year-old event promotions and live music advocacy company with a growing buzz in the northeast. Founder Meghan Stabile provided some context via phone in advance of the show, "The motto of Revive Da Live is dedicated to exposing live jazz music and hip hop in hopes of creating a larger awareness and appreciation for jazz live music and helping musicians that create it."
Stabile established the company as a senior studying voice and music business at Boston's Berklee College of Music and credits the school and job at local haunt Wally's Café for introducing her to a wider world of music. "I started singing when I was really little. One of my all time favorite bands that got me into playing was Silverchair. I was kind of into that whole grunge scene." But with Berklee came exposure and inspiration, which translated into throwing shows that attempted to wrest some of the music she came to appreciate, primarily contemporary jazz, out of the underground.
The reliquary too. Stabile and her Revive Da Live cohorts don't approach their work as erudite museum curators but grounded masters of ceremony by not only incorporating the vocabulary of hip hop but by omitting the exclusive vocabulary of jazz appreciation. There is no talking down just fresh enthusiasm. "I feel like I represent a lot of people," Stabile said. "I basically am that person that I am trying to get to as far as audience is concerned. I didn't grow up with it. It wasn't something that was on he radio. It wasn't something that was on TV all the time."
Revive Da Live is just twenty events into realizing a vision that hopes to reengage young music fans with inventive live music but has already made a notable impact and cultivated a faithful if musician-heavy following. "Hands down, nobody's doing what we're doing," Stabile said. "It was that way in Boston and its that way here in New York."
The first concert of their flagship series bore witness. Large Pro proceeded to "duet" with Slum Village drummer Daru Jones and then an impressive array of jazz instrumentalists shared the stage with rap vet and amateur comic Jeru da Damaja, bringing life to his undiminished classic The Sun Rises in the East. But Jeru, a relative newbie to the scene, didn't allow for the jazz musicians--bassist Esperanza Spalding, pianist Ray Angry, saxophonists Jaleel Shaw and Marcus Strickland, trombonist Corey King, trumpeter Igmar Thomas and the aforementioned Jones--to get theirs until the end on the late J Dilla production De La Soul's "Stakes is High." It's a song heavily favored by the many jazz musicians reared when hip hop became pop, many of whom call Dilla a chief influence. Ray Angry, bobbed vehemently as he elaborated on the melody and the familiar loop, extended and improvised, similarly charged the soles of the healthy crowd that remained.
Tomorrow evening, Friday November 21st, Revive Da Live presents drummer Chris Dave (of Erykah Badu, Mint Condition and Robert Glasper's bands) and Friends at the Hip Hop Cultural Center of Harlem as part of the JazzMix festival.
Photo Credits: Large Professor and Jaleel Shaw at Le Poisson Rouge photographed by the author on Thursday, November 6, 2008.
Spotlight: Gretchen Parlato
Tags: Gretchen Parlato, Jazz
N.E.R.D. centered synesthesia in this year's pop musical conscious but Gretchen Parlato featured the sensory experience in a buoyant lyric she penned to legendary jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter's "Juju" in 2005. Included on her essential debut, and written at film scorer and jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard's behest, it reflected the concentrated wisdom Parlato brings to musicking.
Long enamored with the sounds of Brazil and, in recent years, transplanted listeners to West Africa with frequent collaborator Blue Note guitarist Lionel Loueke, her influences range from folk to New Wave to R&B to the jazz vocalists Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Nancy Wilson. In fact, her pared down cover of the Michael Jackson hit, "I Can't Help It", is a case study in genre transcendence and interpretative brilliance.
I spoke to the 32 year-old jazz singer back in the winter, a few weeks after photographing her trio at a quaint West Village date. In the two seasons since, she has toured Australia, opened for Bobby McFerrin at Carnegie Hall, recorded and performed with Esperanza Spalding, the young jazz bassist with both Bill Cosby and Questlove's imprimaturs, taken a brief medical hiatus, recovered and scored a record deal with ObliqSound.
To my delight, she is back at the mic and tonight begins a two night stint at lower Manhattan's Jazz Gallery to be followed by a flurry of dates, concentrated here in the New York area, the Southern California native's home since the summer of 2003. So what better time to share edited excerpts of our conversation, which surveyed her early augties tenure at the Thelonious Monk Institute, her pop, Brazilian and African influences and her thoughts on the future of jazz.
Spotlight: Ayinde Howell
Tags: Ayinde Howell, Film, Interview, Music
The irrepressible Ayinde Howell is equally at home on stage, on set and in the kitchen. The Pacific Northwest transplant to Brooklyn stars in James Spooner's most recent film, the festival stalwart, "White Lies, Black Sheep," playing now in Brooklyn as part of the fourth annual Afro Punk festival but he's also a sharp-eared producer, rousing poet and emcee and successful restaurateur. Fresh from a photo shoot Thursday, the ever busy Howell shot me an e-mail responding to a few of my questions on his background and current projects.
VIBE: You are a rapper/actor/chef/producer? How did you become a jack of so many trades?
Howell: Deejaying is what got me started in the whole performance thing. I started that at fifteen then took a hiatus into the family business by partnering with my dad to open Hillside Quickies Vegan Sandwich Shop in Seattle next door to the University of Washington. In the course of about "three years of hiding behind the pots and pans," as a close friend put it, I had met and fed the likes of Saul Williams, Dead Prez, Erykah Badu Common, Blackalicious and the Last Poets! My place became known as "the Hip Hop Vegan Spot" and I was back stage at so many concerts, the music was just calling out to me.
At the time, I was heavily into spoken word, which lead to me writing, producing, directing and performing two one man shows. That still was not enough, so I gave my half of the sandwich shop to my sister and moved to Los Angeles to pursue music with one of my long time collaborators from Seattle who promptly decided to quit music the day I arrived. The rest of my time in Los Angeles was tumultuous and short-lived. I landed back in Seattle and was offered a lead in an inde film called "Urbanworld" opposite Ishmael Butler of Digable Planets. After wrapping that film, I recorded my first album, American Hero Vol. I. It was then I started to realize I could produce the music I heard in my head.
You have produced and collaborated with so many artists. Can you identify three songs from various projects that best represent your style?
My style as a producer is like me: different. I really like "Freedom 2tha Kings" featuring Buttafly of Digable Planets, "NoWar" featuring S.Sweets, both of which are on my last EP the SecretLife of PorchMonkeys
For those who may not be aware, what is SecretLife of PorchMonkeys?
The Secretlife of Porchmonkeys is a concept EP I produced along with my studio collaborator Bubba Jones. It's title is a reference to how I feel like I am viewed as a hip hop kid in this time in Hip hop. I tell people I'm a rapper and they are like, "Oh, well good luck with that." It has such a heavy stigma to it that I've wondered what if nobody ever knows that I had this whole secret life, and I'm not just some dude with a label on the rapper rack.
You are a Northwest native. What challenges and advantages arise for artists coming up out there and why did you decided to relocate to Brooklyn?
Seattle is a great place to grow something to put it on a stage and be very creative and if you are good at what you do but you hit the ceiling fast. After reaching that point, I thought this was a perfect time to leave so I moved to Brooklyn armed with my talent and a whole lot of ambition with my sights on conquering new ground.
Your film "While Lies, Black Sheep" deals with tokenism and racial disillusionment. What drew you to the role and what experiences were you able to draw on to lend credence to your character?
Actually, Afro Punk drew me to James Spooner, and in classic Brooklyn serendipitous fashion we kept running into each other. With good timing, some luck and a long auditioning process, I landed the role 6 months after landing in New York. The first thing I identified with in my character, AJ, was him being an outcast amongst his own people. I grew up Rastafarian in a smaller town 30 minutes south of Seattle called Tacoma in the eighties and was Vegan, with dreadlocks everywhere and home schooled long before it was cool. Niggas had a field day with me and my sisters, so it gave me a lot of fodder to fuel AJ. AJ is a kid I would always see and wonder what his story was and I wanted to honor that as much as possible in doing so it took me outside of my comfort zone in masculinity music, and identity.
What's next for you?
Up next on the radar is me with my nose to the grind and my head in the stars. Check for me.
"White Lies, Black Sheep" plays this Sunday, July 6 at 7pm, Monday, July 7 at 6:50pm and Tuesday, July 8 at 7pm at BAM Rose Cinemas in Brooklyn, New York. Click here to purchase tickets.
Bubbling Under: Algebra Blessett Part II
Tags: Algebra Blessett, Music, Soul
Although Algebra Blessett's debut, Purpose, was long in the making, she revealed not even a hint of bitterness in our telephone conversation this past March. Reflecting back on her industry tenure, she laughed, "I'm always getting with people when they be transitioning. It's crazy. I'm like the transition queen." But under the direction of Kedar Massenburg who she's been aligned with since he parted with Motown, her album finally saw release this past February. Here is part 2 of my interview with Algebra, which finds her elaborating on her childhood in the church and the message behind her music. (For part 1, click here.)
On the reason why she sings
When my pastor...would ask me to sing, I'd be like, "no." I wouldn't do it. We had a small church and I wouldn't do it sometimes because I wasn't moved to do it but I will tell you this: whenever I did sing in church it was so from the heart because I needed it first. It wasn't to entertain anybody. So I think that's the difference.
Singing in church, some people can get up every single Saturday and sing and I was never that person. I sang when the lord told me to sing. So I would sing for myself first. ...Even now, in performing, every time I get behind a mic, I feel like I do it for myself first because I need it to get through the next hour, to get through the next day, to get through my life period. And I feel like if I have that purpose of doing it, then I can reach somebody else. It's all honest no matter what it is. It's kind of like my pulpit when I'm on stage. That's my pulpit and however I want to carry out my service, that's what God has allowed me to do. I know it sounds selfish, and I'm an Aries so I can me selfish sometimes, but I feel like if I can't help myself, then I can't help nobody else.
"Everything is Valid": Young Jazz Trumpeter Christian Scott's Diverse Universe
Tags: Christian Scott, Jazz, Music
Christian Scott at the Blue Note Jazz Club, New York (10.22.07)
"I still can't tell the difference between good and bad police," explained trumpeter Christian Scott Monday night from the Blue Note bandstand before charging into "Litany Against Fear." A swelling bulwark to injustice, the song was written after Scott's encounter with a Black boy terror-stricken by the New Orleans police's unprovoked detention of the his big brother. Revealing that he too had been repeatedly culled for police line ups, Scott and band capped a six song set with drama and dexterity before autographing CDs, posing for pictures and mashing it up with members of the packed New York club. Scott, who expressed surprise at show's start that so many had shown up for the Monday night gig, played with an alacrity and aptitude befitting a man familiar with selling out venues and, indeed, secured his current record deal with Concord Music Group by playing to throngs at the Virgin Megastore in Boston, where he attended Berklee College of Music.
While the set tackled fear and loss, Scott, couched it with a good deal of humor, exhibiting a star quality that will soon be on display in the new George Clooney movie, Leatherheads. In this second installment of our interview with Scott (conducted prior to his Blue Note performance), the New Orleans native spoke to his forays in film and the entire span of his creative ventures, from his recent release, Anthem
New Slang: Young Jazz Trumpeter Christian Scott on Sound & Substance
Tags: Christian Scott, Jazz, Music
Photo Credit: Kiel Scott
24-year-old trumpeter Christian Scott called in for this interview late and breathless. Detained at a New York subway stop after a car carrying him was besieged by a gun-brandishing cop despite no sign of criminal activity amongst the commuters, he was aghast and a little bit amused at the sheer ridiculousness that ensued. The 'only in New York' moment just briefly fazed the quick witted New Orleans native who remains confounded by the storm of ineptitude and indifference that flooded his birthplace, a catastrophe he assails on his sophomore album Anthem
