SOUNDTRACK: JLCO SEPTET WITH WYNTON MARSALIS-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #163 (February 2, 2021).
I was looking for some era-appropriate music for this post, then I saw this Tiny desk from Wynton Marsalis which hearkens back to big band but is very contemporary (just like this story).
Marsalis has been writing music about democracy and the call for justice for decades. “I hope that the social and political corruption and turmoil of these times cast a light on the individual investment required to maintain a libertarian democracy,” he wrote on his blog in January. “May the events of these times inspire us all to engage even more deeply in the rights and responsibilities we have as citizens.” Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra Septet recorded their Tiny Desk (home) concert at Dizzy’s Club, or what they call “the house of swing.”
The first of the three pieces is called “Sloganize, Patronize, Realize, Revolutionize (Black Lives Matters),” a six and a half minute instrumental that features tasty solos from just about everyone.
“Sloganize, Patronize, Realize, Revolutionize (Black Lives Matters),” [is] a bold statement about humanity and the consequences of racism. Marsalis says this piece — as well as the rest of the music on his new album, The Democracy! Suite — deals with the timeless human issues we see exacerbated during the times of the pandemic, like social challenges and matters of the heart.
It’s got a big swinging intro and then things settle down for individual moments. First Walter Blanding plays a grooving tenor saxophone solo. Wynton takes a bright trumpet solo. Carlos Henriquez gets a little upright bass solo action and has a little back and forth with Obed Calvaire on drums. I often wonder if these solos are written out, or if they follow a general guideline or if they are all improvised.
After a return to the main melody, Ted Nash gets a very different sounding alto saxophone solo after which Elliot Mason plays a ripping trombone solo. Dan Nimmer plays a slightly dissonant piano solo before the band returns to the main theme and brings it all home.
The next two pieces of the suite run uninterrupted into each other.
“Deeper than Dreams” is a reverential piece Marsalis wrote for those who have lost loved ones during the pandemic. Marsalis … lost his father, the legendary pianist and jazz patriarch, Ellis Marsalis, to complications from COVID-19 last spring, and [he] speaks affectionately of “the times when our old folks come and sit with us in the spirit realm when we are sleeping.”
This piece starts slow and swoony. This time the solos are more duos. With Marsalis and Nash playing together, then Blanding and Mason going back and forth and finally a piano and bass moment for Nimmer and Henriquez.
To close, “That Dance We Do (That You Love Too)” is playful and funky and inspires a hopeful message, one that Marsalis says is “for everybody who got out and got down during this time on behalf of freedom.”
This final piece opens up with a funky introduction. Nimmer mutes the piano strings as he plays a sound that sounds like a guitar. The bass brings in a funky rhythm and then the horns all go to town. The biggest surprise comes when Blanding brings out a tiny saxophone that looks almost like a toy and yet he plays a wicked and wild solo on it.
Then Marsalis plays a muted raw trumpet solo–he gets some wild and crazy sounds.
Obed Calvaire never gets a drum solo per se, but his work throughout the songs is always interesting and complex with all kind of nice percussion and rhythm.
This was a really fun set.
[READ: March 15, 2021] Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem
I saw this book at work and thought it might be a reprinted Blaxploitation novel. But in fact, this is an entirely new book.
I also didn’t realize that Matthew Henson was a real person. I’m embarrassed not to know that but I see that it was almost by design that I didn’t know who he was.
Henson was an American explorer who was one of the first people to reach the geographic North Pole. He was essentially partners with Robert Peary on several voyages to the Arctic over a period of 23 years. [I’d never heard of Peary either, so I didn’t feel too bad about not having heard of Henson]. But unsparingly, upon the success of reaching the North Pole, it was Peary who received the accolades and Henson was dismissed as his helper or even his servant. Henson received nothing for his work and wound up languishing until many years later when his work was finally recognized:
In 1937 he became the first African American to be made a life member of The Explorers Club; in 1948 he was elevated to the club’s highest level of membership. In 1944 Henson was awarded the Peary Polar Expedition Medal, and he was received at the White House by Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. [He died in 1955]. In 1988 he and his wife were re-interred at Arlington National Cemetery. In 2000 Henson was posthumously awarded the Hubbard Medal by the National Geographic Society.
So that’s the background.
In this story, Henson has come back from his expedition and has been making a name for himself as a kind of hero for hire. It’s a wonderful conceit and a great way to get attention for a man who deserves more name recognition. Also very cool is that the book includes Bessie Coleman, (the first African American and Native American woman to earn a pilot’s license–although she had to go to France to earn it since America wouldn’t give her one). (more…)
I Just Read About That... 