There has been an explosion of composer, trumpeter and teacher Wadada Leo Smith’s music on disc in the past ten years. Smith has certainly maintained a prolific pace since his Kabell records of the early 1970s, but the scope and frequency of his works, and, fortunately, their recognition, are on the upswing. Najwa continues a series of dedicatory suites of varying size and breadth embracing human and natural subjects. Four of the five pay homage to composer/performers long and recently departed, while the fifth, the title track, simply and enigmatically references “a love lost.” Guitarists Henry Kaiser, Michael Gregory Jackson, Brandon Ross and grandson Lamar Smith are joined by bassist Bill Laswell, Smith on trumpet and percussionists Pheeroan akLaff and Adam Rudolph. Laswell also occupies the production chair.
Describing Smith’s work is as intimidating as hearing it is enlightening. Tracing his diverse yet unified development from those Kabell years through recent releases on a multitude of labels, a sense of the musician as sculptor emerges with startling clarity. In Laswell’s hands, Najwa’s five portraits are as finely chiseled as anything from 1971’s Creative Music. The title piece’s juxtaposition of lush sustains, plucked pointillisms and spacious trumpet exhortations tells the whole story in a three-minute distillation, sliding in and out of existence with a nostalgic flicker. Smith’s Billie Holiday tribute, “The Empress, Lady Day: In a Rainbow Garden, with Yellow-Gold Hot Springs, Surrounded by Exotic Plants and Flowers,” is constructed in similar fashion but with more layers. In both cases, the ever-morphing and heavily reverbed and delayed sustains anchor everything from sound stage’s center, trumpet radiating outward slightly in soft focus, while the guitars reside up close, dotting the soundstage at various points across the spectrum. On “Empress,” akLaff’s drums embrace everything in wide and slow dances of metal and skin, the bite and ring of cymbals complementing each string and drone as it slides by. Smith’s trumpet phrasing captures Lady Day’s behind the beat aesthetic with uncanny perfection, making this his most complex and effective portrait of the great vocalist and one of the most moving to have been recorded.
The other pieces sport sections of stone groove and cosmic quasi-repetition, spacy sounds merging to create a near-stillness amidst multifarious pulse and syncopation. These mini-suites, as Smith labels them, may have their genesis in the briefer but equally changeable structures of one of their dedicatees. “Ohnedaruth John Coltrane: The Master of Cosmic Music and his Spirituality in A Love Supreme” consists of two grooves separated by a section of airy electric rhythmic concision, dead center in the sound field. The grooves support everything from slow funk to all-out guitar squall, but expert mixing ensures that not a single detail is lost as a constantly evolving layer of drums and percussion create what Coltrane would have called multi-directional rhythms.
Smith’s compositions continue to inhabit a space somewhere between celestial beauty and raw earthy power. His ecstatic paean to Ronald Shannon Jackson is as visceral as anything Jackson himself committed to tape, and the opening melody of Smith’s Ornette Coleman homage evokes shades of Coleman’s intervallically complex heads. To hear the Coleman suite as it moves from explosive energy toward serenity is to experience the unfolding of creative music at its finest. Smith inhabits the worlds heralded by these pioneering voices while expanding, blurring and dissolving their boundaries. His playing presents nuance and feeling akin to every step along each compositional path. I can’t help but think of post-1950 Stravinsky when considering the consistency of Smith’s recent work. Each ensemble, electric or otherwise, becomes orchestral in the most innovative sense, avoiding cliché while relishing its implications. Long may it continue.
If a musician’s test is the ability to project an individualized sound, guitarist Tim Stine has passed the test. Stine moved to Chicago a dozen years ago after growing up in North Dakota and studying in Minnesota and Ohio, and since then has followed the city’s pathway to relevance by working as a concert series organizer and an astute sideman as well as an idiosyncratic presence on his instrument. His winding compositions don’t fall easily into either the straight ahead or outside camp, any more than his playing falls into the trap of gratuitously flashing technique. On Stine’s two most recent records, the trio date Fresh Demons (Astral Spirits) reviewed here by Tim Clarke and the quartet session Knots (Clean Feed), he develops his melodies patiently, but spikes them with reversals, dissonances and tempo change-ups that’ll keep you leaning forward just to catch where he’ll go next.
Michael Gregory Jackson — Clarity
Michael Gregory Jackson is one of my acoustic guitar heroes. Compositionally, I don’t think we have much in common, but I have been poking around with his improvisations for years. This record is my favorite of his, and features Oliver Lake (who I also love to listen to), Leo Smith and David Murray. I was introduced to this album by some older musicians in Chicago, whom I respect very much.
Experimental Sound Studio — The Quarantine Concerts
Lots of great stuff coming out of ESS since the pandemic started. It has made me feel connected to music (again) in a way that I haven’t felt since this all began. Please tune in and donate if you can.
Summer Walker — “CPR”
I love modern R&B. Summer Walker has all of the stuff I like about 80’s classics (she has a light Sade vibe), but is of course very modern too. Her Last Days of Summer recording is my favorite pop music of the last 3-4 years. Nobody better ask me to do an R&B record, because I’ll do it in a second. (I know that won’t happen).
“Justice in June” — A resource compiled by Autumn Gupta with Bryanna Wallace’s oversight for the purpose of providing a starting place for individuals trying to become better allies
A friend sent this to me recently, and I’ve found it very helpful. This is a Google Doc that was put together by friends of friends, and it’s arranged by how much time you have to spend each day to educate yourself on how to be a better ally. It’s 15 pages and plenty of links, and even weekly plans. There are books recommended and talks and other things, but what I can appreciate most about it is that they have also included action items. Who to call, who to write, and what to do? Here is a great place to start, if you haven’t already.
Rob Mazurek and Jeff Parker Duo — Live @ Serralheria, Sao Paulo on Dec 17th, 2013
I’ve spent a lot of time with these two individually and as a duo too. This is a beautiful snippet from a performance in Brazil from 2013. This hints at so, so many styles of music and sound. I don’t care what kind of music it is. What have these two done and still do for Chicago music? There’s no telling. Also, shoutout Rob’s Octet Galactic Ice Skeleton, with hero John Herndon on drums, and Jeff’s The Relatives, my favorite Chicago guitar record.
The Melvins — Ozma
What can I say? I’m from North Dakota and there’s a lot of metal and metalheads. When a kid turns 15 in North Dakota, they are issued a copy of Lysol and Houdini. I love those recordings too, but didn’t find this one until much later. It’s everything I love about them, but better. The sort of crappy recording quality adds to its ‘it'. DRUMS!
Jon Hassell — “Last Night the Moon Came Dropping its Clothes in the Street”
Modern trumpet/sound master making deeply creative music in his 70’s at the time this was filmed. I first heard the ECM album that this tune is from right when it came out 10 years ago, and it hasn’t left my mind the whole time. Sometimes I can get dragged down by the influences I hear in music and here, I do not care at all, I just want to hear this. Fourth world music.
Joe Lovano — Rush Hour
A friend played this for me recently. Gunther Schuller arranged and conducted everything on here. I love his arrangements on the John Lewis album, The Modern Jazz Society Presents a Concert of Contemporary Music. My mother is a choral conductor and I’ve long been fascinated with the use of voice compositionally. It’s perfect here. especially on “Prelude to a Kiss.” This whole album feels like a dream. Lovano plays like how I think I play when I’m dreaming.
Luther Vandross — “A House is not a Home”
This is vocal mastery. Everything about it is perfect. I cry every time I hear this. There is no vocal pop music that hits harder than this. No autotune, not a bunch of production bullshit. His band (on his most famous records) would record the track and then Luther would come in and sing along and do the take. Check out this interview with Nat Adderley Jr. and Marcus Miller about their experience with him.
Paul Desmond (with Jim Hall) — “Easy Living”
There are a bunch of these records, and I’m sure you’ve heard at least a few of them; Bossa Antigua, Desmond Blue, Easy Living, and Glad to be Unhappy are my favorites. The link above is “Easy Living,” from the record of the same name. I can understand if you don’t like this — or lots of other things on this list — but it speaks to me. This has calmed me in ways I didn’t expect to be needed to be calmed over the years.
