Al compas del mundo - programa #111

Al compas del mundo - programa #111 - Whither Jazz?

The funny thing about jazz is that a sizable percentage of today’s younger generation cannot relate. Or so I’m told by my sons who fit that demographic and taste (or lack thereof). Were we like that back in the day? I, myself, began learning about the genre as a college student living in Milwaukee. Admittedly I never paid a lot of attention to jazz until an old grade school friend turned up in town and I let him crash in my room for a while. He travelled light: his trumpet and a handful of records stand out in my memory. Through him I heard Stanley Turrentine’s sax, Blue Mitchell’s trumpet, and Horace Silver’s piano. I immediately dug the “cool” element and the “out there” aesthetic. It’s been a musical motivator ever since. Go to most any jazz concert today and in attendance will be a sea of grayhairs. Don’t know what that portends for the music we call jazz – whose definition has been liberally extended in most every direction over time – but I’m hoping that moment of satori (awakening, comprehension) visits our youth and broadens their artistic perspective to include a relationship with “American classical music”, AKA, jazz. -JH

Run List for Jazz
First broadcast 1-18-24

01 Dizzy Gillespie – Pensativo

02 Terry Gibbbs - Scrapple from the Apple

03 Jackie McLean - Goin' Away Blues

04 James Carter - JC on the Set

05 Ian Carey Quintet +1 – I

06 Terence Blanchard - Dark Room

07 Randy Weston - Loose Wig

08 SF Jazz Collective - Tell Me a Bedtime Story

09 John Coltrane and Miles Davis - 'Round Midnight

Beat me with a plate of scrapple

Comments

Al compás del mundo - programa #99 - Los Folkloristas

This week’s Al compás del mundo earns a pair of dedications. Primarily, to Las Folkloristas, a group of Mexican musicians who first came together in 1966 and who continue to the present day, delighting their public and educating them as to the breadth of folk music genres and instrumentation found in every corner of Latin America. The second dedication is to me and my sweetheart wife Claudia – we met at a concert of Los Folkloristas at the Sala Agora in Mexico City, in 1976. And yes, we too are still together. Get out your handkerchiefs and dry your eyes because there’s a story to be told as evidence that there’s a soulmate out there for everyone. You just have to make the effort to look, even if it takes you to a foreign land. And so it goes like this: I spent all of 1976 living in Mexico City, ostensibly to learn Spanish, but en realidad to loaf around, drink beer, practice my saxophone, and maybe, just maybe, look to meet a señorita. I lived in a pension (boardinghouse) owned by Jul...

Al compas del mundo, programa #92 - Japan

The Japanese historically have been a most creative people, excelling in aesthetic conventions like architecture, painting, culinary arts, theatre, music, and more. A craftsman’s care and an artist’s flair have come to define everyday household objects such as articles of clothing and kitchen ware, designed with a sensibility that imbues them with import and elevated status. After WWII in the United States however, an item inscribed “made in Japan” usually indicated a tchotchke of mediocre quality. A perfect example is the large number of Northwest Coast Native American-style bone totem poles made for the tourist shops in the Northwest. There is a distinctive difference in these “artifacts” from the real, home-made variety that illustrates someone from another culture tackling aesthetics they don’t fully comprehend. And that leads us to some of this week’s musical choices. Imitating Western pop, rock and jazz, Japanese artists have recorded many forgettable efforts – not unlike those o...

Al compas del mundo - programa #114 - potpourri of fun, fun, fun

Fun, Fun, Fun. And I do mean fun. Sometimes this summary of a weekly radio show veers off to a serious side, but not today. Not with this batch of winners. Not when we’re leading off with Los Xochimilcas. Like a mix of The Three Stooges and Spike Jones, they clamor for a round of “pulque for two!” with an eloquent danzón accompaniment. Then there’s Pigbag showing off some serious jazz chops…but is it jazz? Then again, who cares? Why fret over labels when we’re here to have fun?! So The Magnetic Fields’ tune isn’t exactly light-hearted glee and all, but fun comes in many packages. I had fun when I first heard I Die You Die. They sounded like the Velvet Underground had they hailed from West Virginia instead of New York. That’s not fun? Relatively speaking, there’s always room for Ennio Morricone. That lonesome whistle thrills me, along with the chorus of grunting injuns. A Spaghetti Western at its stereotypical best. Allen Toussaint, by the way, is one hell of a song writer, in cas...

Search This Blog