Cycling through jazz - a Sisyphean Romp!

Hey Joe Henderson! What we got here: Moving through the cycle, starting with early, hot jazz from Illinois Jacquet; a brisk blues from the Duke and his orchestra (Paul Gonsalves’ tenor sax goes all tough and bluesy); to the chillest Miles Davis trumpet and funereal accompaniment from the soundtrack ‘Elevator to the Gallows’: he meets the occasion. What you hear next is a lengthy cut by Keith Jarrett, hypnotic in its repeated bass line and vivacious clean living on the keyboard. A couple of tempo changes serve to highlight a sax entry and the rhythm section once more – all in all, 12 minutes well spent. And then there’s even more... not that the other major talents in this week’s playlist don’t merit their own brief but succinct (?) evaluation from yours truly.

Alas, it’s just that I’m suddenly thinking that an attempt to define a jazz tune and translate its meaning into words. It's a Sisyphean task! When at the SF Museum of Modern Art, I read the descriptive cards alongside works of art that. To my way of thinking, these are often little more than inscrutable justifications for some critic’s PhD thesis. The psychological underpinnings that inspire the creation of a painting, sculpture, and yes, music, seem a little too subjective for me to go there. Adjectives are fun to fling but really, I want the musicians themselves, in this case, to tell us what just transpired and why. And they do! All you’ve got to do is listen. No matter what anyone says, interpretation is all your own.

Al compás del mundo - programa listo #182, 5-29-25 – jazz

01 Illinois Jacquet - South Street Special

02 Duke Ellington - More Blues

03 Miles Davis - Générique (soundtrack from the French film ‘Elevator to the Gallows’)

04 Keith Jarrett - De Drums

05 Joe Henderson - A Shade of Jade

06 Larry Young – If

07 Eddie Harris - I Don't Want No One but You

08 Mose Allison - Gimcracks and Gewgaws

09 Yusef Lateef - Ching Miau

10 Roy Hargrove - O My Seh Yeh

11 Gerry Mulligan - What's the Rush

Colleague Jack links here to a write-up on Moon Traveller on Mose.

Comments

Guitarras del mundo

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Electric Chicago blues

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India y Nepal y Tibet

W here a human voice is heard in today’s program it’s often starkly different from what most Westerners might find pleasing and melodic. But I must remind my listeners that the West probably did not invent the concept of vocalizing as accompaniment to plucked/blown/percussed musical instruments. Why do we sing in the style that we do? I imagine there are knowledgeable tomes wrestling with that idea. I ’ve read that vocals were meant to imitate the sounds made by instruments...or vice versa? The chicken or the egg? I’m not here to answer that question, in spite of the college course I had taken of “Music Cultures of the World” decades ago. What I offer is the opportunity to pay attention to and digest musical expressions performed by people steeped in the traditional ways of their culture. T here is a geographic component to lumping together India, Nepal and Tibet as the Himalayas served to isolate and circumscribe the peoples of those northern regions. But here’s where I fud...

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