So, my journey with jazz has been a long on and off type relationship. I'll just man up and say it's my fault. I could blame it on a number of things..ignorance, impatience, immaturity..blah, blah. But if i could be even more self centered for a second, I'm not traveling on jazz's journey. It's traveling on mine. I have this image of my grandfather sitting on the porch after the sun had set and everybody had finished eating this obscenely delicious meal prepared by hands that knew what to do with what they had. And after the kitchen had been emptied of kids and aunts, and the dishes, the same ones my Mama ate off when she grew up there, were all cleaned and put away, we kids would be outside in the dark yard catching fireflies and runnin' off some of them carbs and Grandad would be on that porch with his ubiquitous pipe and heady, flavorful smoke listening to jazz. That was a cool dude and I didn't really know how cool until reflection and hindsight.
Growing up in New York, I remember Mom and Pops collection consisted of soul, disco and R&B but was still pretty varied. They had all the stuff that people play at parties and cookouts to this day to rock the house. Everything from Temps, Marvin Gaye and Stevie and alot of Motown in general to the Spinners, Earth Wind and Fire, et. al. The only jazz i really remember was more contemporary type jazz like Quincy Jones, Chuck Mangione, Herb Alpert, Grover Washington, etc. It wasn't until i was experimenting with sampling that I really first started "seeing" what the jazz was offering. This was when my friends and i would start "collecting" vinyl from various sources. Which, by the way, seemed easier back then because by that time numerous technologies had come, and gone in some cases, since vinyl, like 8-track, cassette and just before cd's were popular. Many people viewed their vinyl collections as bulky and cumbersome and collectors of dust. Now they're considered "vintage" and you can see $50 price tags or better on some stuff. Shit, not the kid. I won't pay more than 10 bucks for it. Just a rule.
Anyway, back in those mad scientist, crate diggin', sample-chopping halcyon all-nighters, many times we didn't listen to the whole album or song. When i say "we" i mean my production crew "The Black Hippies" which was me, Serious, Mr. Beats, Aloe, and Maestro, although everyone has since gone their own ways and surely developed their own thing. But for me i rarely listened to the whole joint. I know, a travesty, right? It wasn't until i matured more musically that i began to "see" the music and the musicianship. What MC's call freestyling, which is improvised and impromptu rhyme, was already being done by jazz cats..with instruments. This was CREATION!! In my mind it's a microcosm of creation in the highest order. A simple melody (atom, molecule, quark, gobbledy-gook..) and the cosmic spark to imagine it being something else. Something unique and beautiful and....a "uniquely American" institution, as i recently heard it described. Ok.
Today my collection is...eh, i got a few. Not as many as some folks' that I've seen. I have been enriched by recordings from Milt Jackson, Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ), Jazz Brothers, Art Blakey, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Miles, Weather Report, Lee Morgan...pfft, i could go on. I can only endeavor to create good music and in full expression of my self be myself. There is so much plastic passed off as popular music because people are lazy. Folks don't do enough "crate-diggin'" anymore. There is some really good gems of hip hop out there that i call Jupiter Jazz and i know that many of the jazz folk are set as to what is jazz and what isn't and i respect that but in my world good music is good music and let everyone else worry about what to label it or what box to fit it in comfortably or not so.
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