New York Amsterdam News - Black Music Month

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Rap: Its antecedents and descendants

By HERB BOYD Special to the AmNews

Doo-wop, bebop, and hip-hop have more than an alliterative sound commonality: Each is an indigenous music with roots and extensions inseparably connected to the African American blues continuum. While each possesses unique and distinct standalone elements, they all evolved from an expressive center, a fulcrum where innovation, improvisation, and spontaneity thrive. Parsing bebop and hip-hop essentially means examining how jazz and rap blend, something that Guru and Donald Byrd merged in 1993 with “Jazzmatazz,” a pioneering, genrebending album.

Even before Guru advanced his creativity, intimations of jazz and the spoken word were evident in scatting or vocalese, most notably in the recordings of Eddie Jefferson; King Pleasure; Babs Gonzales; and Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross.

Scatting came into existence almost accidentally, when Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong was forced to utter some nonsense words, a kind of onomatopoeia sounds that approximated the actual words after his songsheet fell from the stand, and singer Ella Fitzgerald perfected this invention. As for vocalese, Jefferson penned the lyrics to James Moody’s solo on “I’m in the Mood for Love,” but Pleasure made it famous.

Here is the first stanza which was requisite for anyone claiming to be a jazz aficionado:

“There I go, there I go/There I go/Pretty baby, you are the soul who snaps my control

Such a funny thing but every time you’re near me, I never can behave

You give me a smile and then I’m wrapped up in your magic/

There’s music all around me, crazy music

Music that keeps calling me so very close to you

Turns me your slave…”

To some extent, the commentaries the Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers interpolated into their performances and recordings are part of this evolutionary trend. In the ’60s and ’70s, the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron took the concept to another plateau, fusing the music with didactic political messages.

In the late ’80s, when Gang Starr sampled Dizzy Gillespie’s famous song “A Night In Tunisia,” a harbinger of something new was on the horizon. The rapper followed up this pathbreaking hit with his debut LP, “No More Nice Guy,” and “Jazz Thing,” which, as part of the soundtrack of “Mo Better Blues,” gave the fusion of jazz and rap a popular

and commercial buzz.

The vernacular blend was given additional clout with Eric B & Rakim’s “Don’t Sweat the Technique,” where an acoustic bass embellishes the rap.

Here is a taste of Eric B & Rakim’s “Paid in Full,” from 1987:

“It’s been a long time, I shouldn’t have left you Without a strong rhyme to step to Think of how many weak shows you slept through Time’s up, I’m sorry I kept you...

Even if it’s jazz or the quiet storm

I hook a beat up, convert it into hip-hop form

Write a rhyme in graffiti in every show you see me in

Deep concentration ’cause I’m no comedian....”

It was almost inevitable that rap would fit comfortably in the militant rhetoric of Black power activists, a development that author Marcus Reeves fully explored in his book “Somebody Scream! Rap Music’s Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power” (2008). Reeves posits that rap music and Black Power were linked for many years. He explains how his thesis evolved, taking its genesis from the creations of Rakim, Public Enemy, Tupac Shakur, and DMX, and tucking it neatly into an understanding he gathered from the late Amiri Baraka and his book Blues People. “Each phase of the Negro’s music [is] issued directly from the dictates of his social and psychological environment,” Baraka wrote.

In effect, a crucial entanglement of sociocultural factors is at play with each new iteration of Black music, and it’s still quite fascinating to experience the recent developments and techno commands in the airwaves, concerts, and body movements. At the end of his book, Reeves is not sure where rap or hip-hop or its various offshoots will go: “Whether it lives or gradually fades from the larger commercial space remains to be seen, but rap has most definitely established itself as one of the most important art forms leading to the twenty-first century, anchoring itself as the heartbeat of an American story that continues to turbulently keep on...to the break of dawn.”

And as Guru rapped, “Peace to the pioneers, but I gotta try and clear my throat, check out what I wrote, you can’t tap into this unless you know the roots…”

Jazz and hip-hop: A longtime collaboration

By DAVE GOODSON

Special to the AmNews

That beautiful, eclectic mosaic of races, creeds, and colors, getting down just for the funk of it, as prophesied by visionary George Clinton, was first manifested and crystallized in the most unusual of places: the crates of hiphop DJs. Nothing was spared in that endless search to find the most obscure pieces to help differentiate the various platter-spinners while keeping the party people movin’ and intrigued. Heads would scour any and all places within their vicinity where vinyl was available, hoping to strike gold. Often, the first places to search were the collections of our family. In my personal search, I’d always notice one theme: A few pieces had an extra layer of plastic to preserve the prosperity of the album cover. As for the actual records, they were handled gingerly around the edges with both hands, making sure not to get fingerprints on the plate.

They were also played when the company was around—not the regular folks, the ones who dressed like they were headed to some-

place fancy after. The ones you pulled out the good silverware and dishes from the china closet for because that night, the chicken legs would be eaten with a fork. The ones when proper English was the order of the night. This music in the atmosphere meant you had to level up all around.

That was the power wielded by jazz music. I was left hoping that the music that I was growing up with would buck the odds and grow to have that kind of respect.

It looks like that fateful day has arrived. Upon recognition of the 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop Culture, some of the music spawned from the movement is almost on par artistically with jazz and fiscally, it’s comfortably distanced itself. This comes in a major part by the embracing of the collaboration of the be-bop/jazz community that preceded us. It was a marriage that was bound to happen as we realized the style of music was all that separated our eras.

Poverty, persecution, and pain were still pillars of both cultures, despite the artistic strides. Hell, the Strange Fruit that hung from trees in Goddamn Mississippi in the 1930s still hover

over kids coming home from a local store in Florida or riding the F Train in New York. OGs Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones reached out and both cultures shared Grammy Awards.

Skeptics emerged from both sides, saying those successes were experimental and even forced. To their chagrin, newer torch-bearers of jazz emerged, and they have been heavily influenced by what hip-hop does. Now, when projects like Buckshot LeFonque, Jazzmatazz, RH Factor, or August Greene emerge, the music is organic.

Chris Rob, friend of the Nightlife column, recording artist, producer, and music director, grew up creatively planted in both genres and noted, “I think that hip-hop producers and jazz musicians are similar in that the primary goal is to make something tangible for the streets...nothing pop, nothing watered down, but rather a raw sound that is soul-satisfying— an authentic sound that resonates cool and provokes reflection.”

When asked for a prime example of what that sounds like, he offered, “One of my favorite hip-hop samples is ‘93 til Infinity,’ which samples Billy Cobham’s ‘Heather.’ The chord progression is so haunting, and instantly signifies depth from beat one. The sample, combined with the boom-bap drums provided by producer A-Plus (a sample of Larry Graham’s ‘The Jam’ drum solo), created one of the most hypnotic hip-hop classics of all time. It sets the tone of instant cool, smoked- out, backpack vibes that bookmark one of the most creative peaks in Black music. “ Copy. I have a few to add to that. Tune in next week to see if you agree.

The AmNews' review of of Guru’s groundbreaking album “Jazzmatazz Volume 1 (An Experimental Fusion of Hip-Hop and Jazz)”

From the March 2, 1991 issue of the AmNews

(Image by Jorge Jimenez from Pixabay)

Books for future hip-hop heads

“She Raised Her Voice! 50 Black Women Who Sang Their Way Into Music History,” the upcoming “A Child’s Introduction to Hip-Hop: The Beats, Rhymes, and Roots of a Musical Revolution” (both by AmNews contributor Jordannah Elizabeth); and “A Child’s Introduction to Jazz: The Musicians, Culture, and Roots of the World’s Coolest Music” by Jabari Asim, are all great books to give young folks a solid grounding in hiphop history and its relation to other genres. For more info, visit www.hachettebookgroup.com.

Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett spent part of his early career playing fusion. He played electric organ and electric piano on several Miles Davis albums from the fusion era. He quickly returned to the acoustic piano and went on to greater fame. Jarrett left the Davis band in 1971. In 1973 he performed a series of recitals showcasing his brilliant talent for improvisation. An album recorded at a 1975 performance, The Köln Concert is considered a masterpiece. It’s also one of the best-selling solo piano albums of all time. Although he continued to present solo concerts throughout his career, he didn’t always play alone. He also led successful quartets in Europe and the United States.

The Godfather of Rap

Because he often recited highly musical rhymes, Gil Scott-Heron has been called the godfather of rap.” A poet and musician like no other, he felt a much closer connection to jazz. Born in Chicago and raised in Tennessee and New York, he published his first novel when he was 19. His second came a year later. In 1970 he turned to music, singing, and chanting his lyrics to the accompaniment of percussion. On later albums, he worked with jazz musicians such as bassist Ron Carter and Brian Jackson, a flautist and keyboardist. Few artists have combined jazz rhythms and lyrics calling for change as skillfully as Scott-Heron. His best work includes The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” Lady Day and John Coltrane,” and Johannesburg.”

Excerpts

M-Base

The Toshiko Akiyoshi–Lew Tabackin Big Band

During a time when most jazz musicians were trying to save money by working in small groups, Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lew Tabackin did just the opposite. In 1973, the married couple formed a sixteenpiece ensemble. They were based in Los Angeles for the first nine years of the band’s existence. Then they moved to New York and changed the group’s name to The Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra featuring Lew Tabackin They continued to perform and tour until 2003. They recorded twenty-three albums and received multiple Grammy nominations. Throughout that

“A Child’s

A way of thinking about creating music, M-Base was introduced in the late 1980s by alto saxophonist Steve Coleman and several other artists. In 1991, they released their first album, Anatomy of a Groove Some members involved in M-Base have also had noteworthy solo careers. They include Cassandra Wilson (vocals), Greg Osby (saxophone), Geri Allen (piano), and Robin Eubanks (trombone).

A Tribe Called Quest

The rappers Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Jarobi White, and DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad were the members of the Tribe, among the mostacclaimed hip-hop groups ever. In 1991 they released their second album, The Low End Theory offering new connections between rap and jazz. The songs include many passages from bebop and fusion. Art Blakey, Weather Report, and Eric Dolphy are among the artists sampled. In another unusual move, the group hired hard bop legend Ron Carter to come into the studio and record the bass line for one single, Verses from the Abstract.”

The Low End Theory sold more than one million copies and is included on many lists of the best rap albums of all time.

Don Byron

As a boy in the Bronx, Don Byron took up the clarinet in hopes that it would help with his asthma. Since the 1990s, he has been regarded as one of the best at his instrument. In 1992 he recorded his first album, Tuskegee Experiments. His other albums have revisited Motown classics, the compositions of gospel greats Thomas Dorsey and Rosetta Tharpe, and klezmer, a European folk music rooted in Jewish tradition. Songs to listen to: Tuskegee Strutter’s Ball,” Didn’t It Rain”

to

time, Akiyoshi, a pianist, arranged all the music and composed nearly all the songs.

Tabackin played tenor saxophone and flute.

Born in the Manchurian region of China in 1929, Akiyoshi returned with her family to occupied Japan after World War II. In 1952, she was discovered by the great pianist Oscar Peterson, who helped her get a recording contract. She came to the U.S. to study at the Berklee School of Music, where she was the first Japanese student to enroll. Songs to listen to: Strive for Jive,” Harvest Shuffle”

A Tribe Called Quest

Joshua Redman

After graduating from Harvard University in 1991, Joshua Redman made plans for law school. Plans changed when he won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, and chose a career in music instead. The son of respected saxophonist Dewey Redman, Joshua has become a bestselling composer and bandleader. Raised in

Berkeley, California, he took up the tenor saxophone at age 10. He played in school bands through high school and college. His first album, Joshua Redman, was released in 1993. He has since recorded more than a dozen albums. Along the way, he has performed with Pat Metheny, Chick Corea, Roy Hargrove, and many others.

female rapper who was a role model for Black girls who wanted to be seen as individuals and recognized for their intelligence. Born Dana Owens, the young girl knew by age eight that she was meant to have a name that represented who she was inside. Dana searched through a book of Arabic names and landed on Latifah, which means “very kind.” Years later her chosen name would go down in history, highlighting her hard work as a rapper, singer, and actress who gave women a voice in hip-hop culture.

Excerpts from “She Raised Her Voice! 50 Black Women Who Sang Their Way Into Music History,” illustrated by Briana Dengoue

HIP-HOP

The first two words of the lyrics of the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” are “hip-hop”! The

In 1988, Queen Latifah became a beatboxer (someone who makes hip-hop beats with their mouth) for a group called Ladies Fresh in New York City, and she recorded her first song, “Princess of the Posse,” to highlight her rap skills. People connected with her early

GRANDMASTER flASH & THe fURIOUs fIVE SYLVIA ROBINSON MADE hip-hop a household name but members of the hip-hop community who came before the Sugarhill Gang didn’t take her hit record seriously. Sylvia didn’t give up. She looked for more artists in rap. In 1982 she scored another hit with Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five’s powerful and visionary rap song

Excerpts from “A Child’s Introduction to Hip Hop,” illustrated by Markia Jenai

make appearances. This is an example of the connection of white rock artists and Black hip-hop culture leaders, creating a “rap rock” tradition that would live on into the next century.

NEw SCHOOl HIp-HOp

H ip-hop and rap kept growing in 1983 and 1984. Hollywood began to tell the stories of hip-hop in South Bronx, rappers were selling millions of albums, and hip-hop fashion and language were spreading all over the world. Some people were writing stories saying that hip-hop was a “fad,” or a short-lived cultural phenomenon, that would disappear as fast as it had arrived. Little did they know that in 1983, a new era of hip-hop was getting started and would push hiphop into its rightful place in popular mainstream music and culture. This new sound and style of hip-hop was called “new school” hip-hop. While old school hip-hop was made up of sounds that borrowed from the funk and disco music

The Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra featuring Lew Tabackin

from

Introduction

Jazz,” illustrated by Jerrard K. Polk

Composer and bassist Bill Lee dies at 94

Spelman College, and they were married in 1954. As a bassist in his early 20s, he was inspired by Charlie Parker. He performed with small jazz groups in Atlanta and Chicago before moving to Brooklyn, NY, in 1959, with his bride.

Bill Lee, a jazz bassist and composer whose versatility found him in demand among a varied spectrum of music icons and genres, from Duke Ellington to Odetta, Harry Belafonte, and—of course—those memorable film scores for his son Spike Lee, died on May 24 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 94.

Spike Lee confirmed his father’s death via Instagram, sharing a series of blackand-white portraits taken by younger brother David Charles Lee.

“My father, Bill Lee, played bass on Bob Dylan’s classic song ‘It’s All Over Now, ‘Baby Blue,’ on his album ‘Bringing It All Home.’ This morning, May 24th, my father made his transition. Today is also the birthdate of Bob Dylan,” Spike Lee wrote in a tribute on Instagram.

During Lee’s six-decade career, his unique versatility as a bassist earned him a reputation as being one of the few jazz musicians to have extensively recorded with folk music icons Peter, Paul, and Mary; Woody Guthrie; Cat Stevens; Simon and Garfunkel; Tom Paxton; and Ian & Sylvia, as well as with bluesman John Lee Hooker and on Aretha Franklin’s Columbia Records album debut “Aretha” (1960). He recorded more than 250 albums, from jazz to pop and folk. Lee seemed to unconsciously gravitate toward folk music—his experience of Black life in the South was embedded in his musical compositions, which accounts for his folk operas being so successful at Town Hall, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, and the Newport Jazz Festival.

Lee was most renowned for composing those outstanding scores for his son’s early films, including “She’s Gotta Have It” (1986), “School Daze” (1988), “Do The Right Thing” (1989), and “Mo’ Better Blues” (1990). Terence Blanchard took over the scoring role starting with “Jungle Fever,” although Lee did compose two of the film’s songs.

Lee had small parts in all but “Do the Right Thing.” He first composed the score for his son’s short film, “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads,” that Spike submitted as his master’s degree thesis at the NYU film school. In 1983, it became the first student film to be showcased at Lincoln Center’s New Directors/New Films Festival.

“What an honor it was to have Bill Lee as a friend and mentor, being a lead vocalist in his band, producing and celebrating a couple of his birthday concerts, and collaborating with him as the composer of the soundtrack for my one-man play by Laurence Holder, ‘MONK,’” said jazz producer and director Rome Neal.

Lee found a blissful independence with

Strata-East Records, owned by trumpeter Charles Tolliver and pianist Stanley Cowell. There, he recorded three critically acclaimed albums, including “The Descendants of Mike and Phoebe: A Spirit Speaks,” which was a collaboration with his two sisters, Consuela Lee Moorehead, a jazz pianist and music instructor at Hampton University in Virginia, and A. Grace Lee Mims, a librarian with outstanding soprano talents. “The Brass Company: Colors” and the third album, self-titled, consisted of an ensemble that he founded and directed: the New York Bass Violin Choir, a collaboration of seven basses.

Tolliver said that recording was one of the label’s most impressive projects. “I remember vividly, the performance that Bill (presented) at Central Park—he called it ‘A Giant Trio.’ It featured Bill’s seven basses, a piano choir of seven pianos with Stanley Cowell, and Max Roach and his Um Boom

drum ensemble,” recalled Tolliver. “Man, what an incredible performance. My only regret is we didn’t record it. Bill was the personification of the Black musicians’ experience after Reconstruction. He composed the way he lived.”

William James Edwards Lee III was born in Snow Hill, Alabama, on July 23, 1928, the son of Alberta Grace (Edwards), a concert pianist and teacher, and Arnold Wadsworth Lee, a cornet player and band director at Florida A&M University. In addition to his sisters Consuela and Grace, he had four other siblings: Clifton, Arnold Jr., Leonard, and Clarence.

At an early age, Lee studied drums, flute, and piano. In 1951, he graduated from Morehouse College (following in his footsteps, Spike Lee became the family’s third-generation Morehouse grad) in Atlanta, Georgia. His college sweetheart, Jacqueline Sheldon, attended the neighboring

With her, he had five children; film director Spike Lee, Christopher (who died in 2014), still photographer David Lee, actress Joie Lee, and filmmaker Cinqué Lee. Their maternal grandfather, William J. Edwards, was a graduate of Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. His experience at the institute inspired him to continue the legacy of Booker T. Washington by starting an arts school in Snow Hill in 1893 for Black students pursuing academic subjects and vocational training. By 1918, the Snow Hill Normal and Industrial Institute had multiple buildings with more than 300 students. Although Edwards died a few years later, the institute endured until its closing in 1973.

In the 1970s, when the electric bass became prominent among jazz groups as jazz-fusion became the new sound, Lee, an acoustic bass purist, refused to follow suit and lost work as a result. “Some things you just can’t live with,” he told the Boston Globe in 1992. “Just thinking about doing it, my gut reaction hit me so hard in the stomach. I knew I could never live with myself.”

“Everything I know about jazz I got from my father,” the filmmaker told the New York Times in 1990. “I saw his integrity—how he was not going to play just any kind of music, no matter how much money he could make.”

Over the years, Lee became a noted firstcall musician and bandleader in the West Village and Harlem. This writer met Bill Lee during one of his performances at the Lenox Lounge. He had a cast of young guns playing with him: his son, alto saxophonist Arnold Lee (from his second wife, Susan Kaplan); trumpeter Theo Croker; and drummer Kassa Overall—all were attending the Oberlin Conservatory at that time.

“Bill Lee is one of the great American composers of our time,” said Croker. “His harmonic beauty was unique and his choice of melody always struck a chord inside of the listener. He was a masterful orchestrator of imagery.”

Lee’s love for music was not confined to performing and composing—he also taught African American music history at Long Island University. His dedication to nurturing young talent as an educator and musician has influenced generations of students.

Despite his significant contributions to the music world, Lee often said his most outstanding achievement was his family.

In addition to Susan Kaplan and Spike Lee, the elder Lee is survived by sons David and Cinqué, daughter Joie Lee, and Arnold Lee, his son with his second wife; a brother, A. Clifton Lee; and two grandchildren.

Christopher Lee died in 2014, and first wife Jacquelyn Lee died in 1977.

Jazz bassist and composer Bill Lee (© Chester Higgins. All Rights Reserved)

A Z Z

C L U B S

HARLEM

Bill’s Place

148 W. 133rd Street (Open Friday–Saturday) 212-281-0777

billsplaceharlem.com

Jazz clubs are secular houses of worship, where audiences gather to witness musicians openly exhibit their emotions, skill, and life experiences. The clubs have their own ambience, dancing in musicians’ unblemished truth. The music swings, it jumps, it might hit you in the gut, but damn—what a hip happening. Call it what you want, good engaging music, all enthralling!

Although Bill’s Place opened in 2006, the brownstone stands in memorial salute to “Swing Street,” that 1920s strip between Lenox and Seventh Avenues where speakeasies in basement joints lined both sides of the street. The joints where Billie Holiday sang her young heart out, Willie “the Lion” Smith performed as house pianist, and Duke Ellington could often be seen just hanging. You are welcome to bring your own brown bag…BYOBB.

Further downtown, Max Gordon opened the Village Vanguard in 1935, where he presented folk music and those beat poetry cats. As time drifted into 1957, it became a jazz house that has since journeyed into a 21st-century jazz mecca. —

Ron Scott

Smoke Jazz & Supper club 2751 Broadway 212-864-6662

Smokejazz.com

Room 623 Harlem’s Speakeasy Jazz Club 271 W. 119th Street (Open Wednesdays, Fridays, Sundays) 212-589-8979 room623.com

The Shrine 2271 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd. (World music, jazz) 212-690-7807 shrinenyc.com

New Amsterdam Musical Association 107 W. 130th Street (Live jazz and open mic, jam on Monday nights)

212-281-1350

namaharlem.wixsite.com

American Legion Post 398 248 W. 132nd Street (Live jazz on Sundays) 212-283-9701

Legion.org

Marjorie Eliot Parlor

Entertainment Jazz (Open on Sundays) 555 Edgecombe Ave. 212-781-6595

Harlemonestop.com

Silvana Bistro 300 W. 116th Street (Live jazz and world music) (Downstairs)

646-692-4935

Silvana-nyc.com

The Porch 750A St. Nicholas Avenue 646-895-9004

theporchnyc.com

MANHATTAN

Dizzy’s Jazz Club 33 W. 60th Street 212-258-9595

2023Jazz.org

Jazz at Lincoln Center Broadway at 60th Street 212-258-9800 Jazz.org

Django Jazz Club & Restaurant 2 Avenue of the Americas 212-519-6649 Thedjangonyc.com

Birdland Jazz Club 310 W. 44th Street 212-581-3080 Birdlandjazz.com

Blue Note Jazz Club 131 W. 3rd Street 212-475-8592

Bluenotejazz.com

The Jazz Gallery 1160 Broadway 5th floor/entrance on 27th Street info@jazzgallery.org

Zinc Bar 82 West 3rd Street 212-477-9462

info@zincjazz.com

The Stone 55 W. 13rd Street (near 6th Avenue) (Avant garde jazz (Music Wednesday–Saturday) 917-474-0018

thestonenyc.com

Village Vanguard 178 7th Avenue South 212-255-4037

villagevanguard.com

Mezzrow Jazz Club 163 W.10th Street 646-476-4346

Smallslive.org

Small’s Jazz Club 183 W. 10th Street 646-476-4346

Smallslive.com

Nublu 151 Avenue C (between 9th and 10th Streets) East Village 646-546-5206 Nublu.net

Arthur’s Tavern 57 Grove Street 212-414-4314

Arthurstavern.nyc

BROOKLYN Sista’s Place 456 Nostrand Avenue 718-398-1766 Sistasplace.org

Orinthology Jazz Club 6 Suydam Street 917-231-4766

Orinthologyjazzclub.com

Bar LunAtico 486 Halsey Street Bed-Stuy 718-513-0339

Barlunatico.com

Bar Bayeaux 1066 Nostrand Ave 347-533-7845

Barbayeaux.com

Barbes 376 9th Street Park Slope 347-422-0248

Barbesbrooklyn.com

The BrownstoneJazz 107 Macon Street 917-704-9237 (Open Friday–Sunday) brownstonejazz.business.site

Wilson Live 637 Wilson Avenue wilsonlivebk.com

(Adobe Stock illustration)

Classical Conversations, Part 1

By ALICIA HALL MORAN Special to the AmNews

I was onstage with pianist Aaron Diehl, his trio, and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra when the New York Amsterdam News reached out and asked me to pen a piece celebrating classical music for June’s special Black Music Month issue. We were rehearsing the vocal solo in Mary Lou Williams’s “Zodiac Suite” and I could not turn down an opportunity to highlight the music Williams herself had worked so hard to wrangle. Classical music offered her an expanded palette with which to create!

A Harlem resident like me, Williams’s famous performances at Café Society and Minton’s Playhouse and the salon she hosted in her apartment on Hamilton Terrace motivated and inspired the likes of Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. She invited the world in and made it all her stage. In her honor, I celebrate Black Music Month with you as I explore Black music that embraces the notion of this classical palette.

I spoke with composer George Lewis, artistic director of the International Contemporary Ensemble, professor of American music and chair in composition at Columbia University, and co-editor of the upcoming “Composing While Black.”

“Classical music today is undergoing a stylistic explosion in which nobody really knows where the music is going…but you don’t have to check your culture at the door when you enter the classical realm.”

Lewis, also a sage historian, pioneered the real-time improvisation of computer programs with humans, engaging the past and tempting the future. Lewis’s classic composition “North Star Boogaloo” placed a live “classical” percussionist into pre-recorded samples of basketball legends “rapping” and poetry read by Quincy Troupe, in his take on hip-hop.

As composer Tania León has said, “Who gets to be on the stage?” is part of the story of Black classical music. Lewis and musicians like Olly Wilson who created electronically expanded the mediums through which an invitation could be extended.

“It’s time to celebrate the Black classical composer as part of Black music,” Lewis said, especially those “living and breathing: Nkeiru Okoye, Carlos Simon, Tania León, Marcos Balter, Trevor Weston, Alvin Singleton, Jeffrey Mumford, T. J. Anderson, Allison Loggins-Hull, Anthony Davis, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Andile Khumalo, Renée Baker, Anthony R. Green, Camae Ayewa, Shelley Washington, Kennedy Dixon, Yaz Lancaster, Leila Adu-Gilmore, Brittany J. Green, Alyssa Regent, Nyokabi Kariuki, Daijana Wallace, Nathalie Joachim, Corie Rose Soumah, Darian

Donovan Thomas, Njuabulo Phungula, Tyondai Braxton, Elliott Reed, Mikhail Johnson, and many others, blazing new and influential trails.”

I asked Tania León about this moment. She is a composer, conductor, professor emeritus of Brooklyn College, Pulitzer Prize winner; an advisor to arts organizations; and the founder of Composers Now, a nonprofit uplifting “creatives making an impact in all styles of music right now.”

She won a Kennedy Center Honor last year and honorary doctorates from Brooklyn College, New Jersey City Uni -

versity, and Columbia University, as well as NYU’s Dorothy Height Award this year.

“There is a piece in my catalog from the 1980s that is now a classic. That piece is now a grandmother. But this act of discovery? This story is an act of repetition: who gets the stage.”

Going back in the archives—hers are now housed at Columbia University— is to observe a natural history of classical music in New York City. Flashback to the 1970s and a young hip trio of composers—Tania León, Julius Eastman, and Talib Hakim—are staging classical music concerts with the Brooklyn Philharmonic in hospitals, public parks, and church -

es. Guest stars include seminal artists and torchbearers such as Eubie Blake, Tito Puente, and Betty Carter, and the group is pivotal in launching the U.S. careers of Chinese composers like Bright Sheng and Tan Dun.

It’s bittersweet to contemplate the recent renaissance of the late Eastman, the avant-garde composer, pianist, vocalist and performer, when “in 1977, he was just walking the streets of New York,” León said. In a process of making without fear, experimental music does often become, over time, the next classical expression. Perhaps for this reason, visionaries flock to León’s inexhaustive talents. Extraordinary collaborations— with the choreographers Arthur Mitchell and Geoffrey Holder, writers Rita Dove and Wole Soyinka, the composers she’s mentored over a lifetime as an educator, and—of course—institutions including Los Angeles Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic, and hundreds of others.

“What is the difference between the waltz and the mambo?” she asks, and means it. “These kinds of demarcations are being challenged, erased. These are just dances; these represent the different cultures of the world.”

She told NPR in 2022, “If you are compelled [to compose], it’s because you feel that you have something to say in the world of sound. When you study the early works of any composer, there are traces that grow into the later composition — you find the seeds there. So if you as a student want to get into this…pay attention to what you’re doing from the very beginning.”

The sumptuous, rhythmic compositions that emanate from her nimble pencil (she writes by hand) graft color and culture into virtuosic musical lines, but every player has to bring their own humanity to the table.

Alison Buchanan’s voice towered inside my television and caught me off guard.

I thought my Netflix had skipped to PBS as “Dido’s Lament” by 17th-century’s Purcell poured forth, but it was the international soprano and artistic director of UK’s Pegasus Opera singing to Queen Charlotte in “Bridgerton.”

Buchanan’s scene in the Shonda Rhimes series, was filmed at London’s historic Hackney Empire theater in a neighborhood with a large Black population and the programming—including this filming—reflects that.

“Classical music is the pathway to my soul,” said Buchanan, who now mentors young Black singers and provides opportunities through her opera company. “I grew up inside that West Indian [context of] ‘children should be seen and not

Soprano Alison Buchanan, artistic director of UK-based Pegasus Opera Company, appearing in Netflix’s “Queen Charlotte” (Photo courtesy of Pegasus Opera Company)

Continued from page 22

Harlem Chamber Players bring works by Black composers to Harlem Songfest II

heard.’ When I was at school, I never felt I had a voice, but when I started to sing, I suddenly felt able to express what I could not verbalize” in speaking.

And I can relate. After spending my early childhood years in New York City, we moved to quiet Connecticut when I was ready for grade school, and birds and locusts were the loudest players. I was constantly urged not to be so loud. Summer stock theater and chorus became my acoustic safe zone.When I went to college in Harlem, I began a slow process of unlocking my natural, fuller voice, which led me down pathways I still travel. The opening of Voice creates its own sonic boom.

We discussed the impact of Buchanan’s televised, regal poise, “a noble posture, we call it,” she said. Shoulders alive, ribcage gently lifted, eyes lit from within, cheekbones radiating, breastbone proud.

“I enjoy the feeling within me, the way the high voice vibrates inside when it’s balanced and open.”

Singing asks us to be the bell of our own horn, the body of our own cello. We know the stereotype: “Opera singer shatters glass with astronomically high note!” The laser power of a vibrating headvoice is necessary to the image of the Black singer as a trumpet for freedom. Think Marian Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, in concert with the United States of America. Think Mahalia Jackson live at the Newport Jazz Festival, singing the songs of former slaves to Duke Ellington’s horns. Think voices facing into the headwinds. Next week: Part 2.

Alicia Hall Moran is a Harlem resident, classical mezzo soprano, and conceptual vocal artist, and former AmNews classical music columnist for “Suite Sounds.”

*Dedicated in loving memory of Raul Abdul.

By NADINE MATTHEWS Special to the AmNews

On June 9, the Harlem Chamber Players (HCP) will celebrate both their 15th anniversary and Black Music Month with a concert, Harlem Songfest II, at Miller Theatre at Columbia University.

In a recent interview with the Amsterdam News, HCP founder Liz Player said that in addition to music by traditional European composers, HCP, which consists of a diverse group of musicians, will play music by Black composers. “We’ll be performing the ‘Overture to Tremonisha’ by Scott Joplin. We’ve got ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’ by Margaret Bond, who was friends with Langston Hughes. We’ll have ‘There is a Balm in Gilead’ from ‘Spiritual Sketches’ by Damien Sneed, Dorothy Rudd Moore’s ‘4th of July’ aria from her opera about Frederick Douglass, and the aria from Mary Watkins’s opera ‘Emmett Till.’” HCP will also perform Harlem Renaissance composer Harry Lawrence Freeman’s aria “The Voodoo Queen.”

Freeman “is known as the first African-American composer to write an opera that was successfully produced,” Player said. “He wrote over 20 operas, but not much is known about him. It would be great if an opera company would go through the archives and look at some of this other music and discover what he really is

about, because I would love to know more.”

Although the number of musicians who play at any HCP event varies, this concert boasts a 60-piece orchestra. Conducting will be Damian Sneed. Sopranos Janinah Burnett and Jasmine Muhammad and baritone Kenneth Overton—all currently on the roster of the Metropolitan Opera—and tenor Martin Bakari and mezzo-soprano Lucia Bradford will make appearances.

The Monmouth, NJ-born, Harlem-based Player describes herself as an “army brat” who lived in Japan and Korea as a child. She fell in love with the clarinet as a child and knew she wanted to be a musician, but her parents resisted her pursuing that as a career. “I actually quit the clarinet for a while and studied computer science,” she recalled. “I was a program analyst for eight years before I quit and went back for a second bachelor’s degree at Queens College for music because I missed it so much.”

Player eventually found herself playing for the NY Housing Orchestra, which was pivotal in the history of the HCP. “I founded [the HCP] in 2008 with the late violist Charles Dalton. We met during a benefit gala concert at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall for the New York City Housing Symphony Orchestra,” Player recalled of the orchestra founded by Janet Wolfe, a longtime patron of classical musicians of color.

Although she is driven by the idea of creating opportunities for Black and brown classical musicians, Player said the process of founding and running HCP has been just as rewarding in another way. “I discovered just how much Black composers have contributed to what we call classical music or European derived classical music,” she said.

She gives much of the credit for this to WQXR radio personality, Terrance McKnight, HCP artistic advisor and host of the upcoming concert. “He really educated me a lot on this. Even growing up studying classical music before college, I knew nothing about Black composers of classical music. I thought this was a European art form. I love those giants in the European classical music world, but it’s just been wonderful discovering all these Black composers and women composers, and other composers of color.”

Two of Player’s favorite clarinetists are Sidney Bechet and Harold Wright.

Even with much of the work toward creating a more equitable playing field for Black classical musicians that organizations like HCP, the Sphinx Organization, and others have done, the turning point was the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, Player said. “Suddenly the classical music world opened its eyes to the horrors of anti-Black racism. Then major symphony orchestras were rushing to do works by com-

posers of color.”

From Player’s standpoint, the yawning wealth gap between Blacks and whites is a major structural deterrent to a Black and brown presence in classical music. Black and Brown people make up only 4% of musicians in major symphony orchestras, she said. “Instrumental musicstudying classical music is very expensive. It’s expensive to go take lessons, to go to auditions.” She said the practice of tenure in orchestras is also a deterrent. “People tend to stay in a symphony orchestra until basically they die or are close to death, so it’s even harder for anyone to get in.”

Player said that as in most areas, nepotism plays a major role in classical music. “A lot of it has to do with who you know. You need to know what schools have the best teachers, you need a mentor—someone who is in the classical music world who can show you the ropes.” Black and brown aspiring musicians, because of structural racism, often do not have this kind of access.

Finally, Player emphasized the importance of supporting groups like HCP. “We’re Blackled, and trying to create an orchestra that represents our city and our country right now. Our orchestra is Black, white, Asian, Latinx. We’re all coming together to create music, which is what draws us together, brings us together, heals and transforms us.”

For more info, visit www. harlemchamberplayers.org.

(Contributed photo) Harlem Chamber Players (Photo courtesy of Harlem Chamber Players)

How hip-hop became a global phenomenon

By MAL’AKIY 17 ALLAH Special to the AmNews

With hip-hop’s 50th anniversary soon approaching, we’re delving into some history since its West Bronx inception in 1973. It eventually morphed to become a global phenomenon, affecting various aspects of society culturally, economically, educationally, politically, socially, and theologically. Kool DJ Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash, known as “The HipHop Trinity,” are recognized as its founders.

Beginning as a way for local African Americans and Caribbean Americans to express themselves artistically, hip-hop incorporated DJ-in’, MC-in’, B-Boyin’/BGirlin’ (break dancin’), graffiti, and the “knowledge, wisdom, and overstanding”’ as “Hip-Hop’s 5 Elements.” Area youths were urged to invest time in developing their talents and using them to unite and better their communities, rather than combating each other in the streets.

“Hip-hop is Afro-indigenous culture, which has existed since the beginning of time,” contended Paradise Gray, chief curator of the Universal Hip-Hop Museum. “The oratory history of rappin’ goes through the deep cultural knowledge that we’ve had.”

He also mentioned several preceding influences, such as the Black Spades and other street organizations, the Black Power and Civil Rights Movements, and the Last

Poets and Watts Prophets.

By the end of the 1970s, the culture became known as “hip-hop,” a name credited to MCs Lovebug Starski and Keef Cowboy from Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five.

“I picked up the mic and just started saying ‘a hip-hop, hip hop, de hibbyhibbyhibbyhibby hop.’ The people couldn’t believe it, but it stuck,” Starski explained during a 1986 interview with The Observer.

In 1979, the Sugar Hill Gang released their single “Rapper’s Delight,” recognized as the first rap record, which opens: “I said-a hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie, to the hip hip hop-a ya do’’t stop the rock it to the bangbang boogie, say up jump the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat.”

Also that year, the “World Famous Supreme Team Show”’ began broadcasting over Newark’s WHBI 105.9FM’s airwaves. This was the first radio program anywhere featuring an exclusive hip-hop playlist, and they broke many new rap recordings on-air. Mr. Magic and DJ Marley Marl were featured on their show, and later hosted “Mr. Magic’s Rap Attack”’ on WBLS 107.5FM, starting in the summer of 1982.

DJ Chick Chillout and Kool DJ Red Alert started their mix-shows on WKRS 98.7FM shortly thereafter.

While on the air, they used street slang from their ’hoods, which was swiftly changing the lexicon in the metropolitan area and

beyond. “Hoods” were renamed as “Money Makin’ Manhattan; the boogie-down Bronx; Do or Die Bed-Stuy; and Never ran, never will, Brownsville,” for example.

“Brothers and sisters in the military, or who went away to school, took those cassettes with them around the world,”

Paradise said.

Harlem’s Kurtis Blow was the first hiphop artist to sign a major record contract, releasing his self-titled album on Mercury Records in autumn 1980. Throughout the rest of the decade, many local artists signed record deals and began touring cross-country, as well as overseas, selling millions of records. Due to the prominence of on-air music video programs, many people outside New York got a glimpse of inner-city life and began to imitate their fashions and vernacular, and the theology of the Nation of Islam, Five Percenters, and Zulu Nation became more widespread.

During his May 16 1983 performance at “Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever,” popstar Michael Jackson introduced multimillions of viewers to the moonwalk.

These events helped popularize hip-hop to a broader audience.

“Hip-hop is a cultural depository of a unified people whose origins are Afro-indigenous,” Paradise said. “It’s what the Creator gave us to bring the whole human family back together.”

By the mid-1990s, many cities nationwide had exclusive hip-hop programs on their airwaves.

Several local events are scheduled for this August 11 in commemoration of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, including a grand one at its birthplace, 1520 Sedgewick Ave.

Next week, Part 2.

Kool DJ Herc to be inducted into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

By MAL’AKIY 17 ALLAH

Special to the AmNews

Hip-hop music’s founding father, Kool DJ Herc, will be among the luminaries to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF) at the end of this year, and will also be honored with the Musical Influence Award. The timing is most appropriate, being in sync with hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, which will be commemorated this August 11. Brooklyn’s Barclay Center will host the induction ceremony on Friday, November 3, during Hip-Hop History Month.

“Everything we now recognize as the massive cultural force of hip-hop began 50 years ago in the Bronx with the turntables of DJ Kool Herc,” the RRHOF explained in their statement. “Herc was a founding father of hip-hop music.”

What began as a back-to-school event hosted by Herc’s sister, Cindy Campbell, at the rec room of their building at 1520 Sedgewick Avenue on August 11, 1973, eventually came to be recognized as when hip-hop was birthed. On this day, he planted a seed in the West Bronx that has since sprouted worldwide.

“This was in the Bronx in the ’70s. I moved to the States with my mother and I started to have jams in an old building,” the Jamaican-

native Herc recently told the media. “It got very popular and then the American kids got hold of the toasting—that’s the element that they took from us.”

He used his Jamaican roots and culture-in-

fluenced sound system set-up while spinning hard funk and soul records. His “merry-goround” style of using two turntables to spin records, and a mixer to extend the music without interruptions, had seldom been seen in the

U.S., and became the building blocks for hiphop music. He and his master of ceremonies, Coke La Rock formed the Herculoids, hip-hop’s first music group.

Since then, hip-hop has become a global phenomenon, influencing many aspects of everyday life around the planet and merging many cultures, ethnicities, and languages. Its commercialization reaped billions of dollars for corporate America.

This year’s RRHOF inductees are quite diverse.

“We’re very happy with this year’s class,” said RRHOF CEO and President Joel Peresman to the media. “People always try to pigeonhole what rock and roll is, but our story has always been that it’s a wide tent. It includes all different kinds of genres.

“We think this class really shows the breadth of rock and roll. When you have Missy Elliott, Sheryl Crow, and the Spinners, along with Rage Against the Machine and Willie Nelson, you’re covering a lot of things.”

However, some say that the Bronx-bred culture doesn’t need awards from outside entities to be validated.

“Who should feel more honored, the RRHOF or Herc?” Paradise “The Architect” Gray, the chief curator of the upcoming Universal HipHop Museum, asked rhetorically. “We don’t need them to sanction who our pioneers are. We should be doing that ourselves.”

Paradise Gray, chief curator of the Universal Hip-Hop Museum (Contributed photo)