There are so many misconceptions about jazz, argues the show’s presenter, saxophonist Soweto Kinch. It’s old-fashioned, impenetrable, for the elite. Or as the MOBO Award-winning bandleader of Sons of Kemet Shabaka Hutchings put it, “one of the last spits in the faces of the African-American community” as white people take the music of black people and eat their dinner to it.
An observation backed up by several historical and contemporary clips of black musicians playing to a sea of white faces. Black male musicians, it should be said, for as “the first lady of the jazz keyboard” Mary Lou Williams recounted women were very often barred from the “boys’ club” or as contemporary pianist Zoe Rahman noted “written out of history” altogether.
But by tracing the roots of the sound and the struggles of the early pioneers of enslaved Africans who for one day of the week were allowed to gather in Congo Square, New Orleans to trade goods and stories and celebrate their rich and diverse cultures, Kinch paints a picture of an ever-evolving movement which for many has outgrown its straitjacket label – taken from a word with sexual connotations which first featured on the 1917 album Livery Stable Blues by the Original Dixie Land “Jass” Band – but is still as sacred and secular, thoughtful and danceful, personal and political, as the work songs of the cotton fields from which it blossomed.
In the same way that the language of jazz grew from the improvised dialogue between slaves who were forbidden to speak in their native tongues, Kinch concludes that contemporary jazz in all its sub-genres such as bee-bop, indo, avant-garde and trad is still rooted in the same seeds of spontaneity, community and as trumpeter and composer of BlacKkKlansman Terence Blanchard put it “a need to express yourself”. Talent is not enough, he argues. But allied with purpose it swings. “It’s the reason why you do it, that’s what makes it jazz.”
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