Song of the Day 10/14: Gary Bartz, Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, “Day By Day”
Guest post by Nathan Arizona
The title says “Jazz Is Dead,” but they don’t mean it. I guess you could say it’s ironic.
Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s recording series by that name features plenty of jazz. But they mix it up with soul, R&B, hip-hop and some electronics. This is almost nothing like the familiar jazzy funk of the recent past. The jazz underlies the new elements rather than the other way around, but there’s a good blend.
Younge and Muhammad apply their Jazz Is Dead production styles to the music of jazz veterans, including Roy Ayers, Doug Carn and the Brazilians Joao Donato and Marcos Valle.
Today’s Jazz Is Dead song features 80-year-old sax great Gary Bartz. This music is on the mellow side and is played to a black-and-white video from the civil rights struggle of the ‘60s.
Younge is based in Los Angeles, but most of this nu-jazz is coming out of South London. Saxophonist Theo Croker is a rising star in that scene. This is from his new album. With vocals.
A lot of the London jazz is derived from the hypnotic “spiritual jazz” of the ‘70s. Think Alice Coltrane or Pharoah Sanders. This song by the group Maisha has that kind of feeling. It features, you guessed it, Gary Bartz.
