Friday, August 21, 2009
The Interconnectedness of All Things
So tonight was interesting in more ways than one.
For starters, I was jamming with the Music Workshop gang (Dimitri on keyboard, no Max or Ron however, which made "Josie" kind of difficult) and was introduced to our vocalist, James. However, James didn't sing: he was a rapper. We play mostly jazz, latin, swing, some funk, things like that, so I wasn't sure how having a rapper added into the mix was going to work. I could tell that some of the other members were a bit hesitant as well.
We were all pleasantly surprised when things worked out phenomenally well. The spoken lyrics were not only in time with the rest of the music, but a fresh new approach to songs we'd been familiar with for ages. Of course some were more difficult to work around than others, but for the most part the music and lyrics integrated splendidly to create a more contemporary, modern sound.
This fascinated me: as I played my sax, I started to realize what a contradiction this really was. Jazz and rap are supposed to be near polar opposites on the musical spectrum. But here they fit perfectly. I saw then firsthand the interconnectedness of all musical genres, that all music derives from the same basic roots, and that no matter how far apart you think two points are, there is always a degree of sameness.
This same principle of interconnectedness can extend to people, as well. All people, no matter their background or skin color, are derived from the same basic roots: the same basic DNA patterns and organ tissue formations, the same needs for survival and primal desires. There isn't that much difference between us... it's the difference between jazz and rap.
It's all music, baby.
(In an unrelated side note, we blew the hell out of "Beautiful Love," easily 100 beats faster than it's normally played. As usual, Hunter's solo was poetry in motion, but Matt and I were fighting just to keep up! Now, I'm really tired.)
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It's interesting you see rap and jazz as polar opposites because (in terms of music evolution), they're not. Rap started using the beat breaks of funk music tracks (I don't know exacts, but I'm pretty sure soul, gospel, and funk came from or are some bit related to jazz; we can include blues, I'm sure, in this pot of similar marked music genres).
ReplyDeleteConsequently, most early rap albums heavily sampled soul, funk, and (yep) jazz. One of the things a lot of fans like about Nas's (generally considered) classic album Illmatic is that the entire thing is jazz samples.
If you ever get interested, too, one of my all time favorite albums (regardless of genre) is Reasonable Doubt by Jay-Z. It, too, relies almost entirely on jazz samples and puts them together in a fashion I think you'd like (check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC7MJ8l73SQ).
Like I had told you at Jeff's party, I've been trying to try my hand at sampling and, for an older rap feel, I've been dabbling a lot more in funk, jazz, and soul. I always liked jazz before, but the funk is pretty fantastic.
I think a lot of it is just perception... I no longer really perceive jazz and rap as opposites in a spectrum, I see them as two different voices making the same statement.
ReplyDeleteBefore, I was under the impression that they were different, had nothing in common, and had no place being compared to one another... but I had to really bring the two together in my mind to realize that they aren't so far apart.