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STRAIGHT OUT OF CRENSHAW IN SOUTHWESTERN LOS
ANGELES, saxophonist-keyboardist-producer Terrace Martin has
little time for purists who seek to wall off jazz from the struggles
of those around him—and, more to the point, from the sound that
reflects those struggles: hip-hop.
“The cats who still believe in barriers, we don’t see them around,”
he said over drinks in Brooklyn in October. “I guess they’re in their
box hanging out together.”
Decidedly not among those cats is Herbie Hancock, the jazz community’s
longtime lodestar of musical pluralism and a champion of
Martin’s.
“He’s a real producer, a conceptual thinker,” Hancock said. “He’s
been at the forefront of a movement of jazz that’s emerging with
the youth right now.
“In a way what he did with Kendrick on To Pimp A Butterfly
kicked it off,” Hancock said, referring to Kendrick Lamar and his
groundbreaking work on the Top Dawg label, which won the 2016
Grammy for Best Rap Album with Martin as key producer. “The
way jazz was introduced, it was cutting-edge stuff. I’m happy that
Kendrick picked up on that and embraced it. He didn’t put the
jazz element in the background. It’s right up there in your face.”
FEBRUARY 2017 DOWNBEAT 31