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First Take BY BRIAN ZIMMERMAN
JIMMY & DENA KATZ
Robert Glasper (left) and Terrace Martin
Building Bridges
A FANTASTIC JAZZ SONG CAN DISSOLVE BORDERS. GROOVE IS
universal, and even bitter enemies can tap their feet to the same beat.
In today’s political climate—which has carved entire populations into
needless factions, turning mere debate into rancorous discord—we
should all try to make room for a little more harmony.
Theses days, jazz is more porous than ever, inclusive of different ideas
(and of people from different backgrounds) in ways that our politics,
unfortunately, is not. At a time when Democrats and Republicans are
drawing lines in the sand, musical genres are perpetually being blurred.
Of course, this is hardly a new phenomenon. The jazz greats of yore
have always known better. “There are simply two kinds of music,” Duke
Ellington wrote in the Music Journal back in 1962, “good music and the
other kind.”
Robert Glasper and Terrace Martin, the artists on our cover, make
the good kind of music. They’ve also dissolved some borders of their
own. Reared on the rhythms of hip-hop and r&b yet steeped in the ways
of jazz, they play a style of music that defies easy categorization. (But if
you feel that jazz is a huge umbrella term, a river with endless tributaries,
then, well, let’s call this music jazz.)
Purists may scoff at any divestiture of old ways, but it’s clear that the
movement of jazz/hip-hop hybridity has already altered the landscape.
“The cats who believe in barriers, we don’t see them around,” says Martin
in his profile on page 30.
There are plenty of reasons to believe that only good can come from
this expansion of jazz territory. Glasper and Martin—along with Kamasi
Washington and his ilk—have opened doors to a new generation of listeners,
many of whom are coming to jazz for the first time. What these
fans are embracing is a music devoid of classification—a music of plurality
and acceptance. What they’re responding to is good music.
In his profile on page 26, Glasper tells DownBeat that the only constant
in jazz is change: “The tradition is, it keeps moving,” he says. “It
reflects the time we’re in.”
There is profound truth in that statement, but it doesn’t quite capture
the whole truth. For as much as jazz is a mirror, reflecting the present
moment, it’s also a crystal ball, revealing what is yet to come. In 2017, we
see jazz musicians building bridges. We don’t see any walls.
DB
8 DOWNBEAT FEBRUARY 2017