AILSA CHANG, HOST:
One of the great joys of the NPR Music Tiny Desk Contest is listening to the nearly 7,000 entries. Earlier this month, we revisited some of the videos submitted from the Latin music world, and today, we dive into a few jazz entries - again with our guide, NPR's Felix Contreras. Felix is the cohost of the program Alt.Latino, and he is a producer for the Tiny Desk concert series, meaning he helps curate music from both the Latin and jazz worlds. Hey, hey, hey, Felix.
FELIX CONTRERAS, BYLINE: Hey. What's going on?
CHANG: What's going on? Oh, before we get into listening to this music, I want to talk about something that, you know, we sometimes hear in the music world, and that is jazz is dead, meaning...
(LAUGHTER)
CHANG: ...Its best moments ever are now part of the jazz canon. I guess you're going to be disagreeing with this, right?
CONTRERAS: Completely, emphatically, wholeheartedly.
CHANG: (Laughter).
CONTRERAS: You know, every now and then, people will pipe up with something like that, and I don't know where it comes from. There are actually now more musicians than there are gigs.
CHANG: Wow.
CONTRERAS: And there are also different ways to listen to jazz or to look at jazz, and to me, that's very inspiring. So yeah, when I hear that stuff, it gets me a little riled up, but we don't want to go there. Don't get me started.
CHANG: (Laughter) Well, it sounds like I already did get you started.
CONTRERAS: (Laughter).
CHANG: But let's listen to some music instead. What are some examples of what you mean?
CONTRERAS: First up is keyboardist and composer Danae Greenfield. She's originally from Washington State. She studied at Berklee school of music in Boston, which is one of the major, major universities there or music institutions that teach jazz. She now lives in Brooklyn, which is kind of ground zero for burgeoning jazz musicians.
CHANG: Yeah.
CONTRERAS: And I want to walk you through her performance of her composition "Flutterby" and point out some things to listen for. And we're going to pick up her performance at about 2 1/2 minutes into her video.
(SOUNDBITE OF DANAE GREENFIELD'S "FLUTTERBY")
CONTRERAS: What we're hearing is a thematic or melodic statement, what jazz musicians call the head - the main melodic idea. And it gives the tune its character and attitude. And in this case, it's almost anthemic, and it's performed by Danae on keyboard and Jared Yee on tenor saxophone. Then she settles into her keyboard solo, and I want you to listen to the snare drum played by Jharis Yokley. It's in line with what a lot of young drummers are doing these days. Instead of hitting the snare for rhythmic influence with the jazz swing, the (vocalizing); the snare's going (imitating snare drum). If you listen closely, you can hear it, like, there's a constant rat-a-tat-tat (ph) on the snares, like (imitating snare drum). It's very different from that old-school thing.
(SOUNDBITE OF DANAE GREENFIELD'S "FLUTTERBY")
CONTRERAS: That snare gives the soloists lots of rhythmic ideas to play off of. And that's something that contemporary jazz has in common with older forms. Like, you have to be a good listener. You have to respond to other musicians. And this performance by Danae Greenfield is a great example of that and a great place to start today.
CHANG: I'm so glad that you pointed out that snare. I don't know if I would have noticed that on my own.
CONTRERAS: It's a very subtle change.
CHANG: Yeah.
CONTRERAS: And it's just something that just fascinates me.
CHANG: I love that. All right, so who's next?
CONTRERAS: OK, Jonathan Suazo - he's a saxophonist, composer, educator, cultural warrior. He's from Puerto Rico, and his band is called Ricano, which is a mashup of cultural traditions from Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic - Ricano - Puerto Rican, Dominicano.
CHANG: Rican (ph), oh...
CONTRERAS: Check his stuff out. Check his music out.
(SOUNDBITE OF JONATHAN SUAZO SONG "HEROES")
CONTRERAS: Right?
CHANG: Oh, I love this.
CONTRERAS: From the start of his song "Heroes," we know we're not in jazz Kansas anymore, right?
CHANG: (Laughter).
CONTRERAS: There's lots of cool stuff going on. And his alto sax plays the head - remember, we referred to the head earlier...
CHANG: Yeah.
CONTRERAS: ...Which - it sounds like it could be a Dominican folk melody. And underneath is a Dominican merengue rhythm, very, very traditional. And it even has wordless vocals, which is one of the standard elements in the jazz toolkit. So it's a nice mashup of things. And then there's a break, and Suazo starts his solo. This is the jazz part because it's a very well-executed solo following the rules of jazz soloing, using other melodic elements of the song as a guide. Then something cool happens. Check this out.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEROES")
FABIOLA MENDEZ: (Singing in Spanish).
CHANG: Oh, my God. My whole torso is, like, shaking right now.
CONTRERAS: Right?
CHANG: Yeah.
CONTRERAS: After a cool percussion break, that's vocalist Fabiola Mendez. She starts singing in Spanish very much like a traditional merengue but with a jazz attitude. By the way, Fabiola Mendez is also a gifted musician who plays a traditional Puerto Rican cuatro, small, little guitar thing. And she's the first musician to major in that in Berklee.
CHANG: Really?
CONTRERAS: Yeah.
CHANG: Oh, my God, Felix. Only you can get me to move in my office chair.
(LAUGHTER)
CONTRERAS: There we go, man.
CHANG: All right, I understand the next submission is heading us in another direction.
CONTRERAS: You know, in the 1960s and '70s, there was a movement of what was called soul jazz, a music that had more of an R&B groove, still with the jazz tradition but not that swing I was telling you about earlier. There were tracks like the "Work Song" by Cannonball Adderley or anything by the band The Crusaders from the 1970s. And I mention that because soul jazz is alive and well with the entry called "What Time Were You Born?" from Ellen Pieroni & the Encyclopedia of Soul. Check it out.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELLEN PIERONI & THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOUL'S "WHAT TIME WERE YOU BORN?")
CHANG: Yeah.
CONTRERAS: You know, Ellen, in fact, plays the same instrument as Cannonball Adderley, the alto sax. And in this tune, she doubles the melody with the guitarist Adam Bronstein.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELLEN PIERONI & THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOUL'S "WHAT TIME WERE YOU BORN?")
CONTRERAS: When she takes her solo, it really warms my heart because I hear the same soulfulness of Cannonball or any of the sax players who played with Ray Charles back in the '50s or the more contemporary alto saxophonist, David Sanborn. And, you know, the secret ingredient is the prominence of the blues in this style. So while we heard earlier Danae Greenfield and her band changing things and expanding the stylistic rules, this band is very retro but with a nice new sheen.
CHANG: I love this funk. And Felix, I love all this variety that you brought in. It all counts as jazz, but it all sounds so different to me.
CONTRERAS: You know, I've talked to some jazz musicians who say that, you know, they don't even use the term jazz. They call it improvisational music. You know, well, it all fits under the tent, man. Like, Duke Ellington, who's the master of them all, he used to say there's only two kinds of music - good music and bad music. Right?
CHANG: I'm with him.
CONTRERAS: Yeah. And this is all good music.
CHANG: It sure is. NPR's Felix Contreras is the cohost of the Alt.Latino podcast and also plays jazz and Latin music himself. So we are so happy he shared some of his insight on some of the jazz contestants for this year's Tiny Desk Contest. So great talking to you, Felix.
CONTRERAS: Thank you. It was my pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELLEN PIERONI & THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOUL'S "WHAT TIME WERE YOU BORN?") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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