Jazzmatazz Volume 1
Guru
Chrysalis Records through EMI
Reviewed by John-Paul Nassif
Jazzmatazz, an experimental fusion of hip-hop and live jazz, is one of the first full-fledged attempts to fuse rap and jazz. It is hosted and compiled by expressive Brooklyn rapper "Guru" from the "old-school style" rap group Gang-Starr.
Although Guru raps on most of the tracks, there is a well-selected cross-section of guest artists including Ronny Jordan, Carleen Anderson, N'dea Davenport, Courtney Pine, Lonnie Liston Smith, legendary trumpeter and pianist Donald Byrd, and French rapper extraordinare HC Solaar.
Guru states that "rap is real — it's musical, cultural expression based on reality ... while jazz is also based on reality... " So, given these two basic affinities, why do rap and jazz attract such different audiences? Even though jazz has been adding flavour and elegance to rap in the form of samples and backing tracks since the seventies, rap epitomises the "urban" experience in a way that some jazz conservatives would perceive as vulgar.
Jazz however, void of this "vulgarity", still manages to conjure up as much, if not more, emotional intrepidity. Much of jazz's impact is suggested, or provokes thought and imagination, while rap is more direct. Jazzmatazz captures the essence of both styles, neither is dominating, rendering both jazz and rap as uniquely resolute and, importantly, undiluted.
The songs on Jazzmatazz vary from romantic (but realistic) love songs such as "When you're near" and "Trust me", through the mellow kickback like the single "Loungin' ", to the shockingly real "Sights in the City".
"Sights in the City" tells a story using three characters. Emit, a young school kid who gets fed up with school, becomes a hustler, and delivers "packages" for "Mack-money-Joe". Despite his high and glamorous expectations, Emit ends up in a jail cell. René, a teenager that "couldn't take mum's yellin' " ran away from home and began "goin' on dates for Pimp-Daddy Mash ... Now she's a victim of the system/ Now what happened to her dreams and her ambitions?" Lastly, Mr Philmore: "He owns a grocery store/It's small little shop/ The children call him pop but of course he keeps a shotgun/ just for protection/ 'cause he's got a little grandson ... " Confronted by two criminals, "He fired, they fired, all at the same time/ Now there's a funeral Wednesday at a quarter to nine."
"Transit Ride", "Down the Backstreets", "Take a Look (at yourself)", and "Le Bien, Le Mal (the good, the bad)" all detail some of the perils of Brooklyn life. Each urges us to hold ourselves responsible for our own actions. At the same time, these songs recognise that African Americans are often manouvered into these situations by America's culturally biased, liberalised white supremacist ideologies which impose political oppression, economic and psychological repression, social degradation on black people.
For years, jazz has assumed the passive, black Christian "don't worry, be happy", "pie-in-the-sky" attitude. With its fusion with rap, jazz may become a "militantly mellow" political voice displaying (rather than desultory anger) a double-sided understanding of a double-sided problem.