In 1993, when Chicago trumpeter-bandleader Malachi Thompson released “Lift Ev’ry Voice” (Delmark), he achieved a career high point that seemed to pose considerable artistic risk.
Specifically, by addressing the vast history of African-American music in “Lift Ev’ry Voice” (from ancient chant to modern jazz), and by dealing with this epic subject so dramatically, Thompson seemed to leave little artistic room for any more recordings. After “Lift Ev’ry Voice,” what could he possibly have left to say that would sound nearly as imposing and as important? How could he top the most ambitious and most musically rewarding work of his life?
Two years later, the formidable trumpeter has come forth with the answer, in the form of his latest release, “Buddy Bolden’s Rag (100 Years of Jazz)” (Delmark). As its title implies, the recording deals with another historical facet of jazz, this time the revered, turn-of-the-century trumpet innovator Buddy Bolden.
If “Lift Ev’ry Voice” dealt eloquently with the musical links between ancient black music and its contemporary counterparts, “Buddy Bolden’s Rag” zeroes in on a specific and crucial chapter of black music in America: the jazz century. It’s an era that begins with Bolden’s emergence as a professional musician in New Orleans, in 1895, and stretches right up to the present moment, 100 years later.
The music that Bolden helped invent–a freewheeling, loosely improvised brass-band idiom that eventually would be called jazz–represents a starting point for Thompson’s riveting new recording, but only that. By also evoking the spirit of be-bop, post-bop and various up-to-the-minute avant-garde languages, Thompson and his Africa Brass band celebrate the whole glorious, rambunctious history of jazz.
In so doing, Thompson shows that in this music there are no real divisions between past and present, modern and historic, yesterday and today. All elements come together when erudite jazz musicians are at work, as they are in every track of “Buddy Bolden’s Rag.” The rhythmic exuberance of the title cut, the jubilant brass choirs and intricate backbeats of “The Chaser in Brazil,” the bristling trumpet dialogues between Thompson and guest soloist Lester Bowie on “The Chaser in America” define the stylistic breadth of this album.
So do the elements of avant-garde improvisation and traditional incantation that course through it. Big Band choruses, outlandish instrumental solos, classic be-bop riffs, old-fashioned trumpet duets, off-the-map chord structures–whole jazz traditions converge on this recording, with volatile results.
Clearly, Thompson is a musician born to take on epic themes.
“The whole concept of this CD was to give an overview of jazz starting with Buddy Bolden, but not to do it in chronological order, which can be kind of boring,” says Thompson. “But the idea wasn`t to create some kind of repertory album or to try to re-create the sound of early New Orleans music, which would be a futile effort, anyway.
“What I wanted to do was to re-create the spirit, the energy that was in the air at the time that Buddy Bolden was coming up.”
But of all the historic jazz figures worth celebrating–from Jelly Roll Morton to Louis Armstrong to Joe “King” Oliver–why focus on Bolden?
“Because except for jazz buffs and jazz historians, most people don’t know about Bolden, but should,” Thompson says. “Here’s a guy who didn’t study music formally but knew something of music theory, knew something of arranging and had this amazing ability to hear a song and arrange it on the spot. He would just assign notes to different guys in the band, he’d come up with the harmony, the syncopation and the counterpoint, and in that way he did a lot to create the original vocabulary of what would be called jazz.”
Tragically, though Bolden lived until 1931, no recording of his playing has survived. And because he spent the last 24 years of his life institutionalized as a schizophrenic, he took his secrets on the origins of jazz to his grave.
The musical revolution that he helped launch, however, pushes ever forward, as Thompson’s epic recording suggests. By linking his own, searing brand of lyric improvisation with Bolden’s, and by covering numerous musical stops in between, Thompson has created another grand statement on the meaning, purpose and beauty of American jazz.
