English tenor saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings is being widely hailed as the next big thing in jazz. In a recent New York Times review, Giovanni Russonello wrote, "Now more than ever, the easiest answer to that pesky question - what’s keeping jazz vital these days? - appears to lie in London. And much of the serious activity there runs through Shabaka Hutchings." The young (33-year-old) musician anchors a handful of his own bands, and their LP Your Queen Is A Reptile by his Sons of Kemet was released on the prestigious Impulse! label, the former home of Coltrane and Pharoah, Mingus and McCoy, Oliver Nelson and Sonny Rollins. Jazz cred doesn't get much better than that.
Shabaka brought two of his groups to Big Ears this year, and we took the time to check them both out. Both of them are built, as critic Jon Parales described it in his review of the festival, around Shabaka's "fat-toned, indefatigable tenor." Sons of Kemet, who played Saturday night, is a quartet: Shabaka, two drummers, and a tuba player.
That set was muscular enough according to Parales, but the previous night's set by The Comet Is Coming - Hutchings, a drummer, and a keyboardist - "was so forceful it set off a mosh pit." NPR Music described The Comet Is Coming's sound as "astonishing music that blends jazz and electronics in thrilling new ways," and as "spaced-out, sonic premonitions of apocalyptic doom." Their recent LP is called Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery ("we were going for brevity," joked The Comet's keyboardist Friday night). According to NPR Music, that record could serve as the soundtrack if "a Salvador Dali zombie-scape came to life."
We can't deny that both sets weren't exciting and propulsive, and Shabaka can achieve a force-of-nature wail with wall-of sound proportions, but we can hardly categorize the music as "jazz." Jazz can scarcely even be defined anymore, but if you go back to the old "improvised music over a syncopated beat" definition, then Shabaka certainly isn't that. His playing relies much more on repetition than improvisation, the same riff repeated over and over with varying degrees of intensity, and the pounding four-on-the-floor dancehall beats of his bands are hardly syncopated. "He allows himself an extended solo now and then, but most of the time he pumps out short, hard riffs, all sinew and drive," Parales notes in the Times. The beats are "derived from dance music and - his far-from-secret resource - carnival rhythms (he has Barbadian roots)."
Not that not being jazz automatically disqualifies music from being enjoyable. There's lot and lots of music we like and that we like a lot that nobody would ever call "jazz." But if critics and the media are going to anoint Shabaka as the future of jazz or the force keeping it vital, there's going to be problems down the line. Instead of exploring new possibilities with his music and opening up new modes of expression, Shabaka limits the modes to his "short, hard riffs" repeated over and over. Instead of leading jazz to new horizons, Shabaka seems to be shackling it to jump blues, early R&B, and EDM. This circular process does nothing to enhance jazz and doesn't even provide fans of jump blues, early R&B, and EDM anything new to appreciate, but instead simply redirects them back to what they were already listening to anyway.
We know, we know - we're sounding like old discontents, like the same people who tore into Miles for On The Corner or that booed Bob Dylan at Newport. So we will say that on a positive note, we met several young listeners, almost all men, at Shabaka's Big Ears sets who had no previous interest in or exposure to jazz music, or anything avant-garde or experimental at all, but who were awed and impressed by his bands, and who did stay around to hear and enjoy the other diverse sounds, including jazz, at Big Ears. So if Shabaka can serve as a gateway band for these new-found fans, the way that early jazz fusion bands like Mahavishnu and Weather Report did in the '70s for a previous generation, then maybe the music might benefit after all, and that's most definitely a good thing. Maybe jazz does need a rock star after all.
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