Music Monday: Detroit, the Future, and the Past

This was a good music weekend. 

I really enjoyed the latest release from Strut Records: John Sinclair Presents Detroit Artists Workshop. The album consists of 11 tracks recorded from the Detroit Artis Workshop from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s by the poet, activist, and promoter John Sinclair and his fellow artists and musicians from Detroit. The Detroit Artists Workshop was one of any number of community based music organizations in Detroit that helped record and sustain the city’s innovative jazz scene in the 1960s and 1970s. As the roster of musicians recorded on this sampler indicates, the cross over between the Detroit Artists Workshop and Strata East records is obvious with Charlie Moore, Ron English, Lyman Woodard, and the Detroit Contemporary 4 (and 5) appearing on the Strate East label. One has to expect that trombonist Phil Ranelin the founder of Tribe Records also performed at the Artists Workshop as he and Sinclair collaborated elsewhere. 

The context is meaningful, of course, because Detroit jazz (and Detroit music more broadly) is enjoying a revival as people discover that the city is more than MoTown and, later, House. Sinclair was an important bridge between the city’s proto-punk rock scene (he was the manager of the MC5) and the city’s jazz outfits. He and his wife’s psychedelic shows at the iconic Grande Ballroom contributed to that venue’s national reputation as a place to see cutting edge rock shows. Krysta Ryzewski’s recent book on the archaeology of contemporary Detroit demonstrates that despite this venue’s dilapidated state, traces of Sinclair’s influence persist. These recordings continue in that tradition by unearthing a window into the city’s vibrant music scene.  

Check out Detroit native Donald Byrd play “Blackjack”:

Many would argue that the COVID pandemic exaggerated jazz music’s outsized commitment to its past as labels and artists scrambled to dust off archival recordings for new releases as travel, recording, and performances became difficult or even impossible.

The London jazz scene, however, has continued to drag us into the future of jazz and improvised music as artists like Nubya Garcia, Yazz Ahmed, Theon Cross, and Shabaka Hutchings. I somehow missed the release of the latest album by The Comet is Coming, a band that consists of Shabaka Hutchings, keyboardist Dan Leavers (who also performs as Danalogue), and drummer Max Hallett (aka Betamax). Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam proposes a future of music drenched in the 1990s nostalgia and pierced by Shabaka Hutchings’s frantic and urgent saxophone.

At its best, it sounds like Orbital after a weekend hanging out with Sun Ra. 

The music combines Afrocentric and Afrofuturist strains with the dread return of the comet (which may be THE comet, if you know what I mean).

It will definitely be in heavy rotation on my system over the next few weeks.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Blue Note Tribute to Leonard Cohen. I like Leonard Cohen as one does. His iconic songs, his connection to Greece, and his music’s ability to trigger within me a certain nostalgia for my graduate school days combine to make him an indelible part of my own past.

Anyway, the Blue Note tribute is solid and nice with none of the performances taking any real risks. 

Sarah MacLachlan is lovely on “Hallelujah.”

Immanuel Wilkins, whom I like, does his best Charles Lloyd imitation with he plays with Bill Frisell on “Bird on a Wire.”

I probably won’t rush out and buy this, but I like it enough to play it a bit over the next few weeks.