Music Monday: Soundtrack to Detroit

This weekend, I started to read Krysta Ryzewski’s new book Detroit Remains: Archaeology and Community Histories of Six Legendary Places (2022). I’m no far enough into the book to offer any impressions or commentary yet, but I’m enjoying it.

More importantly (for now at least), it got me thinking about Detroit music. A few week’s ago, I blogged about the late Dr. Lonnie Smith and the Club Mozambique and made reference to the work of the Detroit Sound Conservancy which seek to preserve and conserve the legacy of music in Detroit and the Music Origins Project which seeks the more modest goal of geolocating important venues. The Concert Database is another interesting project that seeks to document venues and performances from throughout Michigan.

To be clear, I’m not an expert on the amazingly rich Detroit music scene. In fact, I’m not an expert on anything, but I do like what I like and have this kind of weird faith that perhaps if I post some of it here, other people will find some things that they like. (I do want to read Mark Stryker’s book Jazz from Detroit (2019).

I also believe that most books deserve a soundtrack.

So for Detroit Remains, I’ve selected music from two 1970s jazz labels: Strata and Tribe. These are not the most prominent or “important” labels from the Motor City. They also didn’t necessarily feature the best known or even more influential artists. Part of their charm is that they feel like they embody a kind of grassroots music anchored in the community building, often Black identity (especially Tribe), and ownership of music rights. They also appear to have relied on the availability of session gigs with MoTown (for example Larry Nozero, despite being an active participant in the Detroit jazz scene for years and contributing to any number of class Strata tracks is best known for playing the saxophone solo in the open bars of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”) and on the vibrant network of local music venues.

Here’s my playlist. 

First, one of my favorite examples of Detroit soul jazz is the Layman Woodard Organization, Saturday Night Special.  It’s an absolutely fantastic blend of jazz, funk, and R&B sensibilities with just a little something exotic (which feels characteristic of the Detroit jazz scene). The cover is also pure Detroit in that it’s a photograph taken by Leni Sinclair (co-founder of the White Panther Party). It apparently was a photo of the contents of Layman Woodard’s pockets after the show where the album was recorded.

The other Strata Corporation album that I can’t quite get enough of is pianist Kenny Cox’s Clap, Clap! The Joyful Noise. Cox was one of the co-founders of Strata who had recorded with Blue Note and the Contemporary Jazz Quintet but founded Strata in the early 1970s as a way to get more control over his music and creative vision. Clap Clap! is brilliant and like Saturday Night Special, it evokes an understated exoticism with Latin and Caribbean sounds (complete with the gentle wash of the waves on the albums opening track)! Is this a form of escapism, like the Club Mozambique? Set against the backdrop of Caribbean nationalism is it a subtly encoded aspiration for greater political autonomy?

Tribe is another of the great, local Detroit labels of the 1970s and like Strata, had a deep engagement with the local situation. They not only released albums by stalwarts of the Detroit jazz scene (including the incredibly influential Marcus Belgrave), but also a magazine that tackled key political and cultural issues for the Black community. While the label was short lived, like Strata it captured a moment in time.

Belgave’s Gemini II for example, blends space jazz, fusion, and soul into a post-bop statement album. Belgrave didn’t record often although he played out constantly throughout his career. More importantly, he mentored a new generation of Detroit musicians included the superstar Kenny Garrett.   

Almost as good as a soundtrack is trombonist Phil Ranelin’s The Time is Now (which also features Marcus Belgrave).

Maybe I’m just romanticizing these labels and this period. I recognize, of course, that Detroit in the 1970s was a complex, racially torn, and economically vulnerable. But that said, there’s a kind of defiance and power in this music that seems to align with the view of Detroit in my imagination.