For the second time, I saw Dirty Projectors in concert last night. And I couldn't help thinking about how much the show reminded me of the music of Guillermo Klein.

Hear me out. I know I've been harping on about this Klein fellow a lot lately, and I also know I'm not the first to have had this thought. I also don't know if Klein has ever seen Dirty Projectors perform, or if lead singer/composer Dave Longstreth has ever heard of Los Guachos. But after last night, it's clear to me that on musical terms, they would sit quite well on a bill together.

Dirty Projectors, for those unfamiliar, is a rock band, and an idiosyncratic one at that, bristling with herky-jerky passages, R&B or reggae borrowings and three cascading female voices. (It's also won a fair amount of beyond-"indie" acclaim for this weird stuff, which is both notable and incidental.) Guillermo Klein's music is chock full of remarkably similar individual signatures, though it clearly could be assigned to the category of Latin jazz.

I contend the two bodies of work converge at more than a superficial level. (I'm using the word "converge" as Lawrence Weschler might, he of the book and contest of uncanny, perhaps-more-than-coincidental similarities at McSweeney's.) I'm wondering if you jazz fans ever listen to pop, rock, classical, "world" music, rap, etc. and think: "I know something in jazz, an entirely different genre (and/or social world) of music, which reminds me of exactly that!" Where are your convergences between not-jazz bands or performers and jazz ensembles or musicians — and what do you make of them?

 

Perhaps the most salient of the connections between Klein and Longstreth is their penchant for hockets, the old device where two or more voices alternate to form a single melody line. You see it especially in Dirty Projectors songs like "Gimme Gimme Gimme" (deep within the song), or as an important part of Guillermo Klein charts like "La Última" or "Miula" (the end section).

But there's also the fact that both composers like to experiment with time signatures, and don't shy away from 3/4 or 6/8 patterns. Longstreth likes to disguise his three-beat meters with lots of syncopation, like in "Temecula Sunrise," which also has a 4/4 chorus; Klein likes superimposing four on three, or two against three, or even 7-7-7-3 across six (don't ask). The end results usually feel natural, at least when you see it executed live; it's abundant on Klein's new album Domador De Huellas, especially on songs like "De Solo Estar."

Klein's new album also re-interprets, sometimes radically, the music and poetry of Cuchi Leguizamón. Longstreth made a full-length record scoring his misremembered recollections of the hardcore band Black Flag's Damaged. There's something in how both composers demanded some sort of rebirth out of their source material, how both "make it new."

And there's the issue of singing. Klein loves human voices both as instrumental textures and prominent centerpieces, especially those of females who are much better at singing than he is: Luciana Souza, Claudia Acuña, Carme Canela, Liliana Herrero. At the same time, he takes to the microphone himself, finding a way to be affecting in spite of his deficiencies. Longstreth is no vocal powerhouse either, but has developed a highly individual technique, incredibly melismatic and piercing, which gets his vision across. And currently, Dirty Projectors features a trio of great female singers who both solo and provide ethereal textures: Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian and Haley Dekle.

There are several other similarities: their penchants for damaged, overlapping minimalism; the roles piano (Klein) or guitar (Longstreth) play in their compositions; the way they write for groups of specific people in mind; the fact that all those groups have great, anchoring bassists and drummers. But I'll stop with the emphasis on the fact that they both like to tinker with conventions a lot — with all the stop-starts, metric play, meaty beats, offset melodies and forced dissonances — with the goal of making it seem natural. Often, in both cases, it actually works.

And again, I invite y'all to contribute your own sonic connections. Does the tight songcraft of Deerhoof remind you of Booker Little's well-structured writing at all? If you could distill the weird folk of Holy Modal Rounders or Joanna Newsom into piano miniatures, would you get something like Ran Blake? Doesn't the huge toomp of vintage Kanye West beats, combined with his ability to actually structure songs, remind anyone else of the impeccable swing plus organized riffs of old Basie? (Sacrilege, I know, but I can't think of many Kanye productions from, say, 1999-2007 that aren't musical.) Beirut vs. Tiny Bell Trio? Big Daddy Kane's spillover virtuosity vs. Johnny Griffin's? Tortoise vs. Claudia Quintet?

Where do you see convergences, intentional or not, between jazz and not-jazz? Do elaborate.

Yesterday, the New York radio station WKCR started broadcasting and online archiving concerts from a venue called Soundscape, recorded between 1979 and 1983. Note those dates: At a time when many improvising musicians had been priced out of their DIY loft performance spaces, and even mainstream jazz was at a low ebb in the public eye, Soundscape was a place for cats to play. And not just any cats, but a lot of prominent modern/free/whatever jazz musicians of the day, from the city or abroad: David S. Ware, Sun Ra, Steve Lacy, Peter Brotzmann, Derek Bailey, James "Blood" Ulmer, Marion Brown, etc. Tuesday nights also saw Afro-Latin jams, from both New Yorkers (the Gonzalez brothers, Hilton Ruiz) and recent Cuban emigres (Paquito D'Rivera, Daniel Ponce).

Verna Gillis, an ethnomusicologist who wore many hats in the music business, booked and ran the space. Some years ago, she handed over her collection of recordings to WKCR to restore and archive. So from Sept. 6-20, the station is featuring a lot of those recordings on air; online, a fair amount of the concert recordings are being archived as streaming MP3s. (You can leave a comment on the Facebook fan page too.) Three sets are already up, with photos, and more are on the way. Lots of listening to do here. [WKCR: Soundscape Archive // Broadcast Schedule]

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P.S.: Full disclosure: As a college student, I was once the jazz director (also, program director) at WKCR. In fact, I recall first receiving the Soundscape donations way back when. But I haven't had any hand in shaping the station since then, which is part of why it's nice to hear about this. Back in the day (not long ago), WKCR was barely populated enough to make 24 hours of radio a day. I presume it still is, but slowly, the station is forcing a foot into the digital media sphere with this archive. It's welcomed here, both personally and professionally.

A Blog Supreme will be on vacation until after Labor Day. Until then, we are periodically leaving you with some photographs from The NPR Jazz Photography Pool, like the one below.

Photographer Ed Newman writes:

I am lucky enough to live across the street from Cleopatra's Needle. When the weather's fine and our windows are open to the breeze, we also get wafts of fine jazz from across the street. And when it sounds particularly fine, I grab my camera and go over to listen and maybe make some images. The night before this image was shot I ended up staying at the club's always excellent late night jam session 'til closing, 3:30 in the morning. The scene was beautiful — usually is. I resolved to go back Saturday night, Aug. 28. Paul Sikivie's trio was wrapping up their set of lovely hard bop, ballads and standards. The club has a beautiful baby grand piano, always perfectly in tune, resonant and highly polished — as you can see. Nice and unusual for a club that just asks you to buy a drink each set.

I got seated right down front, and along with the music, enjoyed the pianist [Aaron Diehl] and Paul's obvious pleasure they were taking in playing great jazz. I just took my camera from my side and took a half-dozen quick shots, making sure I kept the pianist's reflection and Paul framed. No flash, but none needed — the club is nicely lit and I don't like it anyway (it annoys musicians and other listeners and washes out the images). I love the meshed rhythms of piano, bass and drums: Done well, it's clean and smart, aethestically pleasing and intellectually stimulating. Cleopatra's Needle is as close in feel to the (just closed) Donna's Bar of New Orleans as I've found in New York. It's a real neighborhood jazz lovers' joint; you can just drop in and listen, and it's not too pricy or fussy. Everyone is friendly: The other listeners, the bartender, the staff and the musicians.

Here's the original, and a link to Ed Newman's Flickr photostream. Feel free to contribute your jazz shots to the NPR Jazz Flickr group.

A Blog Supreme will be on vacation until after Labor Day. Until then, we are periodically leaving you with some photographs from The NPR Jazz Photography Pool, like the one below.

Photographer Vincenzo Cosenza writes:

This picture of Paolo Fresu was taken last year during the Peperoncino Jazz Festival, an annual event in the South of Italy that mixes music and local food tasting. Paolo is one of the most important Italian trumpet/flugelhorn players — certainly the most eclectic one, because he combines tradition and experimentation. His music is colourful and covers the whole range of emotions; that's why I've decided to picture him highlighting colors and contrasts (i.e. here and here). Fortunately for me he liked my pics!

Here's the original, and a link to Vincenzo Cosenza's website and Flickr photostream. And feel free to contribute your jazz shots to the NPR Jazz Flickr group.

A Blog Supreme will be on vacation until after Labor Day. Until then, we are periodically leaving you with some photographs from The NPR Jazz Photography Pool, like the one below.

Photographer Bruce C. Moore writes:

While I have photographed scores of improvising musicians, I can think of none who are more deserving of exposure than Hadley Caliman. Over several years he has become one of my favorite subjects. I'm on the board of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra and, among other things, I photograph most of their performances. This shot was taken at Seattle Center's Mural Amphitheater on Aug. 8, 2009 — a free outdoor concert by SRJO.

Hadley is a fine player, and a wonderful person. He has a fascinating backstory, and has earned the admiration and respect of all the musicians and jazz lovers in our region,. He, and his music, are honored by the broad acceptance of his recent recording projects, and we are fortunate to have him, and his music, within our reach.

Here's the original, and links to Bruce C. Moore's website and Flickr photostream. Feel free to contribute your jazz shots to the NPR Jazz Flickr group.

A Blog Supreme will be on vacation until after Labor Day. Until then, we are periodically leaving you with some photographs from The NPR Jazz Photography Pool, like the one below.

Photographer Scott Bump writes:

The Newport Festivals — both folk and jazz — shrugged off their stuffy, old attitude this year with some fantastic performances from some great young players. From the absolutely jammed performance of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros at the folk fest to Julian Lage, Jenny Scheinman and Jason Moran at the jazz festival, the shows were relevant and extremely well attended. This is Lucia Micarelli, notable for the range of music she plays from Led Zeppelin covers to her work with Yael Biz's The Love Project. Here she is closing the jazz festival on the main stage with Chris Botti.

Here's the original, and a link to Scott Bump's website and Flickr photostream. You may recall NPR Music recorded much of the CareFusion Newport Jazz Festival (and Folk Festival) this year. And feel free to contribute your jazz shots to the NPR Jazz Flickr group.

A Blog Supreme will be on vacation until after Labor Day. Until then, we are periodically leaving you with some photographs from The NPR Jazz Photography Pool, like the one below.

Photographer Tom Wiebe writes:

As part of the 2010 Cultural Olympiad at the Roundhouse in Vancouver, Anthony Braxton was in town for the premiere public performance of his Sonic Genome project. For 8 hours, 60+ musicians moved organically through 3 rooms at the Roundhouse, "breaking apart and reforming into new organisms performing Braxton's compositions and using his improvisational languages to create a living sound world where the audience is free to listen and wander at will" (to paraphrase from the event description).

Sounds like a recipe for utter musical wankerism and self-indulgence of the worst variety but, as is so often the case with Mr. Braxton, it instead turned into an utterly engaging, immersive and moving experience. His enthusiasm with the local high school musicians who formed part of the "ensemble" (to use the term very loosely) was absolutely amazing to watch. The 2010 Winter Olympics brought a lot of great moments and memorable experiences to Vancouver this winter, but, for me, this was a very close second to Sidney Crosby's overtime goal for the Gold Medal in men's hockey.

Here's the original, and links to Tom Wiebe's website and Flickr photostream. Feel free to contribute your jazz shots to the NPR Jazz Flickr group.

A Blog Supreme will be on vacation until after Labor Day. Until then, we are periodically leaving you with some photographs from The NPR Jazz Photography Pool, like the one below.

Photographer Reuben Radding writes:

Here, the brass band Asphalt Orchestra was playing their last performance of the week at Lincoln Center Out of Doors. They emerged from taxicabs on 65th Street and played in front of Alice Tully Hall, and then led us all over the grounds of the complex, eventually taking us to Damrosch Park, where this shot was taken. They were playing the Frank Zappa song "Zomby Woof," which Peter Hess arranged for the band. I had been shooting them from the start with a good Canon DSLR but I had only a small memory card and by the time they got to Damrosch I'd filled it. Fortunately I had another camera with me, a tiny Panasonic LX3, and its wide angle lens turned out to be exactly what I needed anyway, so I used that.

Alan Ferber started his solo blowing hard, bending his knees and leaning back. In my mind I saw this exact shot. I just needed him to bend a little more ... and more ... and then ... he did it! I snapped, and felt like I had directed him with my mind. Alan is an amazing player and musician but he's a quiet personality and I think there are a lot of people who don't see this side of him. You can see Jessica Schmitz, the piccolo player, in the background smiling at other people in the band in reaction. There were a lot of better photographers than me around that day, and with much better gear, but I was in the best place for this shot, and it felt at the time almost fated.

Here's the original, and a link to Reuben Radding's Flickr photostream. You may also know Reuben Radding as a bass player. And feel free to contribute your jazz shots to the NPR Jazz Flickr group.

A Blog Supreme will be on vacation until after Labor Day. Until then, we are periodically leaving you with some photographs from The NPR Jazz Photography Pool, like the one below.

Photographer Tom Marcello writes:

That was taken on July 6, 1976 in New York, N.Y. As a part of the Newport Jazz Festival New York, George Wein set up stages for free concerts called "The 52nd Street Jazz Fair" along 52nd Street, and Hannibal Marvin Peterson's Sunrise Orchestra was one of them. I had known of Hannibal's playing before with Gil Evans and Roy Haynes and I picked up his masterpiece Children of the Fire, but this performance was really exciting and inspiring. I especially remember a series of stop-time choruses that he played with the wonderful [drummer] Freddie Waits.

I've never been able to identify the saxophonist in the band. Maybe you know who it is?

Here's the original, and a link to Tom Marcello's Flickr photostream. And feel free to contribute your jazz shots to the NPR Jazz Flickr group.

A Blog Supreme will be on vacation until after Labor Day. Until then, here are some midweek links. Also, NPR Music's other jazz coverage.

• Louis, the silent film about a juvenile Louis Armstrong, and featuring a live band led by Wynton Marsalis, is now touring. Felix and I saw it this weekend. It is not particularly historically accurate. It is an impressive synchrony, though. The band is good. And it is also, in the way of good farces, fun.
• Phil Woods is not happy about the NEA making the entire Marsalis family Jazz Masters.
• RIP Bob Bowen. Man, this isn't supposed to happen any more.
• The matriarch of New York jazz.
• Burning Ambulance, the newish quarterly dedicated to music (including plenty of out jazz) is now available.
• Nextbop has been putting up new music from U.K. piano trios (and the Portico Quartet) this week.
• Chicago and Detroit jazz festivals this weekend. Nicole Mitchell! Mulgrew Miller!

This looks labor-intensive:

As a student at the Berklee College of Music, Meghan Stabile's peers were jazz musicians who grew up with hip-hop as popular music. So during her last semester of study, she first put together a show that brought together musicians from both jazz and hip-hop communities, exploring the connections within.

Stabile's operation, now based in New York, has become Revive Da Live, a concert production group presenting street-savvy jazz artists like Robert Glasper, Jaleel Shaw and Esperanza Spalding, often on stage with hip-hop performers like Talib Kweli, Pete Rock and Large Professor. Revive Da Live produces frequent performances around New York and the world; the Revive Music Group now also manages and books a roster of artists.

Revive's underlying goal has always been about education through live experience: Of jazz to the hip-hop crowd, and vice versa. In lieu of being able to bring a Revive show to all blog readers, I recently sat down with Stabile and two associates, MC/DJ Brian "Raydar" Ellis and pianist/writer Jared Pauley, to talk about jazz records for the hip-hop crowd.

"There's a way back to jazz through any kind of song that a 13, 14-year-old loves," Raydar Ellis said. "It's just a matter of tracing it back in a way that they find appealing. And that's what we do. That's our thing."

From our informal discussion, I've culled five (six, really) songs or albums to feature. Do leave us your suggestions, in the comments below.

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1. Dorothy Ashby, Afro-Harping (1968).

 

Meghan: A lot of stuff comes from listening to Pete Rock. He sampled a lot of records. We were speaking yesterday about Dorothy Ashby, and Raydar had mentioned this record. Even from that, another record called Dorothy's Harp: you can find samples from Madlib, Rahzel, Jay-Z, Pete Rock for sure — the list goes on.

Patrick: What about that particular record makes it so interesting?

Raydar: It's the way that that record was made. It's the sonic — and maybe this is just the audiophile in me, but — the way it was mixed and recorded. Her harp has this beautiful delay on it, but the bass has most of the low-end along with the drums. ... You can also hear what she did on some of Stevie Wonder's records.

2. Donald Byrd, Stepping Into Tomorrow (1975).

Raydar: I think the stuff that got me into jazz was, oddly enough, it was Incognito and Pieces of a Dream. My dad played a lot of the smooth jazz stuff on the radio — he'd be listening to CD 101.9 — and then he also had a bunch of records at the same time.

Coming at it from a perspective that a hip-hop listener understands, which is where the samples are generated from, I guess Donald Byrd Stepping Into Tomorrow has the "Think Twice" cut — "Looking out the Front Door," by Main Source is a direct link. But it's also been covered by J. Dilla on Welcome 2 Detroit, and by Erykah Badu. And that's just one song, let alone the whole record, let alone his whole catalog. That's a really dope record to start with.

3. Miles Davis, In A Silent Way (1969).

Jared: Miles Davis' In A Silent Way really changed the way I could hear music. I hate to go back to the word "organic," but everything is such an "organic" blend. As he progressed further into his fusion phase with Bitches Brew and On The Corner, it became a little more chaotic with the way he and [producer] Teo Macero edited all the tape together. But In A Silent Way — it's got this meld of electric pianos, and vibrato, and abstract, atmospheric music going on. It's hard to describe it. And it's like every great piano player of all time is on it, and every great musician — anybody who ever did anything great in fusion was on one of [Miles Davis'] records. Fact.

4. Charlie Parker, "A Night In Tunisia" (March 1946) and McCoy Tyner, "Impressions" (from Trident, 1975).

Meghan: With Hip-Hop 1942, we took records from the '50s, '60s, '70s — well, specific songs — and we played the original. For example, [a] Charlie Parker version of "A Night In Tunisia" was later used to create Gang Starr's "Words I Manifest." So we had a line up of stellar musicians — Marc Cary, Ben Williams, Louis Cato, Casey Benjamin and bunch of others — and they performed the original, as the original, and transitioned it into "Words I Manifest." So it went from the jazz record to the popular hip-hop song that derived from that record. And we had a whole audience there, which was mainly a hip-hop audience, that didn't know the original. So we had the album covers on a screen behind the band, showing which song this was, and what it was [sampled] into. They went crazy. It was a ridiculous show.

The other, which is my personal favorite, is McCoy Tyner's version of "Impressions." Ron Carter's bass solo was later used to create Black Sheep's "The Choice Is Yours." So Ben Williams — this was his idea — when he was soloing ... he just went into this subtle "Dum-dum-dum-dum Dum-doo-dum-dum," and then just went into it real hard, and the audience is screaming, 'cause they just didn't expect it.

Patrick:: Ben has that way of just plucking really hard — making you feel it.

Raydar: Yea, that's my cousin! [laughs] It's all in the family.

5. Robert Glasper, Double-Booked (2009).

Raydar: I really think it's great for a hip-hop head to come into jazz with that record because Rob was born from both sides of it. He has equal footing in both worlds, and he represents that on the record really well, whether it be that breakdown before "Butterfly," where they kind of flip the "F- - - Tha Police" joint, or the "Forever" joint, where [drummer] Chris [Dave] is laying the drums back kinda crazy. It's something that a hip-hopper can instantly recognize, but that they can sit back and listen to multiple times, and find the subtleties in the solos and performances. It's a really good record.

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Related At NPR Music: Listening To Rap With Robert Glasper.

About as soon as I hit "publish," I began to see gaps in my recent short rant essay, titled "You're Not Too Dumb To Like Jazz." In particular, Dan DiPiero points out something which I feel I ought to clarify here. I think he's misreading my intent a little bit, but I'm certainly leaving that possibility open by leaving out a few missing pieces.

Thinking about those lacunae, and how to fill them, dovetails nicely with my thoughts on another collection of music which has captivated me this summer: Steve Coleman's new album Harvesting Semblances And Affinities.

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The unifying idea of Coleman's new album, he writes, is "energy harvesting, i.e. the gathering, through musical symbolism, of the energy of particular moments." He describes the opening track as follows:

"Attila 02 (Dawning Ritual)" represents the opening energy of this assemblage of compositions. It is a sonic ritual that opens the way and prepares for what is to come. The tricky rhythms, dominated by the number 3, are reminiscent of combined energies of the Yoruba Orisha Eshu-Elegba, the Opener of the Way.

Have a listen to the first part of "Attila 02," before the solos:

 

"Attila 02 (Dawning Ritual)," from Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Harvesting Semblances And Affinities [Pi Recordings]. Steve Coleman, alto saxophone; Jen Shyu, vocals; Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet, Tim Albright, trombone, Thomas Morgan, bass, Tyshawn Sorey, drums. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Recorded Oct. 19, 2006.

On my own, I'm having trouble figuring out if it has a constant or variable meter, how a pattern of threes can be located in here, what exactly this might have to do with any Orishas. But where I do connect is how well drummer Tyshawn Sorey asserts a groove that is not a groove, how vocalist Jen Shyu declaims atop it all, how the horns are arranged for such maximal color and emphasis, how it all unravels so well before picking up again. There's certainly an energetic mood being conveyed, and I like to think that even when so many of my critical faculties abandon me, I can identify something akin to what Coleman was trying to capture.

I saw a more recent version of Steve Coleman's Five Elements perform this material this year at the Undead Jazzfest. I like this detail that Ben Ratliff captured in his writeup:

Above all, the band was an amazing system. Sweating through my clothes, I heard couple of good musicians behind me — there was almost always one within arm's reach — reacting with kind of sickened wonder. "What is going on up there?," one asked, sounding almost worried. Exactly.

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When people say they don't "understand" jazz or are "too dumb" for jazz music — or, conversely, call it "overly intellectual" or "too cerebral" — it's often a euphemism or rationale for not liking a certain strain of it. If we take them at their word, there's a lot to be potentially confused by: Jazz in general is unfamiliar to the average bear, and more complex than your average pop music. So it doesn't make you dumb if you can't immediately dissect a work of jazz. Seems to me you're an above average intellect for even caring enough to engage with it at all.

Here is the missing link: Most people like a lot of music they don't "understand." Musicologically speaking, I certainly can't break down everything I like about any recording I enjoy, or know what inspired it. The best musicians of any genre have a way of transcending this in order to communicate something more human than the artifice of music theory.

A few weeks ago, I broke down the rhythmic foundation of Guillermo Klein's arrangement of "Coplas del Regreso." But even so, there was a lot in that song I wasn't able to decipher into technical terms; more importantly, there remains the fundamental mystery about why those particular combinations were so affecting. (That was the point of that exercise anyway, to muse on its futility.)

Even though I like his new album, I feel like I "understand" even less about Steve Coleman's work. I confess I don't know his discography very well yet. I've met Coleman a few times, but I've never talked to him at length about his music. I wasn't around when M-Base, a philosophical framework he helped devise, was first formulated; I don't know what the critics said about him when he was releasing music on major labels.

I do gather Coleman has studied music in Cuba, Ghana, Senegal, southern India, at IRCAM in Paris. I also know that he is interested in new ways of structuring music — a website and now-defunct blog lays out a few of his ideas about negative space, Greek and medieval modes, symmetry, Charlie Parker and so forth. It's my impression that he likes to devise unconventional structures, from disparate inspirations. But I fully admit that I am generally unfamiliar with what those musical structures are, here or otherwise.

Given all that, this record still exerts such a powerful and mysterious appeal that after nearly three months, I keep reaching for it over and over.

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By way of analogy, I think about the summer blockbuster Inception, a fast-paced science-fiction film about implanting an idea within somebody else's dream. That movie was complex! It asked you to accept all these fantasy concepts native only to the world of the movie: shared dreaming, totems, "extraction," the "kick," the idea of an active subconscious, interminable limbo states, etc. The climactic final sequence features, depending on your interpretation of events, three or four different layers of dreams within a dream.

It would take a few viewings, and probably a few conversations with director Christopher Nolan, to fully comprehend everything that was going on in Inception, philosophically and technically. (Not to mention the plot holes.) But it wasn't difficult for much of the audience to enjoy at some level: Currently, it enjoys an IMDb user-generated rating of 9.1 out of 10.

Admittedly, the sonic language of Harvesting Semblances And Affinities is certainly less familiar than the visual language of Inception.** But the unfamiliar is not the same as the cerebral. Jazz, and especially stuff like Steve Coleman's music, is saddled with a certain meta-language that implies that the music's appeal is a sort of mental arithmetic game (or worse, posturing of appreciation). It's complex, sure, but in and of itself, that's not the draw.

Jazz fans and musicians don't like the stuff because they enjoy being able to dissect its chord changes, scale modes and time signatures. Those combinations of chord changes, scale modes and time signatures makes them feel something good inside.

That's why words like "brainy," or "highbrow," or this entire lexicon of left-brain appeal is discomfiting. Jazz is generally intricate, sure. But this oughtn't deter from the idea that the music can be for anyone who likes what they hear. In other words, you're not too dumb to like jazz: You're too caught up in thinking that dumb vs. smart is the right way to approach this stuff in the first place.

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_{**I'm not so naive to think you would get comparable sales results if you marketed Steve Coleman's album as widely as Christopher Nolan's movie was. But I do think it's worth trying.}

A few months after Miles Davis taped that material that would become Bitches Brew, he went on a two-week European tour with his quintet. A short clip of their Copenhagen, Denmark performance appears above. That's Miles with the pink shirt, multi-colored vest and red trumpet; elsewhere, that's Wayne Shorter on soprano sax (not seen here), Chick Corea sporting the robe-like garment that remains his sartorial signature (also, sadly, obscured from camera), and youthful incarnations of Dave Holland (upright bass) and Jack DeJohnette (drums).

They play "Miles Runs The Voodoo Down," and it's quite different than the album version. On Bitches Brew, this thing is ... well, it's just as unclassifiable. But it's definitely a different breed of unclassifiable, with that insistent bass line, and that shape-shifting lounge-funk (stoned-funk?) beat, and all those keyboard and guitar and percussive interjections.

We only have two-and-a-half minutes of the video here, but this live performance feels both freer and less willing to let go. Miles' live band hasn't fully become the impossible future funk-rock enterprise it would become; it's still tied to something like a ride cymbal-based swing beat. But there are only five people here, versus the 11 on the recording (plus Teo Macero in the studio), and man: they go out.

 

It's a transitional sound, somewhere between the inside-outside post-bop of mid-'60s Blue Note recordings/the second Great Miles Quintet (Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams) and the Weather Reports, Mwandishis, Lifetimes, Returns to Forever and yes, Miles Davis fusion bands to come. Then again, Miles Davis' entire career seems like one big transition in retrospect; it was just faster at certain times than others.

Back to the video: It's available on a DVD which comes with both standard and deluxe reissues of the album. (The bonus edition comes with another live audio set, plus a vinyl record and other goodies.) It's out on Tuesday Aug. 31, a few months after the 40th anniversary of the original Bitches Brew album release. You can purchase either version through the record company directly, if you're so inclined.

Forty years on, a fair amount of the noteworthy things going on in jazz/"jazz" are fusions: collisions with hip-hop, R&B, electronic music, Latin folk, Carnatic improvisation, indie rock or even other styles within jazz history itself. Likewise, Bitches Brew doesn't sound like jazz as we know it (still doesn't); it does feel like something a restless experimenter who came from the jazz world might devise, though. This DVD find, I think, supports that view.

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Related At NPR Music: The Bitches Brew beer taste test.

Last summer, I sat on my front porch with Orr Shtuhl, Washington City Paper's Beerspotter, and paired six summer jazz songs with six summer beers. Sun Ra smoked funky grooves with a La Sancerroise au Gruyt and Charles Mingus' "Ysabel's Table Dance" was seduced by a Verdi Imperial Stout. To quote one torn commenter about our project, "I don't know whether to hate you or make you my hero."

On Tuesday, to celebrate 40 years of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, Dogfish Head brewery will release a limited edition Bitches Brew ale. And in order to verify the Brew-ness of such an ale, I invited back Orr, as well as our Blogger Supreme Patrick Jarenwattananon, to taste the imperial stout and honey wine fusion.

Pouring out the first glass, there was no foam and a lot of black.

 

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Lars Gotrich [NPR Music]: What are we seeing, Orr?

Orr Shtuhl [Beerspotter, Washington City Paper]: Well, it's not quite black. It's one of the darkest stouts I've seen, but not the darkest. While a stout in the glass looks black, you always look at the edges to see the character. The edges have a dark amber color, while at the middle, it’s going to be pitch black.

Lars: I love the sediment I get when I tip the glass.

Orr: It's very viscous. We're drinking out of fancy wine glasses, which lets you see how it clings to the side of the glass. It leaves a clear wall like a syrup.

Lars: So what's in Bitches Brew Ale?

Orr: It's three parts imperial stout and one part tej, an African mead. An imperial stout is a strong version of a stout, which is a dark ale that usually has notes of chocolate, coffee and/or molasses. It's usually very sweet and, in this case, has a very low hop profile.

Tej is an African mead wine (or honey wine) and in place of hops, it uses gesho root. Today we use hops for flavor. Beers like IPAs are really hoppy, fresh, fruity, bitter, floral, and delicious. Originally, though, hops were used as a preservative, and some herbs and flowers are also preservatives. Before European brewers used hops, they'd use herbs like rosemary. In Africa, one of the plants they used was gesho and that's what's still used in this traditional honey wine and what's used in one of the four parts of this beer.

Lars: I think we should drink some. We've been waiting too long! [After a sip.] I get an immediate hit of coffee.

Patrick Jarenwattananon [NPR Music]: It's certainly malty compared to hoppy, but it doesn't quite hit me in the way of a pure imperial stout. There's a definitely an edge rounded off of it.

Orr: It feels like honey in the way that it sits on your tongue. Many imperial stouts will have some roast elements because the dark color of stouts comes from the roasting of the barley before it's used. The level of toasting determines the color of the beer. A stout can be very heavily roasted — that's why you get these coffee flavors, chocolate flavors. This one really sits on your tongue and one minute afterward, I can still taste it. The mead wine lingers longer, it doesn't have that bitterness to clip off the finish. To me it tastes like old-timey Cola.

Lars: Well now that you say that, it's like when you go to a restaurant and the fountain is extra syrupy that day. And that's the best time to drink Coke, you know?

Patrick: It also isn't terribly carbonated. It goes down very smooth.

Orr: It's almost does feel like a concentrate and that's why it's certainly worth drinking out of a smaller glass. ... Dogfish Head's beers are much like its president, Sam Calagione — they're not soft spoken. They're like the fun guys at parties — they're loud, they talk a lot, they present themselves to you pretty openly. I think this beer definitely fits that mold. It's got a lot of flavors going on, and they're all out front. Right away you get these roast coffee notes, thick, sweet molasses, and really complex sweetness in the honey, which is what I really like about this. You can can make lemonade with white sugar, but if you make lemonade with honey instead, and it gives such a rich, floral sweetness. I think that's what you're getting in this beer. It's a lot of flavors that just sit on your tongue like a down blanket that just hangs on top of you.

Lars: I like that image a lot, which makes me want to transition into the music.

Patrick: The Bitches Brew album is kind of like this beer — it's a weird cut and paste. It's coming from jazz, from guys who worked with Miles Davis. And then he instructed them to basically jam with electric instruments, in a not entirely swing way. Then Davis and his producer, Teo Macero, recombined what they did in the studio. The same way you have these three different breeds of stout and then this "exotic" honey wine, it's sort of how the album turned out: three parts jazz and one part ineffable something else.

But I think In a Silent Way is a slightly better analogue for this beer. I know I'm going out on a limb here, but [Bitches Brew] is really complex, almost strident — full of rich sounds like Fender Rhodes, the screeching Miles Davis trumpet, bass clarinet, soprano sax, electric guitar and the drums clipping along. In a Silent Way tends to have more of a rounder edge. Maybe it's just that we're talking about the honey component so much, but I definitely feel like it goes down easier despite everything that's going on in the beer.

Lars: I think that's fair. But Bitches Brew is a little abrasive. It's not harsh Albert Ayler-style noise, but it hits you over the head the first time you put it on. It's like the first whiff of coffee I mentioned earlier. The funny thing is that I don't even drink coffee.

Orr: This beer is one of the least aggressive beers I've ever had. I mean that in a good way. It's very rounded, exceedingly mellow, and you'd never get that it was 9 percent alcohol. It's a very nice introduction, actually, to the imperial stout style. It's one of the tamer, more accessible ones I've had recently. If I had to draw a musical analogy, I'd be more inclined to pick Billie Holiday — it's a mellow mood that anyone can get into. If I had to give a Budweiser-only drinker an imperial stout, this is probably one of the easier ones for them to try.

Lars: Ultimately, does Bitches Brew ale compliment Bitches Brew the album?

Orr: To say that this is a better beer to complement Bitches Brew than Budweiser is like saying one beer is better to complement something like Miley Cyrus.

Lars: Although "Party in the USA" should totally be a beer.

Orr: Right. As far as the pairing, I don't know how academic [Dogfish Head] intended to be, but I think the only common point is high quality. If that's all we got, then it's nothing to complain about. If you want to get really high-minded about it, I think this beer would go better with a more mellow album.

Patrick: Maybe we should move onto another track. Perhaps "Spanish Key"?

Orr: This sounds like more of a late night track. I'm familiar with good beer, but new to jazz. I latch onto more hypnotic, groove-based songs like this. It has more rock touchstones and easier to dig into for me. It's less frenetic to me like the opener, "Pharoah's Dance." I'd rather be drunk to this song.

I think that tasting is more conducive to groove-based music because you're repeating the same thing over and over. You're enjoying the same flavors — every sip is more faint. Really what you're doing is putting yourself in this mood to enjoy something continuously and when you have a more groove-based track, it actually meshes pretty well. I could listen to this song on loop and drink the whole bottle.

Lars: It's a 17 minute song, so you could probably make it through the whole bottle if you wanted to.

More links from this week:

• Nate Chinen on the youthful elements of the Seattle jazz scene, for the Times. Very glad somebody has told this story.
• Brad Mehldau writes on "Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, Beethoven and God," filtered through the lens of German authors and philosophers. Also, Mehldau recently duetted with John Mayer.
• Branford Marsalis turned 50. Here's a Nate Chinen reflection, and a discordant note from Phil Freeman.
• Howard Mandel on the #jazzlives Twitter hashtag, after one year. Also, in the comments last week, Mandel linked to this amusingly dated 1997 piece he wrote called "Jazz Vs. Computers."
• Mark Stryker of the Detroit Free Press on Mulgrew Miller, who is artist-in-residence at the Detroit International Jazz Festival.
• A Chicago club, actually doing well in this rough summer.
• The Smithsonian National Museum of American History blog posted photos and audio clips about Lena Horne and Abbey Lincoln this week.
• A 1979 Abbey Lincoln interview. Also, Chinen (again!) on Abbey's lasting influence.
• Chico and Rita: The animated story of a Cuban couple of musicians making their way in bebop-era New York (H/T Peter Hum).
• More Savory Collection goodies from Newsweek. Also, Seth Colter Walls speaks with historian Loren Schoenberg. And WNYC spoke with Schoenberg and Bill Savory's son at length too.
• It takes two saxophonists to replace one Joe Lovano.
• This is a fun New York Times human interest piece (plus video) from Aidan Levy about jazz musicians' ping-pong obsessions after hours. (Who knew that Aaron Goldberg was so good at table tennis?) Also, I'm a little confused as to why it's a bit heated in the comments.
• Dennis Hopper among the jazz beatniks, from WFIU's Night Lights.
• From The Onion: "Ask A Guy Who's Not Doing The Gig For Less Than $200."
• Destination: Out re-posts a Pat Martino jam.
• JazzWax has an interview with historian Phil Schaap (a personal mentor as well).
• The Jazz Session speaks with Jimmy Amadie and Shane Endsley.
• The Checkout this week was a rerun. It is, like, the second rerun in about a year and a half? Busy man, that Josh Jackson.
• Finally, this is funny (H/T Jazz24):

A few links we have mentioned:

 

• JazzCorner's InnerViews, and Anil Prasad's Innerviews.
• The National Visionary Leadership Project video oral histories, and the Smithsonian jazz oral histories.
• "Has Your Partner's Musical Taste Ever Been A Dealbreaker?" Apparently, yes.
• The Village Vanguard folding bicycle.
• The Vijay Iyer trio + M.I.A. "Galangs" mashup.

Links to other NPR Music jazz stuff:

• You have one weekend left to hear all of the fantastic new Danilo Pérez album Providencia as part of NPR Music's First Listen series.
• The Take Five series this week explores lesser-known Indo-Jazz Fusion.
• JazzSet airs a 2000 set with Abbey Lincoln and Kendra Shank.
• Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz reruns the Allen Toussaint and Elvis Costello episode.
• Bluesman Piano Red does "CC Rider."