A New Kind of Blue: The Power of Suggestion & the Pleasure of Groove in Robert Glasper’s Black Radio

Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr.

Abstract: This essay places the important Robert Glasper Experiment recording “Black Radio” (2012) within its artistic, commercial, and critical contexts. As a project that combines genres, “Black Radio” did more than challenge different communities of listeners; it invited them to see how Glasper’s sonic juxta- positions could be logically aligned. Jazz, hip-hop, R&B, and gospel merge in “Black Radio” to form a stylish, forward-looking contribution that won popular and critical successes. Glasper and his ensemble toy with the social contracts that have established boundaries around sonic language; indeed, he makes their territories feel seamless and natural. Because of the success of the project, we may be witnessing a post-genre moment that disrupts traditional ideas about music that have been preciously held in the industry since it emerged in the late-nineteenth century.

“C hanging the game!” exclaimed the press photog- rapher at pianist Robert Glasper’s standing-room- only appearance at World Café Live in Philadelphia in the spring of 2012. “Yeah, no doubt,” a middle- aged man shot back in enthusiastic agreement. The midsized auditorium was ½lled with an interracial, intergenerational crowd of listeners enveloped in the mesh of sound worlds that Glasper presented GUTHRIE P RAMSEY JR with both commitment and ease. . , ., is the The audience’s enthusiasm for the Robert Glasper Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Music at the Experiment’s landmark 2012 release Black Radio University of Pennsylvania. His (Blue Note)–and its accompanying promotional publications include The Amazing tour–was af½rmed by the American music indus- Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History, try’s arbiters of taste. To much surprise, Black Radio and the Challenge of Bebop (2013), received a Grammy Award nomination in two cat- Race Music: Black Cultures from Be - egories: Best R&B Performance for “Gonna Be bop to Hip-Hop (2003), and the forth- Alright (F.T.B.),” featuring Ledisi; and Best R&B coming Who Hears Here?: Essays on Black Music History and Society. He is Album. Even before it debuted, there was steady also pianist, composer, and arranger buzz about what the recording’s aesthetic ap- for the Philadelphia-based band proach and its critical reception might mean to the Dr. Guy’s MusiQology. future of jazz. Now, in the wake of its release, it is

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00240 by guest on 30 September 2021 clear that Black Radio’s influence extends their more traditional competencies in Guthrie P. well beyond the jazz world, as evidenced composition and performance, as well as Ramsey, Jr. by the R&B branding. Like Miles Davis’s in marketing and promotion. This new- pivotal 1959 album Kind of Blue, which found freedom has allowed ambitious signaled a new direction for modern jazz, musicians and producers to break out of Black Radio may indeed qualify as a game genre boxes and craft conceptually adven- changer. turous projects. Some creators intention- ally share their work free-of-charge on New York Times music critic Nate Chi- the social media sites Facebook, Twitter, nen wrote that Black Radio was “the rare and YouTube before they actually “drop” album of its kind that doesn’t feel strained through traditional commercial avenues. by compromise or plagued by problems Many recordings appear only in these on - of translation.”1 Such a synthesis of line outlets and attract thousands of lis- styles is quite a feat given that jazz, R&B, teners without the help of a record label. and hip-hop have developed dissimilar A new music economy has been estab- social contracts with audiences, a chasm lished, in which record and marketing ex- made glaringly clear by hip-hop’s emer- ecutives no longer exclusively determine gence as a commodity in the 1980s and what music is entitled to widespread dis- the almost contemporaneous “young semination. One of the most exciting lions” movement that shot Wynton Mar - results of this shift is that informal musi- salis and his co-conspirators of young, cal collectives have begun to work across mostly male jazz musicians to stardom. genre lines (those imaginary sonic bound- In public and private discourse, these neo- aries that exclude more than they invite), classicist hard boppers were pitted against creating new audience alliances as well. the sample-½lled digital soundscapes of Although he is contracted with Blue hip-hop producers (“they are not even Note, the label historically associated with ‘real’ musicians”) and their rapping, “straight-ahead” jazz, Glasper proves him - rhyming counterparts (“they are really not self in his latest release to be in the avant- musicians”). Although some critics could garde of this exciting new aesthetic wave. engage with each of these sound worlds, That is not to say that there are not many listeners remained wedged between sonic precursors to Black Radio’s appealing polarizing aesthetic discussions that in - new sounds. Chinen’s article mentions a spired a politics of division. few such milestone performers: Miles That was the 1980s. Dramatic changes Davis, Guru, A Tribe Called Quest, De La in the recording industry over the last Soul, and Roy Hargrove. Each artist/group ½fteen years have opened up new creative has produced projects that blend elements opportunities for artists, and musicians of jazz with those of other popular styles. are taking full advantage of them. Talented We can push the list back further in time independent engineers and producers, to include innovators like pianist Ramsey armed with relatively high-quality per- Lewis, the father of “soul-jazz,” who has sonal recording studios, have increased continued to build a vibrant career slid- exponentially; it’s now a literal cottage ing effortlessly across the jazz/pop con- industry. And because of the digital revo- tinuum. The clear-headed and creative ad - lution, which provided cost-effective ac - venturer Herbie Hancock, too, stands as a cess to cutting-edge technologies, many towering inspiration to genre-crossing musicians have become astute in engi- artists, both in spirit and in technical exe- neering and production in addition to cution.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00240 by guest on 30 September 2021 A New And we must not overlook, as is all too criticism of his dual pedigree in hip-hop Kind of often the practice, the important women and jazz, while also providing ample space Blue: Robert contributors to this aesthetic shape-shift- for experimentation. Glasper’s ing sensibility. Gospel great Elbernita Beginning with an impressive set of trio “Black Radio” “Twinkie” Clark’s songwriting, singing, recordings in the tradition of, most obvi- and Hammond B-3 playing did much to ously, bebop pianist Bud Powell (always a set that genre on an unapologetic and litmus test for the modern jazz pianist), sonically ecumenical path throughout the Glasper’s recorded output gradually 1980s and beyond. Pianist and composer moved into other conceptual and sonic Patrice Rushen’s work boasted a pre- territories. Brands are powerful entities, scient eclecticism that surely provided particularly in the music industry. Al- neo-soul rhythm and acid jazz tracks though he claims roots in gospel, R&B, some of their harmonic approaches. jazz, and hip-hop, Glasper entered into Bassist and songwriter Meshell Ndegeo- public awareness as a “jazz pianist,” and cello’s virtuosic musicianship and fluency it is hard to break away from that rubric in hip-hop, pop, funk, soul, and jazz–and once it sticks. The same is true for any artist the singular and courageous way she whose work is marketed in a system that combines the genres–must be consid- makes money from rigid predictability. ered a signpost in this discussion. This “agreement” becomes a social con- tract that ultimately seeks to dictate what As a subject of written criticism and artists produce, how companies sell con- promotion, as a live performance event, tent, and the spending and listening habits and as a recording, Black Radio deserves of speci½c demographics. Although Glas - our careful attention. But precisely what per was branded as a jazz musician, he has part of the Black Radio project suggests also maintained highly visible collabora- that we are in the midst of a post-genre tions with the revered hip-hop producer moment, a wholesale realignment of the and beat-maker J Dilla (James Dewitt Yan- traditional social contracts governing cey) and the rapper Q-Tip (of the critically music creation, dissemination, and con- acclaimed group A Tribe Called Quest). sumption in the industry? Black Radio’s What we think of as the essence of jazz sense of aesthetic balance–of getting it today developed during the 1940s bebop just right–is key to our understanding, revolution. As historian Scott DeVeaux and it may be derived from two provoca- has explained: tive musical choices: 1) a self-conscious In the wake of bebop, we no longer think of foregrounding of digital technology in jazz improvisation as a way of playing tunes the soundscape, including tricked-out but as an exacting art form in itself that mixes and effects, among other tech- happens, as a rule, to use popular music as niques; and 2) a harmonic palette drawn a point of departure. In the hands of a jazz from the progressive post-bop vocabu- improviser, a copyrighted popular song is lary, featuring close, infectious harmonies less text than pretext. Its crucial identifying that pivot around common tones and feature–melody–is erased in the heat of shifting tonal centers. The songs are oth- improvisation, leaving behind the more ab- erwise characterized by the careful align- stract and malleable level of harmonic pat- ment of sonic symbols from across the tern. Out of the ashes of popular song comes historical black popular music sound- a new structure, a new aesthetic order, scape. Here, Glasper’s aesthetic strategy shaped by the intelligence and virtuosity of positions him to assuage the traditionalist the improviser; and it is to that structure,

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00240 by guest on 30 September 2021 and that structure alone, that our attention As the music scholar and cultural critic Guthrie P. should be drawn.2 Mark Anthony Neal has written in his Ramsey, Jr. insightful review of Black Radio, the use of This aesthetic order, grounded in virtu- the terms post-genre and black music might oso spectacle, has been both a blessing seem oxymoronic.3 What Neal is indicat- and a curse; it is an ideal that has, on the ing, of course, is that the concept “genre” one hand, created expressions of sublime operates as an index of sound and the beauty and, on the other, eroded the eco- social ideas assigned to it. In other words, nomic base of the once popular music people socially agree on what sounds with exercises in abstraction that some mean, to what community they “belong,” claim are too dif½cult to decipher. and what extra-musical connotations The world of hip-hop, Glasper’s other they might convey. So if it is post-genre, pedigree, has its own social contract and where does blackness ½t in? historical groundings, though some of its Neal’s meditation on the project situ- more infamous themes of nihilism, mi - ates Glasper’s Black Radio in the historical sogyny, and political confrontation have context of black American radio stations, tended to eclipse the dynamism of its de - which reinforced the personal connection ½ning musical traits. Nonetheless, as a sys - between Glasper’s album and my experi- tem of organized sound, it has (like con- ences growing up listening to the Chicago- temporary gospel music) flaunted an ir- based station wvon (Voice of the Negro). reverent and irrepressible voracious muse, Chess Records executives Leonard and Phil absorbing sound elements as quickly as Chess owned the am station from 1963 they appear in the public sphere. Likewise, until Leonard’s death in 1969. They pro- hip-hop has demonstrated similar senses grammed it all: gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, of portability together with the re in force - pop, and because it was Chicago, some ment and transcendence of ethnic identi- more blues. Musical eclecticism de½ned ties as they have been bound to speci½c the station’s community of listeners, link- sound organizations. ing the generations with an “open-eared,” Glasper’s Black Radio project intelli- aesthetically patient temperament: one of gently and artfully indexes these histories. your songs was surely coming up next. Indeed, all of the sonic and social agree- Tellingly, when I visited Glasper’s home- ments of hip-hop, jazz, and gospel (Glasper town of Houston a few years back, I grew up playing in church) congeal in noticed the same ecumenical historical thoughtful, groove-based arrangements consciousness on its radio stations. on the album (and in the live shows, But we have largely lost our expansive though in different ways). When we con- tastes to the corporate pressures put on sider the crafty details of the songs, their program directors to maintain the strict conceptual and technological framing, social contracts of genre. And this is the their harmonic environment and relation- very reason that audiences (and, ironically, ship to popular song, their virtuosic per- the industry) have enjoyed Black Radio’s formances, and their accessibility and even nod back to that more eclectic time, and spirituality, we can better understand why I use the forward-looking term post- Black Radio as an example of “post-genre” genre to capture the project’s pulse, con- black music. The project plays with sonic, tour, and impact. social, and iconic symbols in a way that recalibrates calci½ed, boring ideas about genre, and turns them on their head with Every track on Black Radio rewards–a a good sense of funky adventure. high standard not often met these days,

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00240 by guest on 30 September 2021 A New particularly with projects of this size. The overused technique, however, is that his Kind of most attractive sonic features, as I have ensemble has taken the concept–an ana- Blue: Robert stated above, derive from how the digital log interpretation of a digital concept– Glasper’s aspects of the recording share the fore- and injected the improvisational free- “Black Radio” ground with Glasper’s signature harmonic dom of the jazz/fusion/funk sonic com- approach. Another feature that departs plex. Consider Casey Benjamin’s unpre- from the jazz social contract, as laid out dictable and expressive synth solo on by DeVeaux, is how the project is con- “Cherish the Day”–doubled in parallel sciously not dominated by heroic virtuoso intervals throughout. It is a husky state- solos. These fresh elements, of course, ment reminiscent of Chick Corea’s Elek- also contributed to Black Radio’s Grammy tric Band of the 1980s. How the band nominations in the R&B category, rather keeps the groove pitched just hotter than than in Glasper’s “brand” category, jazz. a simmer beneath his improvisation is a Glasper’s individualized progressive marvel of group interplay. It sounds like a post-bop vocabulary is instantly recog- very hip church fanning up some com- nizable. The project collapses this ap - munity spirit. Why rush through it for proach, however, with another aesthetic: radio’s sake? Moving the spirit takes time. gospel music. One cannot help but asso- With regard to female singers, there is ciate the way that his talented band– plenty here to appreciate. There is the new- Derrick Hodge (bass), Casey Benjamin comer, Ledisi, the ½rebrand vocalist with (vocoder, flutes, saxophone), and Chris grit, riffs, and range; Meshell Ndegeocel- Dave (drums)–hit strong pocket grooves lo’s warm molasses presentation; Chris - with all the deep soul of a sancti½ed Pen- ette Michele’s breathy and sensuous croon; tecostal band. They languish over the Erykah Badu, the priestess of the neo-soul rhythmic and harmonic possibilities of movement of the 1990s; and Layla Hath- these grooves, subtly twisting, turning, away, daughter of the iconic singer Donny and burning as if these manipulations Hathaway, who possesses her father’s were the point of the whole endeavor. same appealing melismatic execution. With all the dramatic innovations that Hathaway’s reworking of “Cherish the have recently occurred in gospel music, Day” exhibits the best qualities of her one quality has held strong: the love of vocal presentation: an open-throated, repetitive grooves that work the spirit, well-supported, and sultry alto voice, providing a platform for some of the captured effectively by the studio engi- most moving singing and instrumental neer. Breathy vowels abound as she moves improvisations in the industry. Black Radio through tasty melodic lines, working brims with this groove-centered aesthetic. over chord changes like her father, but Take Glasper’s rendition of “Cherish with much more economy. Lesser-known the Day,” a cover of the chanting groove- female singers, sisters Amber and Paris tress herself, Sade. The original, released Strother and Anita Bias, offer further neo- in 1993, is emblematic of a core aesthetic soul-ish warmth to the project. of urban pop styles of the last twenty The stylistic inclusivity is not limited to years: verse/chorus song forms built on the performers; note how Chris Dave’s identical chord structures. This quality drum sound is engineered in places to has become ubiquitous in R&B/urban throw back to early-1990s hip-hop sam- soul songwriting because of the spillover ples. Meanwhile, the lavish background effect of hip-hop’s cyclic loops. What vocals on the old school slow jam “Oh, separates Glasper’s interpretation of this Yeah,” featuring Musiq Soulchild and

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00240 by guest on 30 September 2021 Ms. Michele, harken back to R&B duet zying aplomb. Packaged with a statement Guthrie P. sensations Donny Hathaway and Roberta by writer Angelika Beener–less liner Ramsey, Jr. Flack, but with the complexities of a Jaguar note than manifesto–the album an - Wright multitrack vocal symphony. And nounces itself as something new, a turn Glasper’s acoustic solo after minute four toward breaking out of the sonic/mar- of the track–a tasty ride over a Fender keting formulas so prevalent in today’s Rhodes drenched soundscape–suggests industry offerings. The most important as - how this recording might have sounded pect of this “announcement,” however, is if long instrumental solos had been the this: Black Radio allows the music to do the emotional focal point of this project. real preaching. Thus, we hear the band’s Scattered and unusual mixes, electronic “post-genre” gesture as a suggestion, not effects, stylistic juxtapositions, fade-ins, a mandate. In other words, only the mu- oral declamations, and rhythmic chants sic in the totality of our experience, music combine to frustrate efforts to “place” that is boundaryless, market-resistant, this music. The most experimental tracks, artistically adventurous, and conceptually showcasing the male voices of Lupe Fiasco, focused can take black music back. Free Bilal, Sha½q Husayn, Stokely, and Mos black music! Def, crisscross generic markers with diz-

endnotes 1 Nate Chinen, “The Corner of Jazz and Hip-Hop,” The New York Times, February 24, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/arts/music/robert-glasper-experiment-to-release -black-radio.html?pagewanted=all. 2 Scott DeVeaux, “‘Nice Work If You Can Get It’: Thelonious Monk and Popular Song,” Black Music Research Journal 19 (2) (Autumn 1999): 172. 3 Mark Anthony Neal, “Liberating Black Radio: The Robert Glasper Experiment,” The Huf½ngton Post, March 9, 2012, http://www.huf½ngtonpost.com/mark-anthony-neal/black-radio-album -review_b_1326449.html.

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