{"id":3522,"date":"2022-11-29T11:22:56","date_gmt":"2022-11-29T19:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=3522"},"modified":"2022-11-30T15:52:20","modified_gmt":"2022-11-30T23:52:20","slug":"gene-seymours-top-ten-jazz-albums-for-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=3522","title":{"rendered":"Gene Seymour’s Top Ten Jazz Albums for 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Not one of the better years for recorded jazz, I\u2019ve decided, though what\u2019s listed below is still, as Spencer Tracy once put it, \u201ccherce.\u201d I\u2019ve spent more than three decades insisting that jazz\u2019s yearly yield of recordings showed that its energy and quality was surging despite the relative and not-so-benign neglect of what used to be called the music industry. But I now think we may have finally hit, if not a wall, maybe a bump, or a dip in the road.

Then again, I wasn\u2019t expecting much from this past year since everybody and everything is still recovering from the last couple years of lockdown and loathing. With a couple of exceptions, most of what I heard last year sounded tentative and restrained, as if jazz were feeling its way through the emotional wreckage of the previous six years (or so) to get its bearings; just like you, me, and everybody we know.

Which I wouldn\u2019t have minded so much if 2022 hadn\u2019t also been Charles Mingus\u2019s centennial, reminding me of a time when jazz was ALL affirmation, thrust, and drive. Even the best jazz music I heard on record this year seemed to make its way hesitantly, even diffidently from the edges of space while Mingus, the prototype of whatever\u2019s meant by \u201cforce of nature,\u201d went all out, coming at and for you, whether you were amenable to what he was laying down or not. When reacquainting myself with the polyphonic momentum and high drama of \u201cBlack Saint and the Sinner Lady,\u201d \u201cPithecanthropus Erectus,\u201d \u201cFables of Faubus\u201d and other Mingus landmarks, I found myself wandering further back to Fletcher Henderson\u2019s deco-dynamics of the twenties and thirties and wondering where all that hotfoot urgency and furious invention had gone \u2013 and whether it\u2019ll every come back.

Why wonder? The founder of Rolling Stone was quoted this past year saying rock-and-roll had declined so much that it\u2019s never coming back. \u201cIt\u2019ll end up,\u201d Jann Wenner said, \u201clike jazz.\u201d Burn! From wherever he\u2019s calling home, Wenner likely hasn\u2019t even heard of Cecile McLorin Salvant or Maria Schneider or (maybe) even Robert Glasper, no matter how much their work engages the present moment. What I suppose he\u2019s really saying is that rock-and-roll, as with jazz, blues, or even, I\u2019ve been hearing lately, hip-hop no longer own or compel the present moment as they once did. (What does? Podcasts? Hulu? The noises in Elon Musk\u2019s head?)

But as much as it hurts to admit it, Wenner\u2019s right. The dual queens of pop, Beyonc\u00e9 Knowles and Taylor Swift, now preside over the music zeitgeist without much of a challenge. We could do worse. We could do better. In the meantime, we tend to our gardens and fend off negativity. And it\u2019s hard not to be negative given the losses in the past year of people like Creed Taylor, Ronnie Cuber, Sue Mingus, Ramsey Lewis, jamie branch, Joey De Francesco, Ron Miles, Charnett Moffett, Grachan Moncur III, and Pharoah Sanders. When one or more of them leave, we cast about for replacements until we accept that there are no replacements for any of them. There\u2019s just us, the originals who remain, and those whose names we don\u2019t know yet, but can\u2019t wait to get into the action. Zeitgeist or no zeitgeist, these folks go on, no matter how messed up or constricted the rest of the world is.

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1.) Cecile McLorin Salvant, Ghost Song<\/em> (Nonesuch)<\/strong> \u2013 We have a right to expect our best artists to make deep, hard connections to the present from whatever angles they choose. This latest act of insurgency from the finest, shrewdest, most adventurous jazz vocalist of her generation didn\u2019t only connect (as it were); it seemed to be inventing the emotional whirlwind of the entire year as it spun wildly into being, anticipating hope and dread at every shaded turn. Remember that song from The Wizard of Oz<\/em> when Dorothy, Toto, and their shabby retinue have escaped the toxic poppy fields and are skipping towards the gates of Oz? The ditty that goes: \u201cYou\u2019re out of the woods\/ You\u2019re out of the dark\/You\u2019re out of the niiight\u2026\u201d<\/em> Tell me something like that didn\u2019t pop into your head the morning after this year\u2019s midterms and in exactly the wifty, pop-eyed, kewpie-doll fashion Salvant\u2019s rendition does here before it gives way to Gregory Porter\u2019s more ruminative \u201cNo Love Dying,\u201d whose lyrics are far less credulous towards life\u2019s possibilities, but instead encourage abiding faith in love\u2019s persistence however many \u201cbroken wings\u201d materialize in rebuttal. Salvant has from the beginning of her meteoric rise to the pinnacle of her profession displayed rapier-like smarts towards relevance and applicability of song, which comes through in blending not just Porter and Harold Arlen, but also Kurt Weill (\u201cThe World is Mean\u201d), and Sting (\u201cUntil\u201d) along with orchestrating, in \u201cDead Poplar,\u201d a letter Alfred Stieglitz once wrote to Georgia O\u2019Keefe. She\u2019s not just showing off her erudition\u2026OK, maybe she is, a little. But this formidable sound collage is enhanced by her own compositions, some of which play along the edges of introspective passion, if there is such a paradox. (From \u201cObligation\u201d: \u201cPromises Lead to Resentment\/ I could Love You if only it would stop your weeping, and start your smiling\/ But is that Love?\u201d Your move, Taylor Swift.) She closes her recital, unexpectedly, yet impeccably, with the old English folk ballad, \u201cUnquiet Grave,\u201d which at once recognizes the pain and depth of loss, while imploring for the necessity of letting go and moving on. It all sounds a lot like what we\u2019ve been thinking lately \u2013 and a lot more like what we\u2019ll be feeling forever after.<\/p>\r\n