Since its beginnings, jazz has engaged with popular music, but it’s largely built on the blues—throughout jazz’s history, countless staples of its repertoire have pushed the genre forward using variants of the elemental blues structure. Blues feeling is integral to jazz as well, whether the quasi-microtonal cry of blue notes or the expressive style of articulation in its sobs and shouts. As jazz has developed, it’s often departed from these roots, but even during the heyday of free jazz in the 60s and 70s artists found ways to meld freedom and heavy blues into something profound and gritty: pioneers such as Julius Hemphill, Olu Dara, Phil Cohran, and Henry Threadgill could write deceptively simple, soulful themes whose broad improvisational latitude their bandmates brilliantly exploited.
Donald Byrd, Blackjack (Blue Note) Hans Abrahamsen, 10 Preludes/Six Pieces (Dacapo) Christine Abdelnour, Bonnie Jones, and Andrea Neumann, As:Is (Olof Bright) Günter Adler, Live in Asien (Meta) Roscoe Mitchell & Matthew Shipp, Accelerated Projection (Rogue Art)
