Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

I get visited by The Ghost Of Jack Kerouac in my dreams. He pops in from time to time to see how things are going in the world he left in 1969, brag about the museum tour of his manuscript for On The Road, and ask me about new music.

?I?m getting SO tired of The Ghost of Tom Joad,? he said to me last night, interrupting another dream, as usual. ?Ever since that Bruce Springsteen guy made a CD with his name in the title, that?s ALL he talks about!? ?Tom Joad is a fictional character,? I remind him. ?And this is a dream,? he replies. ?So what are you listening to these days?? ?Well, there?s one called “Chromatology” by a band called UpSurge! and…? ?What?s their music like?? he interrupts. ?It?s really good. Spoken word backed by a jazz band.? ?Ahhhhhhh,? he groans, which always scares the bejesus out of me, him being a ghost and all. ?I remember when I used to do that on Steve Allen?s TV show. He?d play piano and I?d read a poem. It always sounded like we actually rehearsed.? ?Yeah, I know,? I said, ?but this is different.? ?How so?? ?Well…?

My alarm clock radio went off and I woke up. This always happens. If I had been able to stay in the dream, I would have told him that, for one thing, spoken-word and music has come a long way since he did it. I would have told him that this music is built on the versatile rhythm section of Darrell Green on drums and David Ewell?s acoustic bass alternating with Ron Belcher?s electric one. They can accommodate the calypso style of ?Last Time I Saw Sonny,? the rat-a-tat streetcorner doo-wop meets the 21st Century sound of ?Medicine Man,? the uptempo-postbop-morphs-into-bossa-nova of ?Ms. BC,? ballads and everything else in between.

I would have told him that the spoken word creations and performances are provided by Raymond Nat Turner and Zigi Lowenberg. Very creative wordplay by both (more on that subject later) that is accompanied by original music by Richard Howell, who also cowrites a pair with Turner and Ewell, respectively. I also would have mentioned that a few of the songs combine their poetry with music from older jazz pieces by Sonny Rollins, Abdullah Ibrahim, and Andy Bey.

This core band gets outstanding support work from an eclectic list of musicians like Glen Pearson on piano, Khalil Shaheed on flugelhorn, Stephen Kent on didjeridu, Ennett Tu Geuther on kazoo (yes, kazoo) and talking drum, David Frazier on accordion, and Calvin Keys on guitar.

A good example of this CD?s music is ?A Child?s Question(s).? It begins with Shaheed?s horn calling out the childhood six-note ?neener, neener, NEEEEEEner? taunt, answered note-for-note by Howell. A piano trio starts to play, big piano chords ringing out every one-beat in a steady 4/4 rhythm, a male voice wails. A little girl asks her father a question about Billy Higgins? drums, then, you can practically HEAR that little girl?s brow furrowing, she asks the whereabouts of Tony Williams? drum and Clifford Brown?s horn, which leads to Turner and Lowenberg asking the same question regarding Mary Lou Williams? piano, Melba Liston?s ?bone, Pops?s trumpet, Bird?s sax, and the instruments of other icons of jazz. Turner asks what happens to ?the masters? axes,? muses on whether ?the baby in the bassinet? will be able to play like Eric Dolphy, and the music immediately changes to a slow and deliberate two-note bassline that eases into a four-notes-per-measure walk. Piano and drums fall back in, joined by a vocal chorus, and Turner asks about Monk?s piano, he calls him ?the cat in the hat,? and whether it would ?sound better than some kid?s Gat.? Shaheen responds with a gorgeous flugelhorn solo. Just as that solo ends and the mind is savoring how nice it was, Turner lowers the boom with the final pair of questions: ?What happens to the masters? axes once their work is done?/Are they lost in a museum once called the street?? The band goes out with a full head of steam added to that walking bass and flugelhorn solo, and I had a ?yeah, WHAT happens?? question of my own.

I would have told Kerouac that he would have loved the rest of the music on the CD, but he probably would have found it a hard one to find, as hard as his attempt to spell ?didjeridu.? You might think that this would bother him, but you don?t know Jack. Well, actually, neither do I, except in my dreams. For ordering and additional information, visit www.upsurgejazz.com.