Word: bebop
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...different universe of skill than the one I inhabit, of course, but the levels that separate me from the lowliest of these guys are the same as those separating them from the likes of Jernigan, whose solo set I stick around for before heading home. He opens with the bebop standard "Jordu," effectively blowing away about 99 percent of the field, then satisfies the country contingent's needs with terrifying versions of "Black Mountain Rag" and "Orange Blossom Special." I smile in idiotic bliss...
...Malone made its way into town for a night's performance at the Regatta Bar in the Charles Hotel. While Green is informally the leader of the group, it is bassist Brown who has worked with the big names, playing in Oscar Peterson's juggernaut trios, Dizzy Gillespie's bebop band and collaborating with Duke Ellington. Rounding out the trio was guitarist Russell Malone, one of the best of young jazz guitarists today...
...talk about American music without talking about Black people and Black musical forms. And you cannot discuss Black music without taking it account its edginess (think of bluesman Robert Johnson, bebop innovator Charlie Parker, rocker Little Richard, soulman Otis Redding, et al.), its rebelliousness (anyone from Big Mama Thornton to Jimi Hendrix) and the fact that edginess and rebelliousness ultimately appeals to white young people as much as it does to Black young people. That and "white music" suffering slumps from time to time made the white embrace of hip-hop inevitable - has there really been anything interesting happening...
...criticism and a revival of the nationalist politics of Malcolm X. De La Soul and Tribe Called Quest were among the leaders of an imaginative school of abstract poetics that stretched the envelope of the hip-hop form and sought to connect it with earlier musical traditions such as bebop, but elsewhere 2 Live Crew were appropriating the frenetic Miami drum-and-bass sound to weave lascivious sexual fantasies that got local authorities screaming to shut them down...
Gangsta rap, with its narrative tales and its cinematic funk-driven sound, offered a distinct alternative to the tricky bebop gymnastics of the freestyling East Coast. But hip-hop came close to destroying itself in the mid-'90s when that bicoastal rivalry almost turned into a shooting war, as Tupac Shakur - between surviving shootings and spells in prison - threatened the life of Brooklyn rapper the Notorious B.I.G. and both men, former friends, were by the end of 1997 dead in as-yet-unsolved drive-by shootings...