Preserving the early 20th century’s musical heritage of Puerto Rico, great compositions written by great icons, including Rafael Hernandez, Pedro Flores, Sylvia Rexach, Bobby Capo and Tite Curet.

By Diaa Bekheet | Washington, DC

One of the great jazz albums of 2011 is Alma Adentra: The Puerto Rican Songbook. It’s a brilliant idea by acclaimed saxophonist Miguel Zenon to preserve the early 20th century’s jazz heritage of his native Puerto Rico.  The album is modeled on The Great American Songbook, which features an entire century of American music from such masters as Gershwin, Berlin, Porter, Kern, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Bernstein and others. Zenon follows the footsteps of such great American composers and songwriters to offer the jazz public some of the 20th century’s best songs that represent the sounds of Puerto Rico.

“The album is basically a tribute to the Puerto Rican Songbook,” said Zenon in an interview with VOA’s Jazz Beat. “When I started thinking of the relationship that jazz has with The Great American Songbook of Cole Porter, Gershwin, Irving Berlin and all the great composers and how, you know, all this Puerto Rican Songbook in this case could sort of translate in the same way. I thought of exploring it that way and eventually became a recording.”

I talked with Zenon about the album, Alma Adentra: The Puerto Rican Songbook. He said he wanted to bring the music of the great Puerto Rican songs to young people today, hoping to preserve it for future generations. Here’s the interview in full with three newly-arranged songs from The Puerto Rican Songbook.

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Zenon’s idea was to take songs written by some of the greatest and most recognized Puerto Rican songwriters and composers in the 20th century from his early childhood, the time of his parents and grandparents, explore those compositions and translate and arrange them into a style he usually performs with his band.

This is the second time Miguel Zenon’s reimagines and rearranges the music of his native Puerto Rico. His 2004 album, Jibaro, was a courageous attempt to reinterpret Puerto Rico’s rural music. The album’s success, along with the Puerto Rican Songbook will become Zenon trademark.

Meanwhile, Jazz made new history in 2011 when jazz singer and bassist Esperanza Spalding was named the year’s Best New Artist at the 53^rd annual Grammy Awards.  It was the first time ever that a jazz artist won the award.

Jazz Beat’s Artist of the Year:

Ron Carter, a prolific, smart and funky jazz icon, is considered one of the most influential bassists in the history of American jazz. He has with more than 2,000 recordings under his belt.

Jazz Beat’s Activist of the Year: Herbie Hancock.  The jazz pianist was “glued” to television, watching live coverage of Tahrir Square protests demand the removal of the regime in Egypt. The world peace advocate praised the peaceful, anti-social injustice protests in Egypt as he attended the Grammy ceremony on February 13; two days after President Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign.

Jazz Beat’s Book of the year:

Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz, by Benjamin Cawthra, charts the development of jazz photography from the swing era of the 1930s to the rise of Black Nationalism and the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

For more on jazz music, listen to VOA’s Jazz America

Happy New Year

Galaxy by Jeff Lorber Fusion

Diaa Bekheet | Washington, DC – Acclaimed jazz fusionist Jeff Lorber is set to officially release his new album, “Galaxy,” next month. The album is sure to take his fans down memory lane.

During the good old days of jazz fusion, between the 1970s and 1990s, Lorber helped to pioneer and expand the music style’s improvisatory approach.

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“It was about time to bring back the spirit of that early fusion jazz,” Lorber told me, while taking a break from his European tour this week.

“This new album, Galaxy, is sort of a further evolution of the concept that we started with [2010 album] ‘Now Is The Time’ and I think it’s a little more focused, a little more energetic and a little more exciting than the previous record, although the previous one was my favorite still,” he explained.

Released last year, Grammy-nominated Now Is The Time, recaptures the spirit of fusion. It revisits materials produced by Lorber during the past 30 years of his career as a keyboardist-composer.  One of the really great songs on the album is “Mysterious Traveler” by saxophone great Wayne Shorter.

Lorber talked to me about Galaxy, his career in music and his legendary style. During the interview, you will enjoy two full songs from the album: “Live Wire” and “Horace,” which is named after the legendary jazz fusion pianist, composer and bandleader Horace Silver.

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Galaxy, features 11original recordings and marks the reincarnation of Lorber’s funk-fusion group “Jeff Lorber Fusion”. He formed the original group in Portland, Oregon in 1975, featuring very influential names in today’s jazz world – among them legendary pianist Chick Corea. The group released their self-titled debut album in 1976 and quickly became one of the most popular acts on the jazz fusion scene. But the group faded out after the mid-1980s.

“I stopped using that name [Jeff Lorber Fusion] in the 80s, in 1985. It was actually from doing this type of touring in Europe that we kind of came up with the idea of calling it Jeff Lorber Fusion again because the European promoters like to use that name to promote my shows,” explained Lorber. “And we just thought it was about time to bring back the spirit of that early fusion jazz music that’s very adventurous, very up-tempo, it’s very interesting harmony and improvisation.”

Lorber studied music at Berklee College of Music. In his 20s, Lorber listened extensively to two jazz piano icons and jazz fusion pioneers, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock. He says he was heavily influenced by them.

Lorber also works with other artists doing some writing and producing. Earlier this year, he teamed up with Grammy-nominated saxophonist Patrick Lamb to produce a new album titled: It’s All Right Now. The breakout CD features stellar LA musicians like Paul Jackson and JR from the popular NBC television program The Tonight Show.  He also produced an album for saxophonist Richard Elliott.

Lorber uses his improvisational skills to blend old school R&B rhythms with modern jazz. “Well, I think the Blues is really at the heart of jazz. It’s at the heart of popular music in general,” said Lorber. “I have a tremendous love for the blues, and I think it would be impossible to listen to anything that I’ve ever played or recorded for more than, you know, ten seconds [laugh] without hearing some kind of blues in there somewhere.”

He believes the blues is universal. “When I take piano students on, the very first thing we study is the blues. That’s what everything comes from,” he noted.

Listen to Lorber’s skillful fusion in Pacific Coast Highway & Cat Paws on Jazz Club USA from the 1996. Music follows Arabic narration. On the show, Lorber explains jazz fusion. You will also enjoy clarinet great Artie Shaw’s Temptation in the Down Memory Lane segment at the end of the show.

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For more on jazz music, listen to VOA’s Jazz America

Book cover

Diaa Bekheet | Washington, DC – If you surf the Internet for articles about jazz and photography, you might find a few. But a recently-released book compiles accounts and rare expressive photos of jazz greats Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Billie Holiday and others.

Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz, by Benjamin Cawthra, charts the development of jazz photography from the swing era of the 1930s to the rise of Black Nationalism and the civil rights movement in the 1960s. It also introduces the readers to some great jazz photographers, including Herb Snitzer, Francis Wolff, Roy DeCarava, William Claxton, Gjon Mili, William Gottlieb, Herman Leonard and others.

I talked with the author, Benjamin Cawthra, who is Associate Professor of History at California State University, Fullerton, and Associate Director at the Center for Oral and Public History. He told me he worked on the book for more than 10 years to offer an account of the partnership between two of the 20th century’s innovative art forms: photography and jazz.

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It all started when Cawthra was working at a museum at St. Louis, Missouri and had the brainstorm of doing an exhibition on jazz great Miles Davis, a native son of St. Louis area.

“It seemed that he’d never taken a bad picture, and so many photographers had taken his pictures,” noted Cawthra who was struck by some extraordinary images that were part of the exhibition.  “So, when I went to do my dissertation at Washington University at St. Louis I was just thinking: where did these really great photographs come from? Why would they taken? What impact, if any, did they have at the time they were taken? And how they become such classic, iconic images and photographs of jazz musicians?”

Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz recounts more racism stories related to jazz greats, including Davis. Miles Davis was performing at a club in New York. He was taking a break to escort a “pretty white girl named Judy” to a Taxicab between sets. A white police officer told him to move along — to keep the sidewalk clear. Davis, who was famous at the time, explained to the situation to the officer, but it tuned into a scuffle.

“A second detective comes along and starts beating him on the head with a baton,” explained Cawthra. “So, the next image we see of Miles Davis is him with a blood-spattered jacket, a bloody scalp and being booked at police headquarters. And again here’s a moment where the social tension and the difficulty of race in America are impinging on the jazz image.”

Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz also shows the links between diverse photographers, examining their common interest in jazz as a subject. In addition, the book sheds light on their “substantial differences” in terms of approach as jazz itself underwent stylistic changes and cultural repositioning against the backdrop of the modern civil rights movement.

Ben Cawthra - Courtesy Don Peterson

Cawthra opens his book by looking at a powerful moment in 1960 when African-American jazz icon Louis Armstrong actually lets his guard down for a photographer named Herb Snitzer who was working for the jazz magazine Metronome. Armstrong was on a tour in the Northeastern United States with his All-Stars band. He was probably the most famous entertainer in America — maybe in the world — not named Charlie Chaplin in the 1920s and the 1930s, Cawthra explained.

“And yet as [photographer Ralph] Ellison suggests in his novel [Invisible man,] which was published in 1952, during that year Louis Armstrong – the real Louis Armstrong – was not really visible, he’s invisible because he has to play a role,’ the book author elaborated. He has to smile, he has to play a particular role that’s expected of him from his audience, especially his white audience and that just the way it was,” the author said.

“He was on tour with Armstrong in Connecticut. He took some extraordinary photographs of Louis Armstrong in which he’s not smiling, he’s not the gregarious entertainer that we think of, and he came to find out later that Armstrong had been denied the use of restroom facilities on the tour,” said Cawthra. “That was really affecting his mood, and that’s perhaps why he has this look on his face.”

In Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz, Cawthra writes: “Surely Armstrong was acutely aware of his own invisibility – his second-class status as a man – during those early years. After all in ‘Black and Blue’ he sings ‘I’m White Inside,’ which Ellison may have read not as a sellout but as the strongest assertion of equality a black singer could have made in the early 1930s.”

The book has some of the most extraordinary and famous photos, which didn’t receive much play in the press between the 1940s and 1960s, nor in some of the leading jazz magazines of the time. Among them are photos of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington,  Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday, which in 1996 became a U.S. postage stamp.

Profile songs by Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington on my Jazz Club USA & Down Memory Lane in 1999, follow Arabic introduction.

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For more on jazz music, listen to VOA’s Jazz America