feature photo: Aubrey Edwards
Pictures often say thousands of words. The late 19th/early 20th century homes and churches in historical, black neighborhoods in New Orleans featured in the video above of a segment taken from “Blues Obligato” speak volumes about environs in which jazz was birthed, from the pews of the Israel Baptist Church to the house of Sidney Bechet’s youth. It tells us that before there was a great American art form, there was a tight-knit community of modest means, and that the former could not have happened without the latter.
It’s only fitting that the composer, clarinetist and saxophonist Byron Asher uses these images to do the storytelling without words, because his music does a lot of that, too. For his first recording project as a leader Skrontch Music, Asher digs deep into the harmony between the burgeoning music style and the Jim Crow socio-political challenges that music’s African-American creators faced during the same time. Sprinkled with some spoken history, Asher’s recordings do have words, too, underscoring the point that these two developments didn’t happen in isolation with respect to each other.
The interwoven groove — dig James Singleton’s bass — that underpins “Blues Obligato” might not be of WWI-era Storyville, but the trombone and clarinet conversation in the middle part of the song’s full version traces a line straight back to that time. The arrangement is laudable in its use of seven horns to come together, pull apart, break down into sections and come together again in a fluid motion. It’s kind of like Dixieland informed by a hundred years of music development.
Skrontch Music is now available, from Sinking City Records.
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