feature photo: Sulyiman Stokes
Makaya McCraven continued the tradition of Chicago being the home of progressive jazz when the percussionist, composer and sound sculpturer came out with In the Moment in 2015. His artful blend of jazz, RnB, hip-hop and other music forms is one of the truly fresh developments in jazz over the last 20 years or so. Since then, he’s honed his unique approach of crafting songs out of improvisation and blurring the lines between studio and live performance with a succession of more widely acclaimed releases. In These Times (Nonesuch Records) was 2022’s widely-acclaimed main release, where McCraven starts with his signature basic plot but adds more satisfying twists to it.
A lot of his usual suspects are on board for this latest endeavor, including Jeff Parker (guitar), Junius Paul (bass), Joel Ross (vibraphone, marimba), and Brandee Younger (harp), all inventive musicians in their own right, exactly the attribute McCraven relies on to get his jams with them move into the song gestation phase. From there, McCraven works his post-production magic, turning very good music into something revolutionary.
In These Times furthers that revolution. Quietly developed while he made seven prior records, these eleven tracks incorporate the more formal arrangements of strings and horns, corralling even more disparate and complex music forms into a single one, a tall task for anyone. But McCraven is well up for it, because he doesn’t constrain his imagination.
One of main appeals of McCraven’s uncommon approach is that it guarantees surprises lurking around every corner. “In These Times” launches an ostinato and spoken word with club crowd noise flowing right into a blissful, harp-laden early 70’s Philly soul vibe but soon return to that vibraphone-based repeating figure, backing it the backbone of a song that flows like water.
That track is the only one running more than four-and-a-half-minutes. As per usual, McCraven packs so many creative shards into 2-4 minutes and somehow it never feels cramped. He doesn’t allot much time for soloing because he doesn’t need to: the composition and its arrangement is the improvisation.
“The Fours” cleverly works in a string quartet but this hardly classical jazz; McCraven makes them part of the groove construction that springs from his and Paul’s tight symmetry. Paul (on standup bass) and McCraven meting out a circular jungle rhythm alone makes “High Fives” compelling but then the mixture of exotic and common instruments combine to give off a glowing resonance, keeping Paul’s bass at the center of it all. A baby sitar and flute is another unexpected combination of instruments that makes “Dream Another” full of soul; it could have been a classic Motown hit with vocals up front.
Starting with “Lullaby” is a string of recordings that deeply incorporates chamber music, in this instance enriched by Brandee Younger’s harp and that string quartet (Marta Sofia Honer, Lia Kohl, Macie Stewart, Zara Zaharieva), with some brass tossed in (Hill, Greg Ward, Irvin Pierce). Heavier arrangements are also used for “This Place That Place,” buttressed by McCraven’s ever-percolating snare, apparently lifted from a live performance. Marquis Hill’s unfettered trumpet leads the lush orchestral backing on the too-short “The Calling.” That backing stays on for “Seventh String,” which is pleasant but almost ordinary, until you take notice of McCraven’s busy rhythms underneath adding the tension just where it’s needed.
“So Ubuji” returns to festive African melodies, led by Ross’ marimba. Parker comes out with scintillating lines for the fragile beauty “The Knew Untitled,” a song that reveals a lot of interesting facets over merely four and a half minutes. “The Title” picks up where that prior track left off, tightening up with a McCraven’s steady groove an artful use of sampling.
For jazz to continue to thrive, there must be artists who take chances and push the genre forward by incorporating genuinely new ideas. There are no such artists pushing harder than Makaya McCraven, and In These Times opens up further possibilities of how jazz can progress upward.
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