Freedom Suite: Let the Music Speak
by John Murph, jazztimes.com
During the second decade of Nnenna Freelon’s illustrious career, she expanded
her role as a jazz singer by exploring gospel, pop and Latin music, as well as
the works of Stevie Wonder and Burt Bacharach. Now she can add hip-hop to her
repertoire, thanks to Freedom Suite, a recent collaboration with hip-hop
quartet the Beast and a host of other revered underground hip-hop and R&B
artists. The project features Phonte, 9th Wonder, Kooley High, Yahzarah and
Darien Brockington, all of whom are based in the fertile North Carolina music
community revolving around Durham, Raleigh and Chapel Hill. Freedom Suite was
released as a free download via the website Okayplayer's jazz channel The
Revivalist: http://revivalist.okayplayer.com. It can also be downloaded on a
“name-your-price” basis at
http://thebeast.bandcamp.com, in MP3 and lossless formats.
The project is the brainchild of 27-year-old rapper, North Carolina Central
University college professor, and leader of the Beast, Pierce Freelon, who
happens to be the jazz vocalist’s son. Nnenna Freelon’s last disc, 2010’s
Homefree (Concord Jazz), foreshadowed this hookup with a take on “Lift Every
Voice and Sing” that showcased her son’s rapping skills. The mother and son
team also came together on a soundtrack to M.K. Asante Jr.’s The Black Candle,
an award-winning documentary on Kwanzaa. Still, few people expected her to
delve into hip-hop as thoroughly as she does on Freedom Suite. “Genres are
boring,” argues Freelon, 56. “There’s only two kinds of music: good music and
the other kind. My standards are to make the best music and to be involved in
the best creative experience as I can.”
On Freedom Suite, Freelon doesn’t trade in her commanding singing for a chance
to tap into her inner Nicki Minaj. In fact, there’s even a striking rendition
of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Skylark” that is grooving and meditative. “I don’t have
a history with hip-hop, which is sort of the point,” she explains. “On this
project, I’m standing on firm ground of those things that I’ve built over the
years, which is a non-standard approach to the standards and an interest of
music outside the pure jazz genre.”
Freedom Suite takes noticeable cues from past jazz and hip-hip mash-ups, such
as the late Guru’s Jazzmatazz series and Roy Hargrove’s RH Factor band. Suite
also includes covers of hip-hop and R&B classics—Mos Def’s “Umi Says” and
Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing),” rearranged as “Rise Above the Sky”—that
came out during the zenith of the late-’90s neo-soul movement. In between the
songs, spoken-word vignettes from ?uestlove, Herbie Hancock, Branford Marsalis,
Amiri Baraka and Angela Davis help convey the political slant, with commentary
ranging from Marsalis clarifying his brother Wynton’s view on hip-hop—Branford
argues that Wynton doesn’t dislike all rap—to Davis taking the African-American
and hip-hop communities to task regarding homophobia. Overall the music
explores themes of artistic and philosophical freedom (and is unrelated to
Sonny Rollins’ classic recording of the same name). Explains Pierce, “We’re
able to talk about the issues that are important to our community and that are
important musically.”
But for all its top-notch personnel and, to a lesser degree, the rather
unexpected artistic move from Nnenna, it’s hard to argue that Freedom Suite is
all that innovative. Many similar discs of varying degrees of success have been
released in the past two decades, and the ideas Pierce discusses have obvious
roots in the early ’90s jazz-rap movement. “We had a lot of projects to look at
that we had been inspired by,” Pierce admits. “There were some things that we
took from other projects and there was also some [different] things that we
really wanted to do.”
He goes on to say that one of the primary goals for Freedom Suite was to have
an intergenerational dialogue set to music; another was to create a more
organic synthesis between jazz and hip-hop that relied less on samples. “If you
look at a project like Jazzmatazz,” he says, “that touted itself as an
experimental fusion of hip-hop and jazz and listen to it critically, the fusion
was sampling old jazz and soul records. We wanted to take a different approach
by actually bringing in jazz composition, horn and string arrangements and live
instrumentation to some of the songs.”
Even with the best artistic and socio-political intentions, many jazz/hip-hop
hybrid efforts get the side eye from hardcore jazz and hip-hop fans alike.
Pierce pays naysayers no mind while arguing that most people just like to hear
their music in nicely packaged categories. Says the MC, “The Beast have had a
lot of feedback, where a lot of hip-hop heads ask, ‘Where’s the boom bap?’ or
say, ‘You need some 808 [drum-machine beats] in there—something that’s going to
make my neck break!’ The reality is that we’re a band that’s very
jazz-influenced. With jazz, it’s the same thing. They expect a certain sound
when you mention Nnenna Freelon.”
“Jazz people only talk to each other,” Nnenna adds. “We complain about the
other music that isn’t jazz as being non-important and non-relevant. And it’s
just boring.” She goes on to explain that jazz has always had its cynics
throughout its continued evolution. “Freedom Suite was an amazing opportunity
to engage in a dialogue that has been long, long overdue; for us to talk to
each other and for us to disagree. Forget the political correctness; let’s just
talk—and let the music do the talking.”
Original Page:
http://jazztimes.com/articles/27148-freedom-suite-let-the-music-speak
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