There are those who would say that the third CD of composer/tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, Days Of FreeMan, is not jazz. I would remind those naysayers that in the 1940s, Dizzy Gillespie was accused of the same thing. When asked why his jazz wasn't swing, he'd invariably confound interviewers by saying, "I don't play jazz. I play bebop."
On Days Of FreeMan (named after the street he grew up on in Buffalo, New York), Lewis takes his longtime fascination with hip-hop and weaves it into a four-chapter autobiography: 1) "Buffalo Braves" (the NBA team that ultimately moved to Los Angeles and become the Clippers), 2) "Good Ol' Golden Days" (of rap, that is, block parties with local DJs playing Pete Rock & CL Smoth next to Tribe Called Quest), 3) "Continuum" (where he recycles one of his heroes, Don Cherry [1936-1995] who helped radicalize jazz with Ornette Coleman) and 4) "Planetary Movement" (James Brown riffs by way of '90s group Digable Planets). The spoken-word wisdom of his grandmother is sampled throughout like a Greek Chorus. Drummer Rudy Royston provides the percussion vocabulary. Forget omnipresent jazz-groove drumming in this release. Royston did his homework, laboring extensively with Lewis over 1990s hip-hop jams to get the feel, the textures and the wicked backbeats down pat. Now all they needed was an empathetic bassist.
Enter Jamaaladeen Tacuma, the free-thinking hero bassist who also played with Ornette (they said he wasn't jazz either.) A longtime leader of his own bands, Tacuma is the perfect foil for his two younger like-minded compatriots. Together, the three of them soar to such dizzying heights, in order to fully enjoy them, methinks the CD should be listened to in two or three sittings. It's just too intense for one long hour of such. Lewis honks, squeaks, beeps, hiccups, snorts and burps through his horn to Royston's incessant in-your-face drumming while Tacuma more than holds down the fort. The breaks and interludes are pure hip-hop. So's the energy and the passion. You can even tell Lewis wore out his copy of 1998's The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill. Add the stylings of Lee "Scratch" Perry and the progressive rock of Medeski Martin & Wood and you've pretty much summed up Lewis this time around.
Adventurous is too meek a word for what's going on here. It's accessible avant-garde hopjazzhip. Does that make sense? Doesn't matter. Art doesn't have to make sense. Make no mistake about it. Days Of FreeMan is high art, brother.
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