... was on Friday. He would have been 91 if he were still alive. He was such a genius. The silence between the notes means as much or more than the notes themselves. Dissonance is more than tolerable; it can be so satisfyingly beautiful. Two profound metaphors for life that I'm still working on fully actualizing. Check out 'Round Midnight:
I think it was a week ago or so that I heard an NPR interview of Ahmad Jamal. Dude is 78 years old and still rules the keys live regularly (and has a new album). It was so funny, the guy from Soundcheck was asking him what he thinks about hip hop in general and hip hop sampling his music in particular (jazz piano). He kind of dodged the question saying there is good music and there is bad music, no matter what the genre. Soundcheck played a clip from Nas's classic song "The World is Yours" (from his album Illmatic), and then asked Jamal if that song was "good music". Jamal said something like "Well, he [Nas] chose a great song to sample [I Love Music]" but when pushed on whether he liked the song in particular, he was like "No Comment". For real??? I love Ahmad Jamal's music, and I also love a lot of Nas's music. I was so surprised to hear that Jamal doesn't like "The World is Yours" -- I love that song and love the way the sample was used! Wonder if he's just bitter b/c apparently he has lawsuits out about properly compensating him for sampling...
GREAT show at the Blue Note last night. Bilal's falsetto live is ridiculous. Robert Glasper is sick on keys too.
It's easy to hear why Bilal's voice is all over hip hop's great albums - from Jay-Z to Clipse to Common... but when he's center stage live, he's even better.
Here's a clip from a show in Amsterdam:
This song makes the world all right. It will still all your December chaos for a moment. There's another slower version on his excellent Live Wide Open album, also gorgeous and raw.
RMW and I finally went to see him play in person last night. More later - super busy day/night today... but, please PLEASE go to one of his live shows if you ever get a chance. I walked into Roseland feeling distracted, buzzing around myself instead of anchored safely inside. I walked out feeling connected to my soul and humanness again. Yeah, I guess music -- well, and art more broadly -- is my religion, my truth.
