JASON MORAN
Same Mother

Blue Note

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The premise of Jason Moran’s latest CD, Same Mother, seems to be that blues music could certainly use the same kind of kick in the ass that Moran has been serving up regularly to jazz audiences on his recordings. In other words, it’s high time someone challenged the notion that this is music of the past, music whose structural and harmonic components rigorously define it and stifle any attempt at real innovation. Quite often Moran’s work on this CD comes closer to the touchstones of the blues spirit than most, more traditional, new efforts.

At the same time, Moran is a jazz musician, and that means that any take on the blues he serves up will be a unique interpretation. And it would be fair to say, I think, that Moran’s interpretation of the blues here is somewhat akin to Thelonious Monk’s interpretation of stride piano. The roots are there, but they are twisting, living again as though some mysterious, powerful incantation that has been uttered by today’s performer seeps back down the branches and brings the very roots of the music back to life.

Moran and his familiar Bandwagon trio (bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits) open with the revival tent meeting-styled “Gangsterism On the Rise.” This piece utilizes a New Orleans second line rhythm as well as a gospel blues piano that evokes the piano professors of both New Orleans and New York City as well as a relentless left hand bass figure that places it all in the context of a modern, rushed, and violent urban landscape. That slips right into the roadhouse shuffle of “Jump Up” which marks the first appearance of guitarist Marvin Sewell. Both Sewell and Moran play boundary-pushing, highly energetic solos. Sewell touches on both the electric Chicago blues of Muddy Waters and blues rock pyrotechnics of Jimi Hendrix. For his part, Moran flirts with stride, R&B jump rhythms and some Texas boogie. It has a roadhouse feel to it, but believe me, you aren’t going to hear music like this in any roadhouse.

The following track is the very gentle “Aubade,” co-written by Moran and Andrew Hill. Sewell plays acoustic guitar here, creating delicate filigree around Moran’s earthier melodic reading. Sewell has played with Cassandra Wilson, Jack DeJohnette, and others and is a really talented guitarist who should be more widely heard. Perhaps his work on this CD will help to raise awareness of his talent. Following the somewhat less than successful “G Suit Saltation” the group reconnects with the album’s blues theme with a rendition of the Albert King tune “I’ll Play the Blues For You” that is perhaps the most straight-forward blues performance on Same Mother. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some twists and turns. Still, the group here manages to represent King’s brand of soul-laced urban blues very well.

The second half of the CD is much more dramatic and wears its blues influence farther beneath the surface. Mal Waldron’s “Fire Waltz” is an aggressive and powerful performance that tips its hat to blues, but is firmly rooted in modern jazz territory. Another track one wouldn’t expect to find on a blues-influenced album is Prokofiev’s “Field of the Dead” from the score for Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevsky. The music is used during the film’s final scene in which a woman walks through the fields and over breaking ice where a battle has just ended. Sewell uses slide guitar to lend a real Mississipi Delta feeling to this track, and its dignified, tragic feel hints at the historical roots of the blues in the painful racial history of America. “Restin” provides a meditative break, a chance to absorb all that has come before and to appreciate its enormity when taken as a cohesive whole. “The Field” is also somewhat meditative, but shot through with more roiling moments that reflect the genesis of this project as music Moran worked on for Seith Mann’s short film Five Short Breaths. Moran based his music for the film on the sound of 1940s Mississippi prison songs, and the use of this thematic element brought into consciousness his desire to record an album of music that spoke to his Houston, Texas roots. Like many Houstonites before him (Joe Sample and the original Jazz Crusaders come to mind) Moran’s early exposure to a wide variety of musical styles has allowed him to craft seamless reinventions of these styles in various combinations.

For Moran, inspiration is everywhere, and I think that’s one reason why that he is able to produce one fresh recording after another. Art, architecture, modern style, the very concept of modernism, literature, popular culture, and particularly film and music, are all subjects for Moran’s fertile musical mind. Nothing proves this further than his continued “Gangsterism” variations. The original piece, “Gangsterism on Canvas” from Moran’s first album, was inspired by painter Jean Michel Basquiat, and Basquiat’s in-your-face irreverence where traditional forms were concerned continues to inform both the series and Moran’s music in general. Here Moran closes with the boisterous “Gangsterism on the Set” which again evokes New Orleans and the common roots of both blues and jazz. Same Mother is another triumphant challenge to complacency in a beloved musical form, and there’s plenty here for both jazz and blues enthusiasts to chew on for some time to come. Either way, it runs rings around much of what passes for either these days