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| Mos Def at George Wein's CareFusion Jazz Festival 55 by Eugene Holley, Jr.  If, as the old saying goes, "there's nothing new under the sun, " then, in the history of African-American music, it can be stated there is no musical genre that has ever emerged on its own with no connection the past: field hollers, and work songs formed the bedrock of the blues, which, along with Afro-Latin genres, and New Orleans parade beats gave birth to jazz, which laid the foundation of rhythm & blues, which spawned soul, which constituted the sonic grammar of rap and hip-hop. To put it another way: there has always been, to use writer Vivien Goldman's elegant term, a "black chord" running through our music, connecting the rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic dots of seemingly distant relatives to reveal that there are no orphans in our musical family.Hear one end of the "chord" when Mos Def & The Watermelon Syndicate, produced by Jill Newman Productions, perform at George Wein's CareFusion Jazz Festival 55 at Newport's Fort Adams State Park on Saturday, August 8. Holding down vocal, spoken word and MC duties, Mos Def will perform with a rhythm section and horns. The Brooklyn-born rapper/actor/poet and uber-brother Mos Def, who emerged from the underverse of the hip-hop scene in 1998 with fellow Brooklynite Talib Kweli, dropped the CD Black Star (Rawkus), which let everybody know that there was a new vocal force to be reckoned with. It was followed in 1999 by his golden solo debut Black on Both Sides (Rawkus), The New Danger (Geffen, 2004), and True Magic (Geffen, 2006). With his quirky nasal delivery, Def (nee Dante Smith) tells syncopated stories - stories of ghetto life, stories of everyday people rising, striving, living, dying, prancing and dancing in all neighborhoods worldwide, from Bed-Stuy to Bahia. If Def's rap game were the only thing going for him, that would be impressive enough, but it isn't. He's been one of the expansive actors to come out of the hip-hop generation, as evidenced by his thrilling performances in playwright Suzan Lori Parks' Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway play, Top Dog/ Underdog, and TV shows and motion pictures, The Woodsman, Monsters Ball, The Italian Job, Something the Lord Made, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 16 Blocks, Dave Chappell's Block Party, and Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind.He also served as host/co-executive producer/music supervisor of HBO's Def Poetry Jam show, and re-teamed with Lori-Parks and director George Wolfe, in the play F***ing A, which garnered him an Obie Award. Mos Def is also working on a forthcoming book called Black 2.0 (Doubleday), a heavily illustrated compendium of significant moments and movements, artifacts and icons of the past 35 years of Black culture. As if that weren't impressive enough, Def is also a jazzfluent artist, and is featured as a special guest with the piano wunderkind Robert Glasper on his forthcoming Blue Note CD, Double-Booked. With his own brand of Converse sneakers, and with the release of a fantastic new CD The Ecstatic (Downtown Records), Mos Def is the man of the moment. He is a soul surveyor supreme and represents the long reach of the Black chord. George Wein's CareFusion Jazz Festival 55 kicks off Friday, August 7, at 8:00 pm with Chaka Khan in a jazz set with the George Duke Trio and the Howard Alden/Anat Cohen Quartet at the International Tennis Hall of Fame at the Newport Casino, 194 Bellevue. Joining Mos Def & The Watermelon Syndicate on Saturday, August 8, at Fort Adams State Park, at 11:30 am are Branford Marsalis Quartet; Joshua Redman Double Trio; Esperanza Spalding; Cedar Walton All-Stars with Lew Tabackin & Curtis Fuller; Hiromi's SonicBloom; Vandermark 5; Jane Monheit; Christian McBride; Vijay Iyer Trio; Marsalis Music Presents Miguel Zenón Quartet, North Carolina Central Big Band, Branford Marsalis-Joey Calderazzo Duo and Claudia Acuña. The festival picks up again on Sunday, August 9, at 11:30 am at Fort Adams with Tony Bennett; Dave Brubeck Quartet; Roy Haynes Fountain of Youth Band; Michel Camilo; Joe Lovano UsFive; The Bad Plus with Wendy Lewis; James Carter Organ Trio; Conversations with Christian McBride; Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra; Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band; Rudresh Mahanthappa's Indo-Pak Coalition; Rashied Ali-Charles Gayle-William Parker's "By Any Means"; Alfredo Rodriguez; The Rodriguez Brothers and Roy Guzman Quintet. Artists are subject to change. write your comments about the article :: © 2009 Jazz News :: home page |