Terence Blanchard has thought a lot about Jimi Hendrix’s version of the “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Performed at Woodstock at the height of the Vietnam war, the song came off as a furious protest. But it also revealed Hendrix’s aesthetic: wild, free, full of sonic chaos and charging forward into a new world.
“It was still the national anthem, but it was also Jimi, and it shows how malleable music is and how you can use it to make a statement,” Blanchard said ahead of his Jan. 18 Celebrity Series of Boston show at the Berklee Performance Center.
After 35 years of recording and touring the world, the composer and jazz trumpet legend has made plenty of statements. His resume needs no padding: He began as a kid touring with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and in his mid-20s replaced Wynton Marsalis in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Later came a string of albums as a leader, Grammys (6 wins, 14 nominations), scores of soundtracks (including a dozen for Spike Lee films) and commissions from orchestras and operas. Last year, he managed to hit new milestones with an Oscar nomination for his work on “BlacKkKlansman” and the announcement the New York Metropolitan Opera would mount his “Fire Shut Up In My Bones,” the first opera by a black composer produced by the company.
“2019 was an awesome year,” Blanchard said with a laugh. “It’s one of those things where you start to freak out, ‘How is this all happening now?’ But it all comes back to the music and what I can do with the music.”
Awards are nice. Breaking racial barriers are vital. But nothing tops connecting his art with his audience and our modern moment.
When producer and Blue Note Records president Don Was heard Blanchard was doing a groove-based project with the E-Collective for the label, his only advice was: “Don’t dumb it down.” Blanchard never intended to, but he knew what Was meant.
“The model is Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra, the Headhunters, but I never want to emulate something old,” he said. “People that do groove music can forget who they are. Instead I wanted something akin to Jimi playing the national anthem. I have always gravitated toward music that says something, John Coltrane doing ‘A Love Supreme,’ things like that.”
On the first two E-Collective records — “Breathless,” a title that purposefully recalls the killing of Eric Garner, and the uninhibited “Live” album — the music can be sweet, almost sentimental or raging, spitting fire at a country full of murder and racism (see, once again, Jimi).
“Music must always be an expression of what we are dealing with, so what’s happening now, the anger and pain of gun violence, dealing with the possibility of a new war, will be there in the music,” Blanchard said.
The E-Collective don’t play it straight. Yes, there’s some bebop, but also fusion detours, experimental passages, long jams that build to crashing crescendos, and tons of fury. Not everyone will get what Blanchard is going for, but he’s been pleased with the reaction.
“I had just put the E-Collective band together and we had played a show in Cleveland and someone came up to me talking about how angry the music was,” Blanchard said. “But then he said, ‘If this makes you this angry and I can hear it in the music, I need to rethink my position on gun control.’ That’s exactly what I want to do. And that’s the power of music.”
Terence Blanchard featuring the E-Collective, at Berklee Performance Center, Jan. 18. Tickets: $45-$65; celebrityseries.org.
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"Music" - Google News
January 11, 2020 at 12:10PM
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For music legend Terence Blanchard, it all comes back to Hendrix - Boston Herald
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