Now I have to admit that I have a hard time with the way some people play trumpet. They play it like rock guitar heroes play electric leads: fast, high pitched, and furious to the point where it becomes just so much noise pollution. That's not the case with Corey Wilkes as he's more than just an excellent trumpet player, he's also a band leader and composer. Of the eleven songs on Drop It Corey has written nine, and each one demonstrates the depth of the rapport he has with the music.
"Trumpet Player", the opening track on the disc, is a piece with lyrics by the great African-American writer Langston Hughes. It's actually a spoken word piece with Miyanda Wilson speaking Hughes' words over top of Wilkes' music. In part, an ode to an unknown trumpet player, "Trumpet Player" is also a history of the African-American experience in North America. While the words are a powerful element in their own right, the music that Wilkes has composed to accompany them are the extra ingredient that brings them alive for the listener by underscoring the emotions that run through them. So muted that at times it's almost impossible to hear, the music is an electrical current coursing through the lyric, illuminating and highlighting each event recounted by Ms. Wilson's recitation.
"Trumpet Player" stands in contrast to the other vocal piece on the disc, "Funkier than a Mosquita's Tweeter" by Ailene Bullock. This is a rambunctious funk/jazz fusion piece which takes on the attitudes of men who pretend to be free so they can take advantage of women. As the lyrics challenge men who extol the virtues of free love so they can get into a woman's pants, the music echoes the scorn Dee Alexander, the vocalist has for the man's hypocrisy. Here Corey's trumpet playing is shrill and harsh, but in the context of the song it makes perfect sense and sounds exactly right.
While none of the other songs have lyrics to act as a guide through the music, Corey Wilkes' compositions and arrangements are such that we can find our own way through the pieces. His trumpet, or flugelhorn, is our guide. Like Pied Piper of Bremen, he leads us through the various landscapes of his musical creations. Like the stirring resonance of a bugle sounding the charge or the gentle breath of wind through leaves, the sounds he generates are able to stir and calm our emotions. Yet no matter how he plays; soft, loud, fast, or slow, he holds our attention with the intricacies of his playing. Even when he is playing loud and shrill, he introduces cadences or phrasings that prevent the sound from becoming tedious or atonal.
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