If there is one genre of popular music that has managed to to both refrain from being co-opted by commercial and corporate interests yet still remain culturally significant, it would have to be jazz. Of course there have been moments when one performer or another has captured the public's imagination and the industry has tried to cash in by attempting to replicate that person's success with imitators, never meeting with anything but limited success.
One of the true glories of jazz is that it remains the purview of the individual, and you can no more recreate or imitate one person's music, to any degree of success, than could a dancer duplicate what another does exactly. Oh, they might be able to follow the same steps, hold their arms in exactly the same manner, but they won't imbue it with the same spirit — the spirit that made it so attractive to the audience in the first place. Like dance, the personality of the individual performing in jazz is what helps establish the connection between the performer and the audience. No matter how hard they try, record companies still haven't figured out how to mass produce individuals so they can cash in on his or her creativity.
Like so much of our popular music, jazz developed out of the music brought over to North America from Africa by those who were dragged into slavery. In the latter part of the 20th century, specifically the 1960s, jazz started to become an avenue through which many African American musicians began to explore their African heritage. Whether through improvisation around rhythms or collaborations with musicians with more direct ties to the continent, a real sense of who they are and where they came from has started to appear in the music of many of today's African American jazz players.
Such is the case with the latest collaboration between David Murray & The Gwo Ka Masters, The Devil Tried To Kill Me, on Justin Time Records. This is the third recording American Murray has made with this group of musicians from Guadeloupe. The tiny island nation is unique in that former slaves who inhabited the island rebelled and achieved independence 100 years before slavery was abolished in the United States. Although their statehood only lasted a decade — they were integrated into France after ten years — their history is unique among African Americans in the Western hemisphere. As Christian Laviso, guitar player on the disc puts it, "The Americans lost their drums... that is what they seek here, the rhythms and melodies of our ancestors."
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