Features
Jazz (He’s Got): An Interview with José James
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Vocalist and composer José James appreciates the shoulders of those he stands on. He has a formidable knowledge of jazz and a genuine reverence for its originators. This appreciation for the history of his sound sees him embrace the origins of jazz yet guide it in a fresh direction under the influence of hip hop, soul and London’s electronic scene.
In February James released his second album on Giles Peterson’s Brownswood label, titled ‘Black Magic.’ While coming from distinctly jazz roots, Black Magic sees James driven by the rhythms of hip hop, dubstep and electro. Produced with the genre bending Flying Lotus, Detroit’s blaxploitation-cum-techno musician MoodyMann and Brooklyn based multi-instrumental and vocalist, Taylor McFerrin, James’s approach to making music is unrestricted by genre labels. Put talented musicians together and James will butter the track with his silky baritone.
His live show blends the improvisational performance of traditional jazz with the energy of a MC. He can croon, scat or just sit back as his bassman rides the rhythm.
A consummate performer and musician, James has recently fulfilled a dream, being signed to Impulse! Records, “the house that Trane built.” His first release on impulse, “For All We Know,” is another mark of respect to those who came before as he collaborates with Belgium pianist Jef Neve to rework classics by the likes of Billie Holliday, George Gershwin and Billy Strayhorn.
In the midst of a prolific year I was able to quickly talk to José during his stop in Paris. We spoke about the influence of hip hop on his music, the process of cross genre collaboration, pop covers and jazz standards, love and the importance of music to the African American community.
Which came to you first musically, jazz or hip hop?
I think hip hop really. I think it was mostly through the samples of hip hop that I sort of got Jazz in my ear. I remember really being into a Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets and De La Soul, a lot of De La Soul and the Beastie Boys. And all those people that could still put out really sample heavy, more experimental hip hop vinyl records if you know what I mean.
What pushed you into being a professional jazz musician?
Ummmm, that’s a good question.
I think I was drawn into jazz because it wasn’t any kind of music that anybody I knew, knew anything about. So it was kinda like I could find my own way into it. I met all these musicians from Chicago who had the numbers of the AACM, that’s the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a group that got started after Coltrane died. There is another one in Detroit too.
So, I kinda hooked up with some of these musicians and this poet Louis Alemayehu and they had an ensemble, a performance, poetry and jazz ensemble. And I started writing lyrics to things like John Coltrane’s Equinox, and just having that sort of support putting all my work into context, just felt really supportive and I decided to see if I could be a jazz singer.
And also at that time there were a lot of people just getting signed and doing really well, like Kurt Elling and Cassandra Wilson, so it seemed like a good time to get into it.
There is still a very hip hop flavor to your music and especially your stage show, your movements remind me of an MC up there performing. What is Hip hop’s on going influence on your music?
It’s a certain culture. It’s just a swagger. It’s a different confidence with rhythm. And jazz has an enormous balance between harmony, melody and rhythm. Whereas for me Hip hop is more about rhythm.
On Black Magic working with Flying Lotus or covering Benga, this had more of an emphasis on the rhythm, than The Dreamer had.
What sort of influence does improvisational jazz have on your creative process, because again your stage show had that style, where your voice was like another instrument having its turn to solo?
Well no matter what we are performing or I’m singing, where are definitely coming from a jazz place and for our live show we want to treat everything like it something to be improvised on.
You know I think the point of Black Magic is to work with composers like Flying Lotus and Taylor MacFerrin who are the next generation of these jazz greats and put their work as composers into a different context. Almost like injecting it into the cannon of American writers in the same way that George Gershwin or Duke Ellington or Thelonius Monk fit into the canon.
They improvised off what they or I wrote with them because all of the musicians I work with are comfortable with jazz and hip hop equally as well as electronic London based music. So, we basically treat it all as the music and try to expand it and expand the audience in the same way.
Because, when younger people say that they don’t like jazz it’s usually because they think that we are playing music from the 60s and it doesn’t have to mean that. It can mean improvising off music from 21st century.
How did you first link up with artists like Flying Lotus, MoodyMann and Taylor McFerrin?
Being signed to Brownswood brought me into contact with a lot of DJ’s. I met people like Mark Pritchard and Dorrian Kan as well as everybody you just mentioned.
And with the band we would do the jazz festivals but we made a point to play at a lot of rock clubs and non-traditional jazz venues.
So I met most of them through Giles or doing the clubs in London. I met MoodyMann in a club DJing. I met Taylor McFarrin in Brooklyn and we used to have a session at New Blue.
It was just getting more involved with the electronic beat making community and naturally forming friendships and starting to work. Because it also important for people like that to have singers to be able to work that can take their work in another direction as well.
That leads to my next question, what do you think has been the co-existent creative influence on each other?
It’s the ability to take the work in a different direction. I know that a lot of people were surprised to hear the stuff that Lotus was doing with me. Stuff like ‘Visions of Violet’ or ‘Black Magic’ because it’s really different, you know it’s a lot more “soulful,” for lack of a better term. And, I think it is stuff he wouldn’t necessarily put out on his own album but it’s brand new sounds and an experiment with a new direction.
He played me a lot of stuff, a lot of really soulful things that even of itself it’s probably strong enough to release as instrumentals but when you add lyrics and a melody on top of it, then it completes it into a whole song.
And for me being able to sing over tracks and write to tracks like that or working with MoodyMann it forces to me to really stretch and to use my voice in a different way and to write in a different way. I’m not working with a band who reacts immediately to what I make in the studio. It’s good for everybody.
You also do very interesting covers, for example on the new album you have a cover of the Benga track. Where do you get inspiration to cover a dubstep track like that?
I just want to push the boundaries of what people think jazz can do or what I can do or what a jazz group can do.
In my own way I would like to educate. I have spent a lot of time in London, and I am getting more familiar with some electronic stuff like dubstep, and people in the States don’t really know a lot about what’s happening in London on the music scene. I think it’s important for when you recognize talent to absorb that.
And I think that has been the role of jazz singers since Louis Armstrong. They have been able to absorb and then translate the technical and harmonic advancements that musicians and composers have come up with and sort of feed it back into popular culture. And I think Benga is one of the most exciting musical artists of out time right now.
When you are making a cover track what are you trying to achieve?
I definitely want to do something that feels natural to me. It was one of my favorite records and it was something that I had lived with for a long time and an idea comes. I get a real strong concept on it that feels original, that feels like I am adding to the work rather than just exploiting it.
Can you relate this to the ‘For All We Know’ album?
Um, that’s totally different. ‘For All We Know,’ those are standards that I have sung for the last ten years. There is difinetly a difference, in the pop world you call it a cover when you sing someone else’s song, in the jazz world you just call it singing standards because its something that everyone does. And actually, traditionally that’s really all jazz singers are sort of supposed to do, it’s almost like a classical tradition of singing. You singing the classical repertoire, like an aria or something that. It’s almost like the American classical tradition, instead of singing covers.
So your retaining the jazz tradition with the standards on ‘For All We Know,’ and pushing the jazz tradition when covering something like Benga on the new album?
Exactly, exactly.
Thematically what makes you such a romantic?
(Laughs)
I think that is just the interesting thing about music and art. It can leave the ordinary world and you can definitely invent fantasy, you have the power to create the world that you want.
To me there are plenty of people talking about injustice and talking about issues and social stuff. To me love and relationships are just what I am interested in right now. That’s the kind of music that I’m writing to after I read the paper and hear about some suicide bomber or something like that. I definitely need some hope and encouragement. So I chose to focus on romance and the art of love and the complexities of desire and attraction because it’s a really elemental part of the evolution of humanity. I think that when we get to a point when we have enough love for ourselves as a species then we have a really good chance to survive. But as long as we see other people and ourselves in an unloving way then we are always going to have strife.
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Simon is a regular contributor to Deft Magazine and active in the hip hop community in Paris. He earned his Bachelors of Law and Arts from New Zealand's University of Otago, Simon was also a DJ on Radio One Dunedin, in Otago, New Zealand.
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