I'm generally quite skeptical to bring up musical subjects that have a racial component because of the infantile debates that will usually ensue.

But i'll go against my better judgement because I believe the music is worth it.
A few excerpts from the cover story in the latest issue of Downbeat: http://www.downbeat.com/d...t=magazine

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Christian Scott Shows His Teeth
by Jennifer Odell


During Jazz Fest in New Orleans, trumpeter Christian Scott was driving home after playing a late-night gig with Soulive when he noticed a car trailing him by the Claiborne Street underpass. At first he was afraid he was going to be the target of a robbery. When the sirens came on, he realized he was being pulled over.

In the moments that followed, he says, nine police officers drew their guns on him, and he was dragged from the car and thrown on the hood. Not wanting to become the next Amadou Diallo, he suggested the officer get his ID out of his wallet while he kept his hands in the air.

"Oh, we got one of these type of niggers," quipped a cop.

In the course of reacting to the use of that ward, the slight, 25-year-old musician was told to shut up unless he wanted his mother to pick him up "from the morgue."

Two years later, Scott is fighting back-and he's using music to do it.

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"The impetus behind the [album] was to illuminate the fact that the same dilemmas that dominated the social and musical landscape of the '60s have not been eradicated, only refined," he said from a London hotel room in Novembeer, summarizing a statement he was writing about the album for his team at Concord.

"The record seeks to change this dynamic by re-engaging these newly refined, pre-existing problems in our social structure in the same ways that our predecessors did."

With an opening track about racial profiling and discrimination, a mid-point tune about Proposition 8 and a closing aria about the legacy of Roe vs. Wade, Sott, 27, meets the challenge he set for himself and then some.

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Though gracious and polite, Scott presents his point of view with the same confident authority he puts into his live shows. And even when what he says rubs folks the wrong way, his honest expression comes with a grain of erudite salt.

Take his position that the neo-classicist movement has such an overbearing presence in jazz education and contemporary music that young players are discouraged from trying to move past it. Yes, that means he thinks it's time to find a new, post-Wynton Marsalis era.

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Such strong emotions likely have something to do with Scott's affection for branching outside of the jazz tradition: He has recorded with Prince and performed with Mos Def and Jill Scott.

DJ Logic first saw Scott perform in New Orleans and was immediately taken by his open-minded approach to music, and his ability to reflect a love of jazz, hip-hop and music from other parts of the world in his writing. Logic invited Scott to sign onto the Global Noize project he was recording with keyboardist Jason Miles. The turntablist was moved by the trumpeter's emotive sound and the deep feeling that came through in his performances on two tracks. "I could hear that in his playing," Logic recalled. "You could close your eyes and hear something. He would take me on a journey, and I could just follow it."
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...K.K.P.D. & Angola, LA & the 13th Amendment



Music for adventurous listeners


tA

Tribal Records
[Edited 4/8/10 0:09am]

wow



Didn't know Downbeat still exist