Tokyo Jazz 2002
Though Herbie Hancock may not have the stadium-filling sexiness of David Beckham, nor his haircut, the first annual Tokyo Jazz 2002 Festival, which Hancock directed, still drew 37,000 fans over two days to the World Cup-abandoned Tokyo Stadium. This number alone would rank Tokyo Jazz 2002 a considerable success by jazz standards. The music, though, was equally a success.
That was a little surprising, since Tokyo Jazz was promoted as new directions in jazz, but looked like it would be simply a re-marriage of jazz with electronics. Was this another industry attempt to convert rock fans? Did Herbie Hancock just want to crank up the synthesizers for a crowd? Was this the start of a DJ-ize jazz movement? Was it just funk for funk’s sake?
It was all those things, but mainly it was two full days of good music. The fans who came to the west Tokyo stadium in the stifling heat were rewarded by cutting edge jazz with both integrity and appeal. One performer after the next revealed sources of energy and inspiration that depended less on brute amplification or hip electronica than on sheer quality of performance. The festival also showed that jazz can translate to a (for jazz) gargantuan venue. In addition, they got a superb sound system, a massive video screen, ice-cold beer and a very good vibe.
Omara Portuondo’s band was worth the admission price alone. As the reigning Cuban diva, reinvigorated by the Buena Vista Social Club, she is still at the top of her game. Her voice rose up over the hot Afro-Cuban rhythms with power, grace and uncut sexiness. Her sultry vocals on “Besame Mucho,” with only piano accompaniment, filled the stadium with the power of rum, roses and Viagra. When the whole band accompanied her, the soccer pitch quickly became a Latin dance floor.
Herbie Hancock’s Future 2 Future Band found a very forward-looking groove. Drummer Terri Lynne Carrington was a wonder. Her solid groundwork of tasty rhythms gave Hancock’s keyboards plenty of floor to dance over. Turntable master DJ Disk put the surround sound speakers positioned at the four corners of the arena floor to startling effect. His samples, scratches and mixes whacked you upside the head with oversized noises and chest-thumping bass lines. Trumpeter Wallace Roney took the mix off into the stratosphere. The band clearly owed a debt to Miles Davis’ jazz-funk innovations, and they paid it in full. When they cut into “Chameleon” from Hancock’s “Headhunters” album, the crowd was on its feet.
Scheduling Wayne Shorter’s acoustic quartet after those dense rhythms seemed an odd choice. Shorter has never sounded better than with his current quartet, but he’s sure sounded a lot funkier, with Weather Report, and even on his 60s Blue Note recordings. His free-style jazz felt abstract and rarefied after the down-home, electric grooves of Hancock’s band. However, the quartet’s intensely focused energy and free-wheeling shifts of direction had even the most techno-funko-philic yelling for more, even if they weren’t dancing.
For the final “Meet the Future” super unit jam session, Hancock didn’t really need to announce, “Everybody’s going to get a little time on this one.” With twenty-some musicians piling on stage, solo time would have to be “little” if at all. With Cuban percussionists, two funky drummers, Norwegian club DJs, acoustic and electronic keyboards, voice-synth guitar, violin, famed saxophonists, all the other horns, AND Herbie Hancock, it was hard to say just what might happen. The soundboard engineer must have been frantic.
At first, Hancock and Nils Petter Molvaer shuffled back and forth onstage with directions for everyone. The band laid down a spacey groove elastic enough for everyone to fit in somewhere, but no one seemed willing to press the launch button. Finally, Tokyo violinist Naoko Terai took an incredible solo that brought the crowd to its feet. Once everyone knew the whole thing would work, they had to hang on for the ride. The collective groove took off like a musical U.F.O. and everyone got a chance to drive.
The last three songs of this jam session were possibly the most intense and unusual this writer has heard in a long time. With the dense rhythmic undertow of so many people on stage, the solos of Brecker and Shorter seemed in danger of being drowned. Instead, the dense backing upped the intensity of their playing and showed that the last generation of jazz players loves uncharted directions as much as the youngsters. Roney and Molvaer added trumpet solos that did their generation proud.
After the show, Hancock confided to me, “Man, I didn’t know how that last one was going to work out, but it did.” Rather than hustling off to their dressing rooms, the musicians stood around talking and hanging with an obvious sense of connection. Something had clicked. Molvaer, clearly impressed, told me, “It was amazing. All these countries and all these styles mixed into a single sound.”
Backstage in the post-festival party room, everyone slipped into a surprisingly bland vocal rendition of “Happy Birthday” for Wayne Shorter, as a cake was brought in. Asked to say something, he had a rather cosmic take on it all. “I really want to explore the universe, maybe there we can find each other,” he said, leaving everyone to wonder whether he was putting everyone on or there was a little something in the birthday cake, or both. After toasting Shorter, Hancock raised another toast to the sweat-soaked collection of festival organizers, musicians and scraggly press backstage, “To Tokyo Jazz 2003!” He’ll be back to direct the festival again next year.