There are musicians who don't like being put in a box.
Then there's NEA Jazz Master Donald Harrison, who apparently looked at the boxes, grabbed 10 of them and decided to play in all of them at once.
That, essentially, is the wonderfully mad-scientist premise behind the New Orleans saxophonist's new album, “The Magic Touch.” Instead of writing an album's worth of unrelated tunes, Harrison takes the title composition on a grand tour through musical styles: post-bop, reggae, New Orleans second-line jazz, bossa nova, blues, chill trap hip-hop, soul and smooth jazz, tropical salsa, Afrobeat and Harrison's own "nouveau swing."
If that sounds more like a musical laboratory than a traditional jazz record, good. Harrison has spent an awfully long career
demonstrating that tradition is much more interesting when treated as a foundation rather than a fence. “The Magic Touch” isn't merely Harrison showing that he can play a bunch of genres; it's a chance to hear how profoundly context can change one composition.
Detroit gets a close-up on Tuesday, Sept. 29, when Harrison performs at Aretha's Jazz Cafe, the intimate Music Hall spot that calls itself the "keeper of the cool" in Detroit's theater district.
Harrison told the Free Press the audience can expect multiple “Magic Touch” versions, as well as a tribute to the late jazz legend Sonny Rollins.
“And then,” said Harrison, “we’ll finish with some of the new recording, sort of a trip around different cultures of the world, and end up in New Orleans at the end for a party vibe. Some people get up and dance. When the New Orleans song comes on, it’s hard to sit down. We’ll see if they get up and dance in Detroit, but I think they will, because Detroit is the home of a great musical dance culture, as well.”
He discussed his process for composing the diverse melody.
“It was something I was hearing,” he said, “that could be put in many formats. Once I came up with it, I heard all these different ideas, (where) I could just change it a little bit, and it would fit. I wanted something really melodic that a person could sing, or dance to. The melody really goes with all of those different styles of music, and that was key. I think it’s wonderful. I’m just so happy that we found this little way of approaching music.”
From the Jazz Messengers to nouveau swing
Genre-hopping isn't some late-career novelty for Donald Harrison.
The New Orleans-born saxophonist came up through Art Blakey's famed Jazz Messengers, playing alongside trumpeter Terence Blanchard. Amazon Music's artist biography traces Harrison's musical path from studying with Ellis Marsalis through work with musicians including Roy Haynes and Jack McDuff. He later made records with Blanchard before developing music that mixed New Orleans second-line rhythms with jazz, hip-hop, funk and R&B.
Harrison isn’t particularly interested in jazz as a museum piece. His music has long been in conversation with the sounds around it. His cultural identity reaches deeper than the bandstand, too. Harrison is Big Chief of the Congo Square Nation Afro-New Orleans Cultural Group. His father, Donald Harrison Sr., was a New Orleans folklorist and Big Chief.
On “The Magic Touch,” all those ideas of heritage, movement, and musical cross-pollination become almost impossible to miss. And the cleverest thing about it might also be the simplest: You don't need a degree in jazz history to understand the experiment.
Just listen to what happens to the song. Hear the rhythm change its posture. Hear a familiar melodic idea enter a different musical neighborhood. Hear how something can stay itself while becoming something new.
Harrison referenced a quote from the iconic Charlie Parker: “If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.”
“That really turned me around 100 percent,” said Harrison. “So I said, ‘Well, let me go live everything, and see where that takes me. All the music that I love, let me go live it from being in the culture and playing with the masters.” Thank God, I have done enough that they let me play with them and, over the years, all of those things came to fruition.
“I guess I’m a living example of what Charlie Parker said.”
In a city that knows something about music refusing to stay neatly inside its assigned category, a jazz veteran is arriving with a record whose core argument seems to be, “Why choose just one?”
“The Magic Touch” can be purchased at donaldharrison.net.
Donald Harrison Quartet
When: 8 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 29
Where: Aretha's Jazz Cafe, 350 Madison St., Detroit
Tickets are $43.55 and can be purchased at ticketmaster.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Jazz master Donald Harrison brings ‘The Magic Touch’ to Detroit
