Jazz survives due to the genre’s innate ability to evolve. Truly, there are few directs connections between those early New Orleans recordings, say, and the dynamic sounds we are presented with in the 21st century – but a common spirit, a certain use of language, remains. Yazz Ahmed sits at the forefront of British jazz, blending aspects of her heritage with club tropes and post-bop styles, a continual innovator whose rich, absorbing work continually sits at the cusp.
2019’s ‘Polyhymnia’ was an outstanding exploratory feast, yet her perpetual evolution remains ongoing. Yazz Ahmed returns to her roots for a special compilation album, taking part in ‘Blue Note Re:imagined II’, which brings together scintillating voices from UK jazz to rifle through the label’s songbook.
The first instalment was rightly lauded, and this second volume includes some fascinating re-works. Out on September 30th – it can be pre-ordered online – the project doubles as a multi-artist love letter to one of the core catalogues in jazz.
In this special piece, Yazz Ahmed reflects on the meaning Blue Note holds in her life, and its enduring influence on her work.
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Some of the very first jazz I listened to was from the Blue Note catalogue.
As a teenager I used to take the tube from Morden in south London, to visit Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus, spending many hours carefully exploring the jazz section, deciding what to buy. These were in the days where you couldn’t listen to albums for free online so I would save up my pocket money and really treasure every album I bought.
You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and the same goes for albums, I suppose, but I must admit that I was often initially drawn to the striking images and typography which characterise the Blue Note brand. Happily, I was never disappointed when I got home and listened to the music, and some of my early Blue Note purchases are still amongst my favourite records.
The music I heard on these albums had a great influence on me as a young player and composer, the work of Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter and Freddie Hubbard informed my own pieces as I began the journey of discovering my own voice. I didn’t have much access to jazz education until I was in my 20s, so absorbing the sound of these Blue Note albums, was my way into this world.
There are of course other important record labels which have made a huge contribution to recorded jazz, Columbia, Impulse! and Verve come to mind, but I dare say that none has entered the public consciousness to the same extent as Blue Note. In 2014 the Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibition of Blue Note album covers, recognising their iconic cultural status.
In the 1950s and 60s, it was the combination of the photography of Frank Wolff with the revolutionary graphic design work of Reid Miles which established the label as the epitome of a certain kind of cool, avantgarde aesthetic which defined the age. The tinted photographs, cropped in a striking fashion, were often used as abstract elements of a composition, featuring titles in powerful fonts and contrasting colours, with the modernist Blue Note logo artfully positioned alongside the names of the musicians.
As I discovered myself, these designs helped the records to make a strong visual impact on the shelves, to such an extent that they changed the way jazz was marketed. Most importantly, these strong design statements also played a role in elevating the status and perception of African-American jazz musicians as serious artists.
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Naturally, just as Blue Note has an iconic look, it also has a distinctive sound, perhaps established in the 50s and 60s by the quality and vision of Rudy Van Gelder’s somewhat mysterious sound engineering. However, when people talk about ‘the Blue Note Sound’ as a musical genre it’s hard to know exactly what they’re talking about. Over the last seven decades Blue Note has reflected the dizzying evolution and divergence of jazz as it has spread around the globe. From bebop to hard bop, through soul jazz, free jazz, experimental, funky fusion, postmodernism and hip-hop, Blue Note has covered it all. If we just focus on the trumpet players featured, we could create a curriculum for the study of jazz trumpet. In no particular order we could start with Clifford Brown, then Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, Donald Byrd, Don Cherry, Terrence Blanchard and Ambrose Akinmusire. You can trace the development of the music and the way jazz has spread out like the branches of a great tree.
My own journey has led me to creating a little twig on this tree, which has been described as Psychedelic Arabic Jazz, but if you had interrupted the teenage me, reading the liner notes for ‘Out To Lunch’ on the train back home, and told me that in 2022 I would be invited to contribute a track to a Blue Note compilation, I would have laughed in your face.
When it came to recording my contribution to ‘Blue Note Re:imagined II’, I wanted to make something personal.
I turned to one of my favourite Blue Note albums, ‘The Complete ‘Is’ Sessions’ by Chick Corea. I chose a quirky little tune, only 28 seconds long, which goes by the title, ‘It’.
I was looking for a piece that would allow me to respond creatively, extending and twisting fragments of melody and harmony to develop something new, which is the way I usually compose.
Chick’s short masterpiece was so inspiring that my ideas began to take shape straight away but did lead me to quite an unexpected destination – maybe think Frank Zappa meets Chick Corea at a club in Istanbul? I’ll let you decide.
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And what are Yazz Ahmed’s Blue Note picks, you wonder? She’s gone for Eric Dolphy’s ‘Out To Lunch’ and Wayne Shorter’s ‘Speak No Evil’.
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‘Blue Note Re:imagined II’ is out on September 30th. Stay in touch with Yazz Ahmed on social media.
