Jason Moran - From The Dancehall To The Battlefield
(Yes Records, 2023)
Wynton Marsalis has long played the apologist for Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Thelonious Monk. He is a living archivist of older music and effectively keeps the music visible to newer listeners. Pianist Jason Moran picked up where Marsalis left off, adopting the cause of James Reese Europe (1881 - 1919), one of the Ur jazz creators present at the beginning.
In the 1910s, Europe led two important orchestras, the Clef Club and Society Orchestras. These groups were more akin to the bands of John Philip Sousa than smaller “Dixieland” style bands like the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Europe recorded in the early 1910s manifesting music greatly conceived and stylized. The few recordings of Europe may sound quaint and antique by today’s sonically pristine standards and that is where Moran steps in, putting the music into a more modern milieu. Where Wynton Marsalis has couched his performances of Morton, Ellington, and Monk narrowly within their respective idioms, Moran thinks outside the box, using different formats to illustrate Reese’s vision and talent.
Moran opens the recording with a poetic prose rumination of Europe from the multiple contexts of student, soldier, teacher, bandleader, and civil rights icon before such a thing had a name. Moran’s soundtrack is novel and modern providing a dynamic backdrop to his Europe narrative. From there, Moran’s project evolves from the introspective solo piano performance of “All of No Man's Land is Ours” through the modern jazz trio reading of “Ballin the Jack / Feed the Fire” to the full orchestral “Russian Rag” and “Darktown Strutter’s Ball.”
Moran’s recital contains a suite of W.C. Handy tunes: “Memphis Blues,” “St. Louis Blues,” and “Hesitating Blues” as the disc centerpiece. Without choking the arrangments to death, Moran creeps up on “Memphis Blues” turning it into a period rave-up, while, on “St. Louis Blues” the arrangement caroms from one disparate mood to the next. It is the lengthiest piece on the disc and includes a contemporary, deconstructionist vibe. “Hesitating Blues” employs all of the period fun, mixing it with the grateful mirth of the present. Moran is masterful.