{"id":4825,"date":"2022-07-24T19:11:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-25T00:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/?p=4825"},"modified":"2022-07-25T06:19:41","modified_gmt":"2022-07-25T11:19:41","slug":"mcbride-2022-newport-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/mcbride-2022-newport-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"What the World Needs Now: Christian McBride on the 2022 Newport Jazz Festival and the Legacy of George Wein"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In many ways, this summer\u2019s edition of the Newport Jazz Festival is similar to years past. It will be held at Fort Adams, the event’s home since 1981<\/a>. Newport will still serve as a barometer of the state of improvised music, whether by living legends, emerging talent, or those in between. But things are also different. 2022 marks the first time the Festival will proceed in full without its founder, George Wein. Since 1954,<\/a> the man often heralded as the founder of the modern music festival had missed his most prized event only thrice: in 2004<\/a> when recovering from surgery; in 2005<\/a> when caring for his terminally ill wife, Joyce; and in 2021<\/a> as his health failed him. But each time, Wein still advised and counseled festival management behind the scenes. With his passing last September, the Festival entered a new era. And yet, if our conversation with Artistic Director Christian McBride<\/a> is any indication, while Wein is no longer with us, he will remain an invaluable part of the Newport tapestry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a way, the discussion of this summer\u2019s Newport Jazz Festival begins across the country in sunny Los Angeles. Two days before Newport, McBride will serve as artistic director of another event: The Hollywood Bowl\u2019s Tribute to Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra<\/a>. During their careers, both Lee and Sinatra straddled the line between popular music and jazz. Appropriately, the evening will visit both sonic spheres by presenting Billie Eilish and Debbie Harry alongside Dianne Reeves and Gretchen Parlato. Some purists may balk at Eilish and Harry\u2019s inclusion at an otherwise jazz-heavy event. But, to McBride, those criticisms fall flat. \u201cJazz has always suffered from a civil war which does much more damage to our own family than it does to the outside world,\u201d McBride notes. \u201cThere’s always been a problem with some people who just can\u2019t seem to enjoy the music. They overanalyze it. Too many people listen with their heads, not their hearts and feet. It keeps people outside the jazz community from joining us; it is better to find common ground. And maybe, in the process, the outsiders will love jazz as well.\u201d One can\u2019t help but notice parallels between McBride\u2019s response to potential Hollywood naysayers and Wein to his critics over the years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Newport has boasted some of the greatest stories in jazz history – the resurgence of the careers of Miles Davis<\/a> and Duke Ellington<\/a> among them – it has always reached further than \u201cjust jazz.\u201d Mahalia Jackson, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, The Kingston Trio, Aretha Franklin, Muddy Waters<\/a>, Led Zeppelin, Sly and the Family Stone, Frank Zappa<\/a>, Living Colour, Parliament Funkadelic, Mavis Staples<\/a>, and, yes, even Sinatra himself,<\/a> are but a few who have appeared alongside jazz royalty at Newport since the mid-1950s. Often each selection brought some detractors, but such complaints left Wein, like McBride, undeterred. \u201cGeorge had a really good sense of balance when it came to doing what he believed in artistically without ignoring the fact he was also making business decisions,\u201d states McBride. \u201cHe loved swing music, especially Lester Young, a young Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, a young Dizzy [Gillespie], Louis Armstrong, and Teddy Wilson. But he didn\u2019t hesitate to serve as many different people as possible, whether booking avant-garde groups or even James Brown.\u201d Today, those influences inexorably extend to one of contemporary music\u2019s most popular forms, hip hop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hip hop is hardly a new presence at Newport, with Mos Def<\/a>, The Roots, and Common appearing at Fort Adams over the years. But the form is omnipresent at this summer\u2019s offering. Jazz rap pioneers Digable Planets will perform at Newport for the first time. Zambian\/Australia-based rapper Sampa the Great will fuse sampled beats with electronica, African music, and neo-soul in her Newport debut. Newcomers The Soul Rebels<\/a> will underscore the direct descendant line from New Orleans brass bands to modern hip hop. The returning Canadian band BADBADNOTGOOD<\/a> counts among its credits projects with Kendrick Lamar, MF Doom, and Ghostface Killah. And even as Jazz is Dead<\/a> presents established jazz heroes like Gary Bartz<\/a> and Henry Franklin, it does so with a nod toward sampling. <\/p>\n\n\n

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