{"id":982,"date":"2020-06-21T17:31:13","date_gmt":"2020-06-21T22:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/?p=982"},"modified":"2021-06-24T17:07:03","modified_gmt":"2021-06-24T22:07:03","slug":"review-roy-ayers-adrian-younge-ali-shaheed-muhammad-roy-ayers-jid-002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/review-roy-ayers-adrian-younge-ali-shaheed-muhammad-roy-ayers-jid-002\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Roy Ayers, Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s ‘Roy Ayers JID 002’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Humanity has a longstanding fascination with incorporating the latest technological developments into music. This interest is perhaps most evident in the history of sampling. In the 1940s, Pierre Schaeffer started producing sonic collages by splicing and manipulating sound recordings. His works formed the base of an experimental form known as musique concr\u00e8te, an avant-garde progenitor to electronic music. It appealed to many outside of this area as well. By the 1960s, producers King Tubby and Lee \u201cScratch\u201d Perry used pre-recorded samples of reggae rhythms. But with the emergence of hip hop in the 1970s, these approaches would come to the fore.  Heavily focused on turntablist techniques, hip hop took the world by storm over the ensuing years, including influencing nearly every other style it encountered. Those at the forefront of this movement frequently built songs out of pieces of those which came before, in the process often bringing more attention back to the original source material. However, it is relatively rare for the sampling artists to subsequently produce new compositions with their predecessors. Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad\u2019s series attempts to rectify this oversight by showcasing new collaborations with some of history\u2019s most sampled musicians. For JID 002 <\/em>(Jazz is Dead, 2020), they do so with the legendary Roy Ayers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many ways, Ayers is perfect for this type of project. Although nominally a \u201cjazz\u201d vibraphonist – Lionel Hampton gave him his first mallets – he has never confined himself to a particular type of music. After his early stints as a bebop sideman, he worked with flautist Herbie Mann, an artist who pulled heavily from both world and popular music. With the formation of his Ubiquity band in the early 1970s, he further began to encompass R&B and later disco. He also spent a month and a half touring Nigeria with Fela Kuti. Over time, his music would influence acid jazz and neo-soul to come, and his collaborators\u2019 list continued to extend to include Rick James, Kerri Chandler, Masters at Work, Erykah Badu, and Tyler, The Creator. The diversity inherent in his art, along with his openness towards sampling, has made him one of the most sampled artists in history; over 708 recordings have utilized his prior works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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