Jazz Week
The Song of the Day is:
Esperanza Spalding – “The Longing Deep Down (Abdominal Portal)”
From the album Twelve Little Spells (2018)
I too would rather run, bound, cactus head to cactus head
Stimulating laps flung wide, the distance well rounded
A working circle
All of our adjacent points equally distant from
The center
Fulcrum self, it’s fruit and its pit so deep
The whole current of being rises through it
There between your crotch and belly button
Esperanza Spalding
Last year during Jazz Week I featured Kamasi Washington as one of the presumptive modern artists who could have a major impact on jazz music if given the chance to flourish and create. This year, under that same principle and want, I am featuring Esperanza Spalding, who at 36 (her birthday was this week, Happy Birthday Esperanza!) has already netted some of the greatest acclaim for any jazz musician of her generation. Most people became aware of Spalding when she won the Best New Artist Grammy Award in 2011. She was, regrettably, the first and only jazz musician to win this award (though, remarkably, she bested Justin Bieber, Mumford & Sons, Drake and Florence + the Machine in doing so (on a personal note, this is the only field of Best New Artist nominees in which I’ve featured all the acts on this blog)). Spalding has rejected the term “child prodigy”, but there have been many who applied it to her. Her musical skills are so attuned that she became an instructor at Berklee College of Music at just age 20. She has achieved a level of fame and recognition not normally seen for female jazz instrumentalists, unfair as that statement may be. Spalding is best known for playing either double bass or electric bass, as well as guitar and her own vocals which can have an airy quality as well as being fully capable of R&B styles. As far as heroes go, Spalding has cited jazz bassists Ron Carter and Dave Holland, both famous for their work with Miles Davis, and perhaps most apparently, Joni Mitchell (one of the few “rock” musicians I could play during Jazz Week without having to work hard to defend my section). Spalding certain does bring to mind the poetry of Mitchell, and she often presents it a neo-soul style reminiscent of Lauryn Hill or Erykah Badu. She’s proven herself not to be a victim of the “Best New Artist Curse“, by picking up two subsequent Best Vocal Jazz Album Grammys, including the most recent awarded for this album, Twelve Little Spells. Twelve Little Spells is a concept album in which each of the songs focus on a different part of the human body. “The Longing Down Deep” is centered on the abdomen, but it would almost be more fitting to consider it to include the midsection as a whole. Spalding now has seven solo albums to her name, and among her guest appearances she has appeared on, yesterday’s artist, Stanley Clarke’s 2007 album. Spalding also benefited greatly from former President Barack Obama’s benefaction, as he invited her to join him and perform on his behalf when he received his Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. She might not have the name recognition of the pop stars of her peers, but she seems like an artist that will have a long and inspiring career.
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