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November 2006 Russ Lundgren Jazz Quartet Straight ahead and swinging Wednesdays
A few years ago, when I first fell in love with jazz, there was no such thing as straight ahead jazz. There was only jazz.
Oh, there was be bop and Dixie,
swing and big band. In those days, blues was jazz. There was no
rhythm and blues. And I grew old enough But if you want straight ahead, old fashioned jazz, tune in this November with the Russ Lundgren Jazz Quartet. Russ is a young guy. A drummer’s drummer around town. He doesn’t have the name recognition of the older guys but he plays real steady. If you like that high hat up-beat with a running bass line, this is your style of music. And one of Russ’s major talents is his ability to scare up other great musicians who people haven’t heard of.
Jeremy Ward hails from Utah, where his father was a band teacher. He learned jazz listening to tunes on the tractor at his family’s home farm. Later he joined the Navy, who shipped him to Newport, RI, where he earned a master’s degree in performance bass. That means he plays and doesn’t philosophize.
Dave Yamasaki is the other steady hand in the quartet.
He hails from the Bay Area where he was known as “a first call
guitarist for studio Lundgren usually scratches around for a fourth. He likes different sounds. He often doesn’t have to go far. His father John, the music director at Le Jardin School in Kaneohe, turned him on to jazz in the 8th grade. Ever since, they’ve been playing together.
“By the time, John was in high
school, he
Another example of a fourth was Russ Lundgren’s choice of Louie Mundy as a singer on a Saturday gig. Louie was trained as an opera singer. But she fell in love with jazz. Now it’s all swinging business. I think she’s absolutely the best in Honolulu. Better than Azure. She has a great voice. Huge. But also a great quiet presence, soft, happy, very confident. And she talks to the audience as if she has great respect for them. It’s wonderful jazz. Archives: Buddy Mak, DeShannon Higa, Nu Swing Project, Russ Lundgren Jazz Quartet
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January 1, 2007 What’s hot in jazz? New York urban sounds
OK, I’ll admit it. I never thought that I’d be this old – where jazz is becoming an unacceptable form. The truth is it’s too loud. And the further truth is: Young people have always liked loud music. They love a huge bass line with pulsing, rapping drum upbeats. Big band was loud. New York urban is loud. That’s the music that’s in today. The first artist to claim urban jazz was Angelamia Bachemin. She pioneered the style of Jazz Hip-Hop, blending the two most uniquely African-American developments in music into one “phat” sound at Wesleyan University in 1997.
Bachemin was a child of New Orleans and inner-city Oakland, California. She developed the synthesis while working on her Master's Degree, where her first jazz hip-hop class rocked the Crowell Concert Hall standing-room-only crowd. She called it the Renaissance Soul Revival. The tradition continued at Berklee College, where Bachemin's classes and performances were so popular that listeners were often found crowding outside the doors. Our Monday band flies in this vein. The newest jazz trend lies in electronic music. Our own DeShannon Higa is deeply into this groove on Thursday evenings. And our new Saturday band is New York urban all the way.
Electronic music takes electronically generated sounds and turns it into a work of music. The music is typically composed on a synthesizer or a computer. Higa takes it one step further with visuals and music. At his recent gigs, he has both a real live painter painting and computer generated moving graphics projected on the Jazz Minds brick wall. This takes jazz to its sharpest edge. It brings it back to the beginning when innovation and improvising reigned supreme. Jazz musicians are artists in the truest sense of the word. Straight ahead jazz is really like old time rock and roll. It’s comforting. It’s great for old folks. But it doesn’t blow you away. “Hip hop is the most current expression arising from the African American cultural continuum and utilizes many of the same African musical characteristics as jazz,” says columnist Emmett G. Price III. “Just as the Hip Hop Nation constructed the word "yo" to designate who was a part of their nation, Lester Young constructed the word "man" to designate who was a part of the jazz generation. Both hip hop "yo" and jazz "man" are anti-heroes in the American tradition.” says writer Rahim Respond. So, don’t be coming round here saying, “That’s not jazz.” You might say it’s loud, but it’s jazz. |
April 1, 2007 Cutting edge jungle music Live, down tempo hip hop groove
I don’t know what you call it, but the new jazz is here at Jazz Minds. And our master of ceremonies Supreme is the tall, slender, good looking, cool Filipino American rap poet Seph 1. He’s the man. He’s cool. He’s on, around, in, about three nights a week at Jazz Minds. Two of the nights are Live music. Big bands by today’s standards. Friday has two guitars, a bass, drums, a DJ and a singer, spoken sometimes sung, shaken not stirred. Saturday is a master of ceremonies, lead singer, cello, drums, guitar and bass. Live music, not canned or stitched together DJ with a hip hop spoken word guy on the mike. Live. With the kinds of rhythms that people like, the kind that scratches your soul, vibrates in your gut, thumps in your head. Urging, deep, ethereal rhythm. And original songs.
“Some of the songs, we’ve done so many times, the audience knows the verses. They can cue us,” says Seph. “It’s all about appreciation and diversity. The words are what bridge the thoughts. So many influences today are not positive. We’re trying to bring the positive back. “It returns our voice. Lots of people, it started with the Blacks, then Latinos, now Asians, Polynesians, Pacific Islanders, we all relate to the minority experience. “Hip hop was because people didn’t feel their modes of expression were being accepted,” says Seph. Is there such a thing as a Hip Hop prodigy? Seph started with nursery rhymes and give his first performance as a poet in the second grade. A military brat, he first heard Hip Hop in Germany. His first gig was at Havana Cabana. He’s played the Indigo, Pipeline, Wave Waikiki, Big City Diner and the All Star Café. He’s opened in Honolulu for some of the very top Hip Hop bands like Pharcyde, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Ozo Matli and Common. If you’re so old that you haven’t heard of these bands, you might wander down. The rhythms are seductive. The voices, spoken and crooned, are like the Fountain of Youth. Mondays are Open Mic for singers, emcees or poets. It’s all the same, in a way. The theme is Simunye, a Zulu word that means “We are One.” Seph will be inviting friends and fellow artists. But anyone is invited to come on down and sign up. You can reach Seph at geminine23@gmail.com The Friday band is called Fort Union Dugout with the Spacifics. It includes Kevin Hughes and Sean Ho on guitar, Eric Awa on bass, and Keli’i Wong on drums. Seph 1 is the lead singer. DJ Fame is on when the band is off. The Saturday band is called Tempo Valley. It includes Eugene Carroll as producer, Paisley as the lead vocalist, Jeff James on drums, Kona on guitar, Mark Sakaue on bass, and Indai on cello. Cello? Yes, cello. DJ Azia is the turntable technician. You can find music from these musicians at Myspace.com. Check out /thespacifics, /tempovalley, /sephone, /directdescendants and /siqrecords. They have a CD that should be out the first week of April. (Also check out tempovalley.com) Pinnacle Every mind we seek Every time we speak Every rhyme we design From the point of a peak
Living the dream.
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to see new jazz, experimental jazz and fusion. Now there’s jazz and
jass, jazz samba and hip hop jazz.
For instance, his bass player is a Navy E-5, but his close cropped
hair and receding hairline make him look much older and his playing
sounds it came right out of the Thirties. 
and live performances.” “It’s no surprise to me since I sat right
next to him where I heard and felt every note he played,” said one
fellow musician in the Pete Escovedo band. Yamasaki has CD called
From Me to You.
was
getting more gigs than me,”
smiles the older Lundgren. “Just remember, it’s the ‘Russ Lundgren
band.’”
