“genre-blurring, spiritually deep sounds” – Glide
Kenny Garrett’s latest release, 2021’s Sounds from the Ancestors, is a multi-faceted album. The music, however, doesn’t lodge inside the tight confines of the jazz idiom. Here, this is not surprising: the alto saxophonist and composer acknowledges Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye as significant touchstones. Miles Davis’s seminal LP, On the Corner, subverted its main guiding lights – James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. Then, Davis crafted his own unique, polyrhythmic, groove-laden, improv-heavy universe. Thus, Sounds from the Ancestors occupies its own space with intellectual clarity, sonic ingenuity and emotional heft.
“The concept initially was about trying to get some of the musical sounds that I remembered as a kid growing up. Sounds that lift your spirit, like John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”, Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace”, Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”. And the spiritual side of the church,” Garrett explains. “When I started to think about them, I realized it was the spirit from my ancestors.”
Indeed, Sounds from the Ancestors reflects the rich jazz, R&B, and gospel history of his hometown of Detroit. More important though, it also reverberates with a modern cosmopolitan vibrancy. Notably the inclusion of music coming out of France, Cuba, Nigeria, and Guadeloupe.
Garrett is easily recognized as one of modern jazz’s brightest and most influential living masters. His illustrious career includes hallmark stints with Miles Davis, Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, Donald Byrd, and Freddie Hubbard. Also, Woody Shaw, and the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Moreover, he has enjoyed a heralded career as a solo artist that began more than thirty years ago. And with the marvelous Sounds from the Ancestors, the Grammy-winning Garrett shows no signs of resting on his laurels.
Recommended for fans of Joshua Redman, Chris Potter, Branford Marsalis and Miguel Zenón.
📸: Hollis King
