# Where Jazz lives now: Jazz is a music of live embodiment: Video, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2022/04/07/where-jazz-lives-now-jazz-is-a-music-of-live-embodiment-video-photos/
- Published: 2022-04-07T16:33:02+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**The jazz club, with its dim lighting and closely packed tables, looms large in
our collective imagination. But today, the music is thriving in a host of different
spaces.**

ImageThe vocalist, flutist and producer Melanie Charles sings at a rehearsal in 
her Brooklyn home, which has become a rehearsal space, recording studio and gathering
spot.

The vocalist, flutist and producer Melanie Charles sings at a rehearsal in her Brooklyn
home, which has become a rehearsal space, recording studio and gathering spot.

![American Jazz musician Melanie Charles plays flute as she performs... News Photo-
Getty Images](https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/american-jazz-musician-melanie-
charles-plays-flute-as-she-performs-picture-id1282542561?s=2048x2048)

A disco ball threw beads of light across a crowded dance floor on a recent Monday
night in Lower Manhattan while old film footage rolled across a wall by the stage.
A half-dozen musicians were up there, churning waves of rhythm that reshaped over
time: A transition might start with a double-tap of chords, reggae-style, from the
keyboardist Ray Angry, or with a new vocal line, improvised and looped by the singer
Kamilah.

A classically trained pianist who’s logged time with D’Angelo and the Roots, Angry
doesn’t “call tunes,” in the jazzman’s parlance. As usual, his group was cooking
up grooves from scratch, treating the audience as a participant. Together they filled
the narrow, two-story club with rhythm and body heat till well past midnight.

Since before the coronavirus pandemic, Angry has led his Producer Mondays jam sessions
every week (Covid restrictions permitting) at Nublu, an Alphabet City venue that
feels more like a small European discothèque than a New York jazz club. With a diverse
clientele and a varied slate of shows, Nublu’s management keeps one foot in the 
jazz world while booking electronic music and rock, too. On Mondays, it all comes
together.

As New York nightlife has bubbled back up over the past few months, it’s been a 
major comfort to return to the legacy jazz rooms, like the Village Vanguard or the
Blue Note, most of which survived the pandemic. But the real blood-pumping moments—
the shows where you can sense that other musicians are in the room listening for
new tricks, and it feels like the script is still being written onstage — have been
happening most often in venues that don’t look like typical jazz clubs. They’re 
spaces where jazz bleeds outward, and converses with a less regimented audience.

“The scene has started to fracture,” the drummer and producer Kassa Overall, 39,
said in a recent interview, admitting that he didn’t know exactly what venue would
become ground zero for the next generation of innovators. “I don’t think it’s really
found a home yet. And that’s good, actually.”

It’s an uncommonly exciting time for live jazz. Young bandleaders have wide followings
again — Makaya McCraven, Esperanza Spalding, Robert Glasper and Christian Scott 
aTunde Adjuah each rack up millions of plays on streaming services — and a generation
of musicians and listeners is lined up to follow their lead, or break away. This
year, for the first time, the most-nominated artist at the Grammys is a jazz musician
who crossed over: Jon Batiste.

These players’ music has never really seemed at home in jazz clubs, nor has the 
more avant-garde and spiritual-leaning work of artists like James Brandon Lewis,
Shabaka Hutchings, Angel Bat Dawid, Kamasi Washington, Nicole Mitchell or the Sun
Ra Arkestra, all of whom are in high demand these days.

Maybe it’s a case of coincidental timing. A confluence of forces — the pandemic,
the volatility of New York real estate, an increasingly digital culture — has upset
the landscape, and with the music mutating fast, it also seems to be finding new
homes.

Jazz is a music of live embodiment. Part of its power has always been to change 
the way that we assemble (jazz clubs were some of the first truly integrated social
spaces in northern cities), and performers have always responded to the environment
where they’re being heard. So updating our sense of where this music happens might
be fundamental to re-establishing jazz’s place in culture, especially at a moment
when the culture seems ready for a new wave of jazz.

![Makaya McCraven - Festival International de Jazz de Montréal | mezzo.tv](https://
i0.wp.com/www.mezzo.tv/ressources/programs/61/1600x1000-8d3aff1-4221-P10061577.jpeg?
w=640&ssl=1)

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