# Jason Moran pays tribute to an early Jazz ancestor. He started that decade at the Clef Club in Harlem: Videos, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2023/02/18/jason-moran-pays-tribute-to-an-early-jazz-ancestor-he-started-that-decade-at-the-clef-club-in-harlem-videos-photos/
- Published: 2023-02-18T00:02:40+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**The album “From the Dancehall to the Battlefield” puts the music of James Reese
Europe through a contemporary prism.**

He started that decade at the Clef Club in Harlem, an organization that fielded 
its own group and worked to improve labor conditions for Black musicians throughout
New York. Not long after, Europe brought his 125-member Clef Club Orchestra — and
the syncopated styles of Black American composers — to Carnegie Hall. In 1914, Europe
provided new music for the star dancing couple Vernon and Irene Castle while also
taking his group into the studio to record for the Victor Recording Company.

During World War I, he was Lieutenant Europe: Along with other members of the all-
Black 369th Infantry, he pushed to be allowed to fight while also leading a regimental
band — known as the Harlem Hellfighters — that amazed audiences abroad. After a 
triumphant return to New York, in early 1919, his war-drilled ensemble recorded 
material for the Pathe label, including a vivacious take on Carl Bethel and Sandy
Coffin’s “That Moaning Trombone.” Later that year, one of Europe’s band members 
stabbed him with a knife during an intermission. (He thought Europe had disrespected
him.) The bandleader died later that night.

![Jason Moran and the Big Bandwagon | Celebrity Series of Boston](https://i0.wp.
com/celebrity-series.s3.amazonaws.com/files/productions/jasonmoran-1440.jpg?w=640&
ssl=1)

All this took place long before Louis Armstrong’s first recordings with King Oliver,
which helped to codify and claim the “jazz age” for the Roaring Twenties. But a 
new, Europe-focused recording by the pianist and composer Jason Moran — titled “
From the Dancehall to the Battlefield” — rewinds jazz’s history a bit and brings
Europe’s sound into a relationship with successive waves of jazz and contemporary
music.

“They talk about ‘jazz is dead,’ like it’s not everywhere or there’s something wrong
with it,” Moran said in a recent interview. “But if you’re listening, the music 
is everywhere.”

Moran cited a riff — synthetically rendered yet clearly big band-derived — that 
powers the Harry Styles song “Music for a Sushi Restaurant.” “That swing is still
associated as the rhythm of this country,” Moran added. And for him, that tradition
is greatly indebted to James Reese Europe’s bands in the 1910s.

“It’s hitting the stage, and hitting the mass of our people in New York City. But
it’s also tied up in the vaudeville era, you know — and blackface. It’s emerging
right at that time, and it’s scary,” Moran said. “So, I think he’s having that push-
pull with it. And I think he reaches the other side of the conversation by claiming:‘
This is a Black music that we have to cherish. And we should be looking at our own
kind of ensembles to manage that.’”

On the new recording, Moran’s band channels some of that original Europe energy,
and deploys herculean efforts during Moran’s own arrangement of “That Moaning Trombone.”
That track, in its hard-charging refinement — and finely judged inflections of tempo
and dynamics — proves a worthy modern testament to Europe’s handling of large ensembles.

“What isn’t mentioned enough about Europe’s band is, they are incredible technicians,”
Moran said. “When I show this music to people and say, ‘Can we get it like they 
do on the record?,’ inevitably they are like, ‘No, we can’t.’” (Moran allows that
his take on “Trombone” is his attempt to reach that summit: “Kudos to the horns 
for really working together on that.”)

Elsewhere, Moran deviates strategically from recorded history. During Europe’s “
Ballin’ the Jack,” Moran fuses the song with motifs from the post-bop pianist Geri
Allen’s “Feed the Fire,” before executing an elegant pivot back to “Jack.”

That mash-up format reflects Europe’s own taste in medleys, as well as the real-
time remixing that Moran has long executed with his trio, the Bandwagon. (“Thank
god for the Bronx, and figuring out that two turntables can work this way,” he said,
when asked whether “Ballin’ the Jack / Feed the Fire” was indebted to turntablism.)

![Jason Moran | American Academy in Rome](https://i0.wp.com/www.aarome.org/sites/
default/files/images/people/jason-moran.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

Elsewhere, Moran embellishes the up-tempo tune “Castle House Rag,” filling it with
nervy rhythmic repetitions — and pianistic lines that are, by turns, soulful and
avant-garde in nature (and sometimes both at once). “It’s very Threadgill, the way
it opens up,” he said, referring to the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and performer
Henry Threadgill, who is also a Europe aficionado. (The tuba player Jose Davila,
a regular in Threadgill’s bands, lends a sense of drive to Moran’s new album.)

Other modern sounds show up for cameos on the recording: The breathing meditation“
Zena’s Circle” comes from the composer and conceptualist Pauline Oliveros. Moran
once invited her to lead a Deep Listening session during his first season of programming
at the Park Avenue Armory. “Selfishly, I wanted to give it to the Bandwagon,” he
said. “But I also wanted people to experience it.”

“Zena’s Circle” leads directly into “For James” — a collaged, multitake document
of a Moran original. It is initially interpreted by his own group, as well as a 
German crowd singing it back to the players; then, in the final moments, Moran’s
tribute is heard — in a majestic, impromptu take — as it was performed by members
of Stephany Neal’s The 369th Experience. (That organization encourages bands at 
historically Black colleges and universities, or H.B.C.U.’s, to gather and study
Europe’s music.)

“They not only scaled it up,” Moran said, “but they made it better.”

If the range of references on this album seems vast, that’s also a testament to 
Europe’s capaciousness, and his influence on Moran. Since departing from the Blue
Note label to produce his own recordings, Moran has become a master of the unexpected
feint. The sounds of “From the Dancehall to the Battlefield” consistently surprise
and delight; backward-masked percussion on a performance of “St. Louis Blues” might
send you reeling back in more ways than one. The studio effect suggesting time travel—
heard prominently in the cymbals — feels like something out of a 1970s Funkadelic
stew; the W.C. Handy tune is, itself, of even deeper vintage. (Connecting all this
is playing that feels utterly contemporary.)

But Moran is being more than simply clever; he is an artist with an eye for connections
among the past, present and future. On “All of No Man’s Land Is Ours,” Moran bends
the end of one motif so that it ends in a less celebratory fashion than it does 
on Europe’s recording. (Moran’s version sounds like a phrase out of Thelonious Monk.)

“I imagine that when they talk about ‘No Man’s Land,’ it’s with mystery,” Moran 
said, thinking about Europe and his players. “What do enslaved people think about
what ‘no man’s land’ means? I want to go forward and backward on the idea. Where
do we feel our boundaries are?”

Jason Moran’s latest album is inspired by the pioneering, 1910s jazz of James Reese
Europe.

![A black-and-white portrait of Jason Moran shown in close-up. His hair is neatly
trimmed, he has a short salt-and-pepper beard.](https://i0.wp.com/static01.nyt.com/
images/2023/02/07/multimedia/06MORAN-01-zqht/06MORAN-01-zqht-articleLarge.jpg?resize
=640%2C942&ssl=1)

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