But before I digress too far into one of those bad-old-days arguments (David Murray played a tune called “Bechet’s Bounce”! Air devoted an album to Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton!), it’s only fair to say that there’s a lot of great music on From the Plantation to the Penitentiary. Right after that fake-free section, Marsalis takes a cliffhanger solo, free but with intent, in his upper register, all thin and spidery and breathless. As accessible as the music is, it’s rich in incident — choral backing riffs by Wynton and saxophonist Walter Blanding behind Sanon, piano solos by Dan Nimmer that are alternately light-swinging and stentorian. And everywhere bassist Carlos Henriquez and drummer Ali Jackson Jr. are guiding those hairpin rhythmic turns. Even the most songlike pieces defy standard verse-chorus arrangements, breaking for ensemble passages or solos at unpredictable moments. Because of the design of these pieces, the ear stays refreshed. And, once again, though there are allusions, the music doesn’t really sound like anyone else. The instrumental “Doin’ (Y)our Own Thing,” with its bright harmonies and jaunty car-honk rhythms, is closer to Leonard Bernstein’s Fancy Free than anything I can think of by Ellington. And I mean that as a compliment.
But then there’s the politics. Wynton is painting in the broadest generalized strokes. He has Sanon sing “I ain’t your bitch/I ain’t your ho” in the sweetest of ballad settings before she laments, “Where did our song go?” It’s unabashed nostalgia, but I’m not sure what it tells us about living in the here and now. And Sanon sounds a bit wan delivering it. She’s better served by the fast patter of “Supercapitalism” (“Gimme that. Gimme this. Gimme that.”), where the shifting rhythms and tight ensemble unisons (it’s hard!) fill in what the lyrics can’t say.
Finally, there’s Wynton’s own “rap,” his first vocal performance on record, “Where Y’All At,” which with its second-line rhythm takes rap all the way back to Mardi Gras Indian chants: “Even the rap game started out critiquin’/Now it’s all about killing and freakin’.” Well, yeah, but rap’s not all about killing and freakin.’ (Has Wynton even listened to Ghostface Killah?) And it’s not just rappers he’s after, it’s also “Righteous revolutionaries and Camus readers.” There’s too much talk from “Whistle blowers cryin’ ’bout who’s to blame.”
Wynton has said elsewhere that he isn’t pointing fingers, that he includes himself among those at fault, and that he’s critiquing “from the inside.” But the album doesn’t bear him out. He told a Boston Public Library audience years ago when the discussion turned to race, “I’m from the community — I’m not just someone who saw some Negroes once.” But we never really see one person from the community — just generalized “Big baggy pants wearers with the long white T-shirts.” Wynton’s from New Orleans — and he’s made it clear that anger about Katrina, though it’s never mentioned on the disc, is part of what fueled the new album — but we never get a clear picture of one hero or one villain. Instead, it’s “Y’all started like Eldridge and now you’re like Beaver.” I don’t know who the generalized “you” is, but I didn’t like convicted rapist Eldridge Cleaver even when he was cool.
