If you really want to see “the community” from the inside, check out the black British alto-saxophonist Soweto Kinch. It is a different community — the album is called A Life in the Day of B19: Tales of the Tower Block (Dune). It’s not a true hip-hop/jazz fusion, more a collage of juxtaposed styles and moments, spoken narration, musical raps. When Kinch isn’t bringing his hard-edged horn to flowing bebop, he’s flowing his own monologues, and dialogues with himself (as an unemployed inner-city Birmingham council-flat “tower” resident and the “annoying woman” who challenges him), over gritty, percolating rhythm tracks.
Kinch might not be up to Wynton’s level as a composer, but he’s damned good. When he plays jazz, it’s real jazz, and when it’s rap, it’s real rap. Kinch, though plenty angry, looks at life with a sense of humor and a sweet, gentle flow. And he’s not rapping about killing and freakin’ — he’s rapping about making it with his rhymes, the skillz to pay the bills. Art. And the struggles of trying to be an artist in a hostile environment. Art in the form of jazz is the same choice Wynton has offered countless African-Americans from “the community.” Maybe some day he will rap about some of the real people he’s met along the way — and he’s met them all, from New Orleans neighborhood kids to Lincoln Center board members. In fact, Kinch was one of the musicians Marsalis inspired to play jazz.
JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA WITH WYNTON MARSALIS | Symphony Hall, 301 Mass Ave, Boston | March 28, 8 pm | $38-$68 | 617.482.6661
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