David Lyttle is taking jazz back to America

David Lyttle’s US journey was more of a jazz-playing road-trip than a conventional music tour. Along the way he played at Art Blakey’s house and used an assault rifle as a percussion instrument, writes Alan O’Riordan

JAZZ music is the most uniquely American of art forms, but it’s increasingly easy to avoid it there. It is played in specialist clubs, on low-budget niche radio stations.

While its sound still pervades mainstream music through hiphop, the thing itself has never been so marginalised. Its status has been greatly diminished since, pre-rock’n’roll, it was America’s pop music.