Jazzanova put a live twist on Strata classics for Guinness Cork Jazz Festival
Jazzanova play the Everyman on the Friday of the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival.
As the home of the US car industry, Detroit was once the beating metal heart of the American future. But by the late 1960s, the town the automobile built was hurtling towards dystopia as American’s motor giants were eclipsed by overseas rivals. That decline reached a critical mass 1967 when riots broke out across the city. But from those cultural ashes was born something new in jazz label Strata — arguably behind only Motown and the 1980s techno scene in the roll-call of iconic musical movements to have come from Detroit.
“Especially in the late 60s and early 70s, racism is rampant in America,” says Amir Abdullah, aka DJ Amir, the producer who has curated a fascinating re-imagining of Strata’s greatest moments in collaboration with Berlin jazz collective Jazzanova. The project is titled Strata Records — The Sound of Detroit Reimagined by Jazzanova and it will be brought to life in Cork when Jazzanova perform at the city’s Jazz festival, at the Everyman Theatre on Friday October 28.
Amir has a lifetime experience in jazz and hip-hop. In 2011, he founded the label 180-Proof, through which he overseas the rerelease of the Strata catalogue. He is a former vice president of the label Fat Beats, has worked in A&R at Rapster/!K7 and was in charge of the Wax Poetics label from 2007 to 2010.
Just like Motown, established by Berry Gordy with the help of a loan from his family, Strata was a triumph of determination in the face of daunting odds. For black Americans, especially in Detroit, there was no such thing as a helping hand.
“There's not a lot of opportunities for black people,” says Amir. “Nobody says, ‘here’s a bag of money for you to go do whatever you need to do’. You have to pull together your resources, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And do it yourself."
Strata was founded in 1969 by Kenny Cox, a bank manager turned jazz pianist. He had grown frustrated with his label Blue Note, which was putting him under constant pressure to achieve commercial success. Eager to pursue a more experimental direction he founded Strata and was soon hosting concerts by Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Herbie Hancock and others.
He started to release music too, though in the lifetime of the label Strata would put out fewer than a dozen records — all highly-sought today by collectors. Perhaps the first to win received acclaim was the LP Saturday Night Special by the Lyman Woodard Organisation — a masterpiece of funk jazz initially mistaken by many for a Blaxploitation movie soundtrack.
There is no better place for the musical legacy of Detroit to be celebrated than at Cork Jazz Festival. Throughout its history, the festival has provided a platform to overlooked voices in jazz. And is once again the case as the Jazzanova remember Strata — and with it, Detroit’s contribution to popular music and culture.
“You have to understand Detroit and two really significant riots — 1967 and 1968, which devastated the city,” says Amir. “And this was a the epicentre of the Civil Rights movement in America. Strata came out of the ashes of all of that. That definitely informed how they made music and how they wanted to be perceived to the wider Detroit public, in terms of their music.
“That’s why their moniker was, ‘all musics for all people’. They wanted to be able to reach everybody— not just the black people of Detroit. But the whites, the hispanics. Everyone else. And to have them to concentrate on something else besides, ‘oh my god this building is burning around’.”
With the Jazzanova project, Amir hopes to challenged the image of Detroit as a post-apocalyptic netherland “It’s not just, ‘the whole place is a wasteland’,” says Amir. “A lot of great music came out of there. Let’s not forget Motown came from Detroit. A lot of the most famous jazz musicians — Dorothy Ashby to Shirley Scott. They came from Detroit, or the Detroit area. A lot of great things came out of that struggle in Detroit. It just happened to be they had those two riots — for good reasons. I wanted to be able to tell another side of the story of Detroit. Not only creativity — the but intelligence behind the creativity.”
The second purpose is to ensure that Strata does not slip between the historical cracks. Amir wants to remind modern jazz fans of the importance of the label, which suffered for years because its releases were so difficult to come by.
“That's definitely one of the motivations behind this project. The story of Strata is so important. Besides the fact that they made a bunch of great music. To be honest, they only released [a handful] of records. I’ve been releasing a lot of the un-released material across the past 10 years.” Strata’s impact goes deeper than that, he continues.
“A lot of people don’t know that Oberlin College, which is one of the great jazz conservatories in America, was created by Strata in 1970 [Kenny Cox helped devise the curriculum for the school]. That’s one of the first jazz music conservatories created in America. Such a small label had such a huge impact on the city. That story needs to be told. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to do something with Jazzanova. They would get it. And we would be able to do the table and history justice.”
With Jazzanova on board, the tour will go one step further — in bringing this music fully to life in a live environment. “The tour is basically highlighting the catalogue. It’s kind of a like a musical story. From the catalogue, from the streets of Detroit.”
Strata never had national distribution in America and so has remained obscure in the United States. Even in Detroit, there have been concerns the label might be written out of history. Amir’s life work is to ensure that does not happen.
“There are some people that need to be reminded. For folks, 40,50, 60 on up... it’s there in the lexicon of people’s minds. They know Strata. They had such a huge impact on the city, even though they were such a small label with a small output. The things they did really resonated with Detroit.”
Strata lives on, sometimes in a surprising fashion. “It’s still revered in a lot of ways. Some of the guys from Strata they used to teach at the universities. Wayne State University, University of Michigan. Some of those guys I know through social media or whatever. They always talk about and teach about what Strata did. So at least the legacy can be passed on.”
- Jazzanova bring the Strata Project to the Everyman, Cork, Friday, October 28 at 6pm. Tickets via guinnesscorkjazz.com
- GoGo Penguin, Everyman Friday, October 28: The Manchester collective blend jazz, electronic, nu-jazz and ambient music.
- Brandee Younger, St Peter’s, North Main Street, Friday to Monday: The New York harpist draws on jazz, soul, funk and classical music. Her LP Pretend was praised by Rolling Stone as “elegant inter-genre chill out”.
- Portico Quartet, Everyman, Sunday: Mercury Prize nominees build their ambient sound around the steelpan-like hang drum.
- MåsExödus Featuring Omar & Jeru the Damaja, Everyman, Saturday: A dreamy collaboration between Dubliners Mark Murphy and Max Zaska brings in some heavyweight international guests. Omar is the UK soul legend behind the classic There's Nothing Like This; while New York rapper Jeru has collaborated with the likes of Gang Starr.
- Amaro Freitas, Triskel, Saturday, October 29: Acclaimed pianist from Brazil adds the sounds of his home country to his contemporary jazz repertoire.
