The Music According to Roy Ayers
Ayers saw no legitimate separation between jazz, R&B, blues, gospel, funk, and rock & roll
Around the time that Roy Ayers launched his group Ubiquity in 1970, a number of other musicians who had made their names in the traditional jazz world started bands that explored a similar attempt to bring the new music of the street and the radio into an instrumental, jazz style. Donald Byrd formed The Blackbyrds. Joe Sample, Wilton Felder, and Stix Hooper changed from The Jazz Crusaders to The Crusaders in order to free themselves of audiences with an expectation of hearing primarily hard bop style jazz. Cannonball Adderley began to experiment with soul-based material along with his keyboard player Joe Zawinul.
These musicians as well as a number of others, were all working with the idea that Black music was something to be reconstructed and reunified, repairing the damage done by a recording industry that sought only to segment every possible musical genre in order to maximize its marketing outreach to a corresponding segment of the population. Jazz, R&B, blues, gospel, had all been broken down into separate entities. Musicians like Ayers, Byrd, Adderley, and others saw that there was no legitimate separation between these styles of music, and by extension, between rock and the rapidly developing funk scene.
The rhythmic sensibility of jazz swung away from the idea of 'swinging', which was necessary in all of jazz up to this point, towards the more robotic straight 4/4 of rock with such groundbreaking records as Miles Davis' In a Silent Way. Such changes are always an inflection point. The other influence was the poly-rhythmic reinterpretation of older R&B grooves and assertion of the bass line to create the language of funk. To many jazz listeners, and a good number of musicians, this transition in rhythmic center was a bridge too far. I saw it echoed again when the rhythmic center of jazz shifted towards hip hop. I saw writers I knew who couldn't understand the change, nor accept the music being created as an extension of the jazz bloodline.
It's like saying 'well, there's Beethoven, that's the peak of Western classical music, so new music in that genre should sound like that.' But time moves on, and every form of music (art) absorbs influences from other cultures or new developments and innovations. We still play and study Beethoven, but we don't expect modern composers to create Neo-classical music. Similarly, there is no reason for modern jazz musicians to create Neo-classical jazz.
There is a further sense of irony in the idea of the primarily white gatekeepers of jazz (and other genres as well) telling black musicians that the music they were playing was not legitimately jazz because they were employing too many outside elements from other (primarily black) musical genres.
Roy Ayers not only influenced his contemporaries in the jazz music world, he also influenced black popular music far into the future. His combination of soul, funk, disco, and cool jazz sophistication became one of the dominant sounds of the seventies, and he turned the vibraphone into a signature sound of the day. Next to the electric piano, which was everywhere, vibraphone, with a high range that sounded like a celeste and a lower range that mimicked the electric piano, was the new must have addition to records by artists from Laura Nyro to Frank Zappa. His work was heavily sampled by hip hop artists, and Erykah Badu bestowed upon him the moniker of Godfather of Neo-soul.
His imprint is all over the more recent British jazz scene with artists like Shabaka Hutchins, Nubya Garcia, GoGo Penguin, Kamaal Williams, and others.
But the thing about Roy Ayers is that, his greatness isn't measured by his influence, long as his shadow has proven to be to the legions of doubters. It is measured by the content of his music and his message as well. Because Roy has definite ideas about how we should live our lives on this planet. The Ubiquity album He's Coming makes clear his Christian stance as well as his crusade for human equality. The album is influenced by the vibe of the then-groundbreaking album turned Broadway show Jesus Christ Superstar. The opening track is called "He's a Superstar," but Ayers' song rides a groove, courtesy of Billy Cobham and guitarist Sam Brown, that turns white hot by the end of the track. You don't have to be especially into Ayers' message to get carried off by the song.
But the second track is a cover of the Hollies hit "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," and that totally dissipates the energy to a calm, reflective tone, signalling that Ayers is wiling to use music by others when it fits his concept--in fact, he covers "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar as well. Another thing is that, while Ubiquity is completely able to bring the heat with the funk or rock numbers, you won't find a track as jazz-influenced on nearly any other fusion group's album. Sonny Fortune's flute solo is delightful, fading the track out.
1974's Ubiquity album A Tear To A Smile shows Ayers' awareness of groups like Earth Wind & Fire as his vocalists sing about philosophical and metaphysical topics and he digs in with a bit more funk and a bit less jazzy arrangements.
In '75 Ayers tipped his sound into full tilt funk/R&B with Mystic Voyage, an album that was meant to be played in the clubs and on black radio, featuring not only Ayers' previously established grooves, but also vocal work on most tracks. It was an album that was meant to occupy the R&B slot in the record store, not the jazz slot. But Ayers' vibes are still all over the record, and regardless of what else is going on around him that jazz purists might have found objectionable, you could not assail the man's playing.
The space occupied by Ayers and Herbie Hancock, who was releasing funk/R&B albums like Thrust and Man Child at this time, is pretty much the same. The main difference on Mystic Voyage is that the record is tipped heavily in the vocal R&B space, with jazz represented primarily by Ayers' vibes playing and some improvisational space in the music.
In 1976 Ayers scored a hit record with the title track from his album Everybody Loves the Sunshine. It's a strange little track, with a few lyrics that are variations of the title sung by Ubiquity vocalist Chi'cas Reid and Ayers, a synth string wash drone, and a nervous piano figure that repeats. It feels like night hawk's take on the sunshine vibe. The rest of the record is pretty great, with plenty of ARP action, driving R&B/disco beats, chill out vibes, and even some solid soloing by Ayers (check out "The Golden Rod").
By this time, Ayers' reputation is that of a solid and inventive R&B/soul/funk/disco performer, with his jazz background more of an exotic flavoring than anything else. Certainly the jazz critics no longer take him seriously, but he is riding high in the estimation of many music fans. Despite his pan-African beliefs and black consciousness, Roy is not exactly political, making his next record/project all the more surprising. Encouraged by his lawyer, who had a Nigerian background, Ayers agreed to travel to Nigeria in order to collaborate with Afrobeat superstar Fela Kuti.
So Ayers ended up flying to Lagos with Ubiquity, which still included Chi'cas Reid (Debby Darby), and his white road manager at the time, Henry Root. The group embarked, along with Fela and his Africa '70 band, on a three week, five city tour throughout Nigeria. Ayers and his group soon learned what it was like to be on tour with a wanted man: Nigeria's government was after Kuti, and would kill him if they got the opportunity. Only two years prior 1000 Nigerian soldiers raided his compound, known as Kalakuta Republic. They beat and raped those within and threw Kuti's 78 year old mother out a window, killing her.
All of this because Kuti called attention to the rampant corruption within the military government. After spending most of 1969 in America, where he was educated by singer and former Black panther member Sandra Izsadore (Sandra Smith) on black nationalism and Pan-Africanism, Kuti returned to Nigeria and formed the Africa '70 band, recording fiery political albums like No Agreement and Unknown Soldier.
The country was in violent chaos, and neither Ayers nor Kuti were protected from it. Henry Root remembers: "We were staying at the Holiday Inn – the best hotel in Lagos. The night we got there you could hear gunshots from our hotel. They were tying people to sand-filled oil drums and executing them on the beach nearby." (https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/apr/10/life-with-fela-kuti-dangerous-tour-roy-ayers-nigeria)
Ayers and Kuti also went into the studio and recorded an album together. Titled Music of Many Colours, it featured Kuti's "Africa Center of the World" on Side one and Ayers' celebratory "2000 Blacks Got To Be Free" on Side Two.
"2000 Blacks Got To Be Free" is a new version of the opening track from A Tear to a Smile, titled simply "2000 Blacks." Listening to the two tracks side by side illustrates very well the key elements of Kuti's Afrobeat sound and how it differs from Ayers' laid back yet driving L.A. afro-funk. Put together, the two halves of Black culture form a comprehensive whole:
"The music they’re playing coalesces into a living embodiment of Pan-Africanism. African-American funk, soul and jazz soloing met with traditional African rhythms and call and response is a shining example of a cross-cultural dialogue that has been occurring between people of African descent for centuries. Ayers explains that this practice of combining jazz with West African music was a homage to the music’s shared cultural heritage: “Jazz is part of our historical experience. The utilisation of various instruments, i.e. the percussion instruments, the horns and for me the xylophone have been used by our ancestors.” As the song climbs toward an ecstatic climax, Ayers drives home his message, imploring us to “Think about 2000 Black, think about unity, think about you and me, think about righteousness, think about positive vibes, think about togetherness!”. (https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/roy-ayers-fela-kuti-music-of-many-colours)
Roy Ayers continued to perform his mixture of soul, funk, and jazzy dance music on recordings in the '80s and early '90s, but as the decade wore on, and continuing into the new century, Ayers spent much of his studio time contributing to records by artists who he had influenced in one way or another. These included Erykah Badu, Mary J Blige, Coolio, Ghostface Killah, Rick James, Mos Def, Jill Scott, and Tribe Called Quest. The '90s saw the arrival of the British acid jazz scene, another movement that was in part influenced by Ayers' musical output of thirty years earlier.
In 2020, Jazz Is Dead released only its second album, featuring Roy Ayers. Producers Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. Youge, a master of vintage soul and funk grooves, creates settings for Ayers that are as stimulating as his original Ubiquity recordings. Horn charts are provided by trombonist Phil Ranelin and saxophonist Wendell Harrison.
Roy Ayers is an example of an immense talent that was never going to be contained by just one musical genre. In fact, it was so large that he was able to find the convergence point for many genres, melding them into Roy Ayers music, a sound that I hope finds some resonance in the cosmic firmament.
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