The struggle is apparent on saxophonist and composer
Gary Thomas' 1991 album,
The Kold Cage, reissued in 2004 as part of label auteur
Stefan Winter's remastering of his
JMT label titles.
Thomas is a consummate tenor man and flutist. His frustration with what had become standard
jazz discourse in light of the new, influential (very narrow-minded) traditionalism ushered in a decade earlier by
Wynton Marsalis and cultural conservative
Stanley Crouch is obvious here.
Thomas employs everything from turntables to electric guitars, synthesizers, and even
rap to combat the stasis, while remaining a
jazz player. From his knotty forceful compositions
"Threshold" and
"Gate of Faces," which open the album,
Thomas engages extrapolated notions of
jazz harmonics and contrapuntal considerations while relying heavily on
electronic keyboard textures, and electric guitars (courtesy of
Kevin Eubanks and
Paul Bollenback) to stretch the margin of that engagement. But on
"Intellect," the tension cracks and splinters. Here
Thomas' flute and saxophone are shored up by pianist
Mulgrew Miller's funky
modal statements while rapper
Joe Wesson pops along the synth basslines and indicts everything around him in
old-school Sugarhill style -- likewise on
"Infernal Machine," where
Michael Caine's synths paint an off-kilter basis for baseline rhythms to underscore and jump off of.
Wesson's tough street
rap about faltering neighborhoods, dope, and the strength of the "black mind" introduces a chillingly futuristic series of overdubbed horn lines in the gaps. And on it goes for the rest of the hour, feinting and darting before active confrontation with the myth and magic of
jazz in an attempt to make it speak outside of its historical truth and into the current cultural one. It's an exhausting but compelling and rewarding listen. It messes with those classicists in a big way by sitting on their shoes while, at the same time, pulling the tradition into the current vernacular for its validation and assertion as popular music. Far from academic, this is fire-breathing music, one that forces not only confrontation but, from any open-minded music listener, a reexamination of the
jazz terrain as a once, present, and future music. ~ Thom Jurek
