"Hide and Seek" (Music Review)

"Hide and Seek"

Freedom in the Groove

Joshua Redman

Joshua Redman: tenor saxophone

Peter Bernstein: guitar

Peter Martin: piano

Christopher Thomas: bass

Brian Blade: drums

A summa cum laude graduate of Harvard as well as one of the best saxophonists of his generation, Joshua Redman can express himself almost as stylishly with words as with notes. That's why he's one of the few jazz musicians who writes his own liner notes. Freedom in the Groove comes with a little memoir about how he's moved past his "jazz snob"bery to a more inclusive musical taste:

"These days, I listen to, love, and am inspired by all forms of music. And once again, I sense the connections. I feel in much of '90s hip-hop a bounce, a vitality, and a rhythmic infectiousness which I have always felt in the bebop of the '40s and '50s. I hear in some of today's 'alternative music' a rawness, an edge, and a haunting insistence which echoes the intense modalism and stinging iconoclasm of the '60s avant-garde."

The track with the most freedom and best groove is the hip-hop themed opener, "Hide and Seek." Ah, here is the "bounce," the "vitality," the "rhythmic infectiousness" Redman is talking about! As a dabbler in the saxophone myself, I know how hard it is to play anything without moving your body, even though the instrument forces your head down and ties up your hands, making you do a kind of awkward pelican dance. Guitarists dance for show, but sax players do it because they can't help it. Especially not on this song. I can't even listen without dancing.

It starts with Redman's tenor sax a capella, alternating some sparse phrases with a lip-popping technique that mimics a bass line. At 0:18, the rhythm section enters: the real bass takes over and continues a simple but beguiling rhythm, and the drums keep the beat but more or less stay out of the way. Redman states a rather complex, syncopated melody, and if you listen closely you can hear the piano hiding behind the saxophone, playing the same notes.

At 1:35, the rhythm changes noticeably, the piano gets put away, and Bernstein's guitar comes out of hiding. At 1:39 and 2:10 his riffs very satisfyingly fill in gaps in the sax solo; elsewhere he subtly makes the section more rhythmically and harmonically interesting. But of course, Redman's funky saxophone solo is the main attraction. The storytelling, the use of tension and release, the development of melodic and rhythmic motifs is masterful--but a lot less interesting to read about it than to listen to. Here are some things to listen for:

* The echoing of rhythms both long (like the first phrase) and short (like the two-note phrase at 1:53ff), as a development (2:53ff) or as a refrain (2:15).

* The lick at 1:51 works because it so simple, just three quarter notes of the same note in three octaves. The lick at 2:25 works because it so intricate, compared to the rest of the solo.

* The mellow release of tension at 2:09, followed by a head-banging re-entry; the sax and drums are in perfect sync here.

* The pulse in funk, including in this song, is in the first and third beats of the measure. This is where you expect strong phrases to start. But if you listen carefully from about 2:38 to 2:42, you'll find that Redman moves ahead of the pulse a little bit, then lets it catch up with him.

* At 2:51 the improvisation line, like a trapeze artist, is perfectly timed to land on the first note of the second unison section. What we have here is a hipper version of the melody, similar but busier. Note the record-skip effect at 3:12, and the accelerating, oscillating final flourish of the saxophone.

We've been so enthralled, we haven't noticed that in the mean time the guitar has dropped out again and the piano has once again re-entered. Starting not quite as lazily as Redman did, Martin quickly ratchets up the energy level by pounding ever harder with his left hand.

And then, before you know it, we're back where we started. As much as we want the groove to keep going, it has to end. Yet there's one more surprise ahead. The fade is a fake; the finish is a flash.