Cassandra Wilson: Jumpworld (CD)

Cassandra Wilson (geb. 1955)

Jumpworld

CD

CD (Compact Disc)

Herkömmliche CD, die mit allen CD-Playern und Computerlaufwerken, aber auch mit den meisten SACD- oder Multiplayern abspielbar ist.

Cassandra Wilson (geb. 1955): Jumpworld, CD

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Label: Winter & Winter, 1990
Erscheinungstermin: 8.4.2003

"Usually if a performer finds a style or approach that leads to popular success, he or she tends to repeat it as long and as often as possible. Cassandra Wilson, a magnificent singer whose voice, as more than one poetic critic has noted, drips smoke and honey, found such a formula on a lovely album of standards called Blue Skies.

Blue Skies is still nestled in the Top Five on the Billboard jazz charts six months after its release and has opened the doors for a tour of the U. S:, Europe and Japan that brings Wilson to the Chicago Theatre for her Chicago debut and first opening date with Miles Davis. But for all that, Wilson says she has no interest in continuing down the same musical path. Thus the Cchicago Tribune in June 1989.

At that time Cassandra Wilson was already busy working on new material for a new album. The singer commented: "I really enjoyed doing Blue Skies, but that was that. I don't study the past as much as I did when I was younger. I felt that that was a period I went through to learn about the traditions of this great body of music. But now I'm more absorbed in the process of perpetuating that that tradition and sending it forth into the future. "Even her superlative ratings in Billboard's jazz survey of 1989 - Blue Skies (JMT 919 018-2) Top Jazz Album #1, Cassandra Wilson Top Jazz Artist #4 - have not induced Cassandra Wilson to change her mind about this decision.

Cassandra Wilson's fourth album Jumpworld (JMT 919 033-2) tackles the future even more emphatically than her first two productions Point of View (JMT 919 004-2) and Days Aweigh (JMT 919 012-2) which earned her the reputation as most promising heiress to the classic tradition of jazz singing. Jumpworld was inspired by a science fiction-comic story of the same title, authored by Cassandra's husband Bruce Lincoln, a multimedia artist. The story goes like this.

Jumpworld is a planetary dimension or a dimensional planet. Jumpworld lies outside the space-time jurisdiction of the Grand System Masters, the G-masters. The G-masters on their homeworld of Ungain, have for time immemorial enslaved the race of cerebral mutants called Freak Thinkers. With the Dreamsapper, the G-masters harness the oneirocreative energy of the Freak Thinkers, using it to fuel their ultratechnological multi-galactic empire. The G-masters have literally taken over an area of the universe and made it into their own dimension where they dictate the rules of physics. The most dangerous of the Freak Thinkers is Darvis Joval. Moreover, he is the sole outthoughtsman. Darvis Joval has the ability to think himself into the other reality that lies outside the Grand system and trigger Domination-Switch. This latter eventuality, however, is unknown to Joval on that fateful day he happpens to escape the Grand System, only to wind up in Jumpworld! Especially since the G-masters still hold captive Zoruun, Darvis' lover. Also unknown to Darvis Joval, he is the shiftmover of long forgotten Freak Thinker legend, bringing on Domination Switch. The end of the Grand System!

In a way that is characteristic for Afro-American storytelling, this story combines playfulness and seriousness, entertainment and social probing. Originally, jazz also had a dual function for Black people as entertainment and instrument of self-definition. The latter aspect, however, was getting more and more lost from view. It is time now, Cassandra Wilson finds, for jazz to reemerge from the museum and the ivory tower. For "our music is alive. It's part of us. It's more than just music."

Cassandra Wilson frees jazz from the corset of History by 'crossbreeding' it with elements of popular music. The New York Times described the original compositions in her repertoire as "Art Songs In Popular Context" and wrote: "Ms. Wilson latches on to the power of pop - good melodies, an assortment of rhythms and dance beats, songs and electronics - without sacrificing any of jazz´improvisational power. Without condescension, she makes an intelligent attempt to cultivate, by taking the best from both forms, an audience that reaches beyond the limits of each idiom."

This is exactly what Jumpworld is also striving to do. The original pieces on Point of View and Days Aweigh exhibited pop, r&b and reggae influences; the popular sources that Jumpworld draws on are primarily pop ballads and funky music. And hip hop. "Jumpworld" for example, the center track of the album, fuses jazz and hip hop, the technically advanced and presently most outspoken form of Black music, in a highly original fashion.

Some of the lyrics on Jumpworld are hardly less straightforward than what some of the hip hop heroes have to say ("Domination Switch", "Lies"). Others emphasize science fiction elements ("Love Phases Dimensions", "Dream Time", "Whirlwind Soldier"). And Jumpworld is both about politics and fantasy. The relation of Cassandra Wilson's lyrics to the original story is fairly loose. She approaches the plot from the woman's perspective. In the beginning the "Woman On The Edge" wanders fearlessly through inhospitable streets, in spirit already off to a better world. Before she is reunited with her "Whirlwind Soldier" and sets out for Jumpworld, where " we live in harmony and we all are family", she takes the Grand Masters severely to task and warns "Domination Switch is On".

If one looks at how Jumpworld came to happen, it seems that 'utopian conditions' à la Jumpworld, the planet where creativity and communal thinking reign, have to a certain degree become reality. Jumpworld is the fruit of close interation between writer, lyricist / singer / composer and instrumentalists / composers. Steve Coleman, as and Graham Haynes, tp, Cassandra Wilson's long-time collaborators, have contributed to Jumpworld both as instrumentalists and composers. The members of Wilson's trio, Rod Williams, keyb, Kevin bruce Harris, b, and Mark Johnson, b, as well as guitarist David Gilmore, too co-wrote a few tracks. Hip hop artists Kirth Atkins and James Moore played a substantial role in creating the title track, "Jumpworld". Further instrumentalists to be heard on Jumpworld are Gary Thomas, ts, Greg Osby, as, Lonnie Plaxico, b, and Robin Eubanks, tb, who also work often with Cassandra Wilson.

Cassandra Wilson: "Jumpworld is an occasion for me and my contemporaries to come together and tap into our collective memories and imaginations so that we might create another dimension of music."

Rezensionen

R. Thomas in Jazzthetik 6/03: "Bis auf ein Stück des Trompeters Graham Haynes bietet Frau Wilson auf dieser CD ausschließlich eigene Kompositionen, die gleichzeitig warm und kühl klingen."