Politicized Jazz for Our Time from Mark Dresser

Mark Dresser (photograph by Jim Carmody, courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz)

According to my records, the album Ain’t Nothing But A Cyber Coup & You was released by Clean Feed this past October. By all rights, I should be apologizing (yet again) for procrastination and scheduling delays; but, by way of an excuse, this seems like the ideal recording to discuss in the wake of yesterday’s State of the Union address. The music is performed by Mark Dresser, an acoustic bass player whose sense of jazz tradition owes much to Charles Mingus, another bassist who refused to shy away from politically sensitive issues (most explicitly by taking on the segregationist governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus). On this album Dresser leads the Mark Dresser Seven, whose other members are Nicole Mitchell on different sizes of flute, Marty Ehrlich on clarinet, bass clarinet, and alto saxophone, Keir GoGwilt on violin, Michael Dessen on trombone, Joshua White on piano, and Jim Black on percussion.

In the notes for the accompanying booklet, Dresser acknowledges Mingus in his second paragraph for providing the inspiration “to engage with our current dystopian landscape from a place of hope and positive potential.” To a great extent that phrase reminded me of the title of the anthology of Esquire articles that took on an earlier dystopia, the highly troubling times of the Sixties. The title of that volume was Smiling Through the Apocalypse. Indeed, I would argue that one encounters more wistful smiles in Dresser’s tracks than I ever did in most of my Mingus recordings.

This is not to say that Dresser is trying to sugarcoat current conditions. As a case in point, consider the track “Let Them Eat Paper Towels.” That was Paul Krugman’s headline for a column he wrote for The New York Times, calling out President Donald Trump’s callous and clueless attitude when he visited Puerto Rico after the island had been devastated by Hurricane Maria. Dresser gives a figurative voice to the Puerto Rican population by drawing upon the melody of the island’s unofficial anthem, “Que Bonita Bandera” (what a beautiful flag).

Dresser describes the title track as “an attempt to give acerbic levity to our national realty-horror-show of corruption, malice, xenophobia and class warfare.” As in “Let Them Eat Paper Towels,” he does this by incorporating well-chosen tunes. His “primary sources” come from the Great American Song Book: “I’m Just a Lucky So and So” and “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be.” This is one of the most intense tracks on the album, complete with a wild piano introduction from White that prepares the listener for the madness to follow.

While there are only six compositions on this recording, they are “interlaced” (Dresser’s word choice) with bass improvisations. These are performed on the McLagan Tines, invented by luthier Kent McLagen. As Dresser describes it, the instrument consists of “a set of seven graduated steel rods attached to a secondary bridge that touches the bass bridge, activating the resonant cavity of the bass.” This makes for some other-worldly melodic lines that, at least to my ear, seem to arise from the ability to set some of the more remote upper harmonics into resonance.

Listening to Ain’t Nothing But A Cyber Coup & You may not change your reaction to either the State of the Union Address or the conduct of the Senate over the last week, but it may still give some reassuring strokes to your personal attitude!