Before we are even born, we have a pulse. Take a moment to feel the beat of your heart: this is the rhythm of the universe. We often take the inspiration of breath for granted--and, of course, the cadence of our step when we walk. But rhythm is life.
However, not everyone is born a jazz drummer. A very select few find this path and commit themselves to mastering swing, counterpoint, color, and polyrhythm. By doing so, they gain special powers to endow music with pulsating energy. There was a time when the drummer's role was simply to keep time, but that day has past. Today's drummers speak articulately through the language of timbre and rhythm. During the last few months, we've interviewed several drummers, including influential artists like Jack DeJohnette, Horacio Hernandez, and Joey Baron. This month we add brand new personal reflections from Elvin Jones, Idris Muhammad, and Bill Stewart. That group spans the range from blissful swing to prancing funk, hard-driving bop, and sounds from the great beyond.
Keeping time with the greats of jazz, David Orthmann has launched a new bimonthly column called Rhythm In Every Guise. In his most recent entry, David examines the work of Kenny Washington.
On a different note, the recorded history of jazz is full of nooks and crannies where musicians have marched to the beat of a different drummer (whatever their instrumental persuasion). Unfortunately, many of these creative documents drop off the horizon when the last record crosses the sale counter. But we have a team of writers who sometimes prefer to work in the dark, so to speak, to illuminate lost masterpieces deserving recognition. Andrey Henkin devotes his Out of Print column this month to select high points from Germany's Calig Records. Chris Hovan dedicates his Vinyl Junkyard column to Irene Reid's lost Verve '65 classic Room For One More. And Ken Dryden, who has been helping our readers find records for years, invites you to Ask Ken about any recording which piques your curiosity.
May marks the launch date of the All About Jazz Wine Club, inspired by our Jazz Uncorked series. This new program allows you to sample quality wines of every vintage, not to mention other benefits that include free music, an informative newsletter, and doorstep delivery. We've always been partial to the combination of jazz and wine, and we think you might be too. Check it out!
Down in the trenches, our site design team has been busy making the CD reviews section of the site more accessible and interactive. Their latest development is a
fully searchable database of every review ever published at All About Jazz. You can look up your favorite artist, title, or record label and get instant results sorted any way you want. For example, we plugged reviewer Glenn Astarita's name into the search engine and came up with a remarkable 857 entries. It appears that some of our writers just don't know when to quit!
This May marks a pounding crescendo in our coverage of jazz from around the world and right next door. We invite you to travel around All About Jazz and see if you can find a new area to explore. Each of our hundreds of contributors approaches the music from a unique personal angle. In some sense, we all march to a different drummer.
