These were the children, Billy Boyo and Little John and Little Harry, that when they were just a couple of tikes waddling around on the boardwalk were scooped up by Toyan and Junjo Lawes and the Scientist. Beneath the palms shading an oceanside walk, perched above a pit of jagged rocks, you had Billy Boyo, Little John, and Little Harry moseying along in the middle of it, closing the gap between them and the on-moseying row of older role models. Junjo Lawes, Toyan, and a guy dubbed the Scientist. Waves splashed up the rocks at the lot of them, all six, and the three elders swore they’d school the boys. They told them, “Boys, if you can rap, we’ll be rich.” And that’s how the unassuming little rascals became the world’s first rapping Lil’-Young-anythings.

Toyan himself was reasonably young, too, and he was a rapper. And when I say rapper like this I’m meaning the early rapping. Lots of repeating of things, especially your name, yet letting all things seemingly flow freely, remarking even in its repeating on how easy it is despite the toughness or roughness of life. Toyan was one of those rappers, a dancehall favorite, and he fixed it so that he could pass on his rapping prowess to his posterity. He scooped up those kids and had them grow up and become teenagers surrounded by reggae and rap of the newest, youngest style, the new DJ style, the rub a dub style, in a dancehall style, dancing on the dancefloor style, which the young kids would grow up to dominate. They would go on, these kids, to thank Toyan for the chance to grow up in his charge, his inspiring them, producing them. And then Junjo Lawes was just the producer; he was just the producer to do it, too. He was a young lad as well, only about 20 or so when he came out to the walk and encountered his most precious resources, those three kids. Even starting so young Lawes’s production discography is stunning; he must have been like a young Napoleon of musical conquests, overcoming in each release whatever strictures set by the precedents, himself becoming like a dancehall president in the process. So the list is like his presidential career, to be recorded someday in the Henry Junjo Lawes Presidential Library in Kingston, not to mention also being just a list of my favorite reggae records, bud--and their dubs. And so finally their dubs were done by none other than a character called the Scientist. He was also a young prodigy at making advancements for sonic-celestial space exploration; he was to reggae what Young Dr. Frankenstein was to Romanticism, a scary paragon of creativity. So these three were the de facto family members of these other three, the little rapping children: a young rapper, a Young Napoleon, and a Young Frankenstein taking three musical orphans under their wings, producing them, engineering them, building them up to be good rapping young men.

The family bounded and boomed into success. The facts and the histories of the family have been recorded as singles, most of them self-aware missives on wanting to make it big rapping--a narrative we’ve since come to find very familiar, even more familiar than the family might make it seem. When they were doing it, it was new. These roots of the rap family tree looks like this:

★“What You Want to Be,” Billy Boyo and Little John: asking a serious question;
★“Wicked She Wicked,” Billy Boyo and Little Harry, Roots Radics band boyo, Junjo-produced, Scientist-engineered: a femme fatale tale for teens;
★“Janet Sinclair,” Billy Boyo and Little John, Roots Radics band, Scientist-engineered: when our heroes were in trouble and needed a maternal guide;
★“I Like Your Something,” Billy Boyo, Silver Kamel-produced, Toyan-helped: who wouldn’t like it?;
★“Bushmaster Connection,” Billy Boyo, Little John, and Toyan, Roots Radics band, Toyan-produced, Scientist-calibrated: speaking on violence in a youth-cultural slang--what a trope!;
★ “Rougher than Rough,” Billy Boyo, Little Harry, High Times band, Junjo-produced: self-explanatory;
★“Billy Boyo in the Area,” Billy Boyo of course, Roots Radics band, Junjo-produced: representing where the rapper’s from, proclaiming himself here not unlike his older, American contemporaries who were always “in full effect”;
★“Space,” Billy Boyo and also a little Little John, produced and engineered by Sinbad sailor of the seven seas and another early discoverer of the dancehall world: speculating on the afterlife;
★And “Jamaica Nice,” Billy Boyo: Jamaica-made.
★And in presenting them to you in this way I’m just meaning to share how I starred them soon after I listed them on my own. 

The effect is like painting a starry picture of a young man’s Jamaican nightshore, wandering on it as in a reggae bildungsroman. The production does that. The galactic genius that inspired the elder family members to use maracas and guiros, laser beeps and zaps, rocket flares, jungle hoots, snake slithers, aluminum warps, concrete claps, the whole discordant symphony of nature and man, the whole grab-bag of sounds--to use those is a genius borne of the nightshore’s beach. In Jamaica was this group of geniuses, a family of arrangers of flows flowing forever into their ebbs in dub. It’s really nice to listen to them, these singles. In them I hear man maturing in the universe.

That’s to say nothing of the Billy Boyo and Little John and Little Harry story itself. Sure they had parents; I don’t know anything about their real parents, but I know that these three candy-faced kids on the boardwalk that one day, twelve years old, were soon rapping over the operatic and innovative productions of their adoptive uncles. Claiming adult dilemmas in rhyme. Shouting “Murder!” and “Ribbit!” over the album’s dub. They had turned themselves over to that other side, the adult side, the dub side; their crystal-sugar faces had cracked and created something brilliant. Through those cracked facets they could rap their Dickensian stories. Getting picked up by uncles and made to inherit some money. Fulfilling their great expectations with the aid of their benefactors. Discussing society’s ills and how to get by in spite of them. They brag, these kids, about their pick-up statistics, about the ways they pick up girls, their status as picked on, as tougher and rougher than rough, repeating themselves, resolving themselves to be what they want and were wanted to be. Billy Boyo says he’s super-duper. Little John says he wants to be a disc-jockey.

A few hundred years ago, it was always boys singing. There were these boys’ choirs that sprang up during the Renaissance that would put on short little plays and do high-voiced choral performances. It is a tradition that spans centuries, generations, hemispheres. So in the early 1980s these Jamaican youngsters took the proverbial torch. It was not long before they put the torch to use that they made themselves stars. The boys’ choirs of old performed in cathedrals; these rapping children of Jamaica performed in dancehalls. These respective environments afforded similar tones, too--not just the soprano lilts of their boys’ voices, but also the hard echo, the hollow resonance of their walls. The church hall is a concert hall is a dancehall. And in entering that hall these boys entered also a hall of fame of rap, is what I want to say. Just that; listen to these kids, man, and appreciate the incipience of hip-hop and especially young hip-hop in their tiny-timbred bars about murder, music, and prospective manhood. What do we hear, when we hear the Lil’ Waynes and Young Thugs and Yung Leans of the world, but the roots of young rap in these reggae child stars.

I had the privilege of being the world/jazz music director at my university’s radio station for a couple of years. I managed the mail we received from various independent artists and promoters, and observed a very distinct character to the sort of music we received: the prevalence of albums that were purely covers of previous works.
 
Every week, I’d get enough cover albums out of which I could make a decently-sized suit of armor. Before taking the position, I had no concept of the mountain of plastic-sheathed disks portraying new artists and old tunes. Perhaps it was a function of where we were as a station, and the contacts and opportunities we had, but a staggering majority of the jazz-related mail I received during my time was simply covering classics. It’s no shame to give proper due to the masters of the past or to put a fresh spin on an old favorite, but if this is a widespread phenomenon, then it’s no wonder that casual listeners far and wide believe that jazz is either stuck 40 years in the past, or dead.
 
Now, let’s think about why this is happening. It’s certainly not from a lack of skilled players. These now-overdone tracks are played with obvious technicality, the musicians of significant caliber, comparable to or even exceeding the skill of their jazzy ancestors. Many of these talented individuals attended some form of music school, or certainly had formal lessons at a minimum, and what else is there to learn but that which exists already? Having never taken jazz-focused music lessons myself, unfortunately, I couldn’t say what is covered in these, but no up-and-coming musician ignores past works when honing their craft. A violinist will explore at least briefly the works of Mozart; it would be too much to ask that a growing jazz musician ignore Mingus or Armstrong, similarly. There is also the necessity to learn how to play notes in context, whether or not to luxuriously extend a sonorous note or keep it short and snappy, and this has to be derived from prior knowledge and existing examples of well-written pieces. As is the case for learning just about anything, it is nearly impossible to learn in a vacuum, in refusing to draw from the successes and mistakes of those who came before. But to skirt entirely around the creation process of music? That is a bit different.
 
Judging from the landslide of tribute CDs that engulfed me every time I attempted to manage my mailbox, this problem is rather rampant. It is true that learning inherently tends to skip out on teaching the creation process. You can’t “learn,” in the classical sense, something that doesn’t exist yet. Writing music is hard; creating most things tends to be pretty difficult. Writing something as technical as jazz is staggering. But even so, when these modern-day maestros of their chosen instrument sent me the recorded fruits of their labors over a particularly tricky piece composed decades ago, I wondered: did this person, skilled as they are, try to write? Ever? Have they set pen to paper, fingers to keys, to eke out a line? Perhaps many have tried, and considered themselves unable to create something to their liking. Talented players would not want to play mediocre acts, and would hardly be pleased with a piece that in their opinion isn’t worth playing at all. Perhaps, out of respectful deference, some would rather not sully the still-gleaming surface of the past, and prefer to pay homage to the old masters rather than expand the genre in fresh directions.
​
Aside from my dismay in receiving so many cover albums, what is the problem? Is anything really being hurt here? I contend that there is a lot of danger. Attempting to reinvent or venerate the past too long gets stale and uninspired, which leads to the loss of what originally made jazz so great: the expression of new ideas and feelings in a new way, with a distinct sound. Expressing the feelings of another for too long is hardly more than mere imitation, which without fail does a disservice to the imitator in removing what special uniqueness they could have brought. There are too many flawless musicians today that are able to make their and their instruments’ voices heard for this to be permitted. I encourage music makers to certain acknowledge and honor the past, but I urge them more strongly to let jazz live in the present, and to work towards crafting an equally-powerful future.

Below are some quick recommendations for current groups that go astray from the beaten path and reinstate the artistry of modern jazz music:

The Kandinsky Effect

The Kandinsky Effect has been out to revitalize the modern jazz music scene for some time.  They're certainly not avant garde, but I don't quite think you'll find them hearkening overmuch to the days of jazz yore.  They play themselves....and that's more than can be said for many bands.  Smooth but not smarmy, rich but not creamy, the Kandinsky Effect bring a refined and energetic touch to the modern jazz scene.

Dan Moretti

Dan Moretti and crew can play a mean, upbeat and poppin' tune.  The tone and pace hearkens back a bit to more orchestral fast jazz pieces, but with a threadbare enthusiasm that simply screams of cast-off dinner clothes and crushing out a tune in undershirts at the local club, to the delight and surprise of somewhat older patrons and younger up-and-comers.  Rife with talent and always fun, I've yet to hear a downbeat Moretti tune.

Dave Holland

Dave Holland comes as perhaps a bit of a surprise--not exactly a modern musician, insofar as to mean a "recent addition" to the jazz family.  With amazing hits since the 70s, Holland continues to bring fresh thoughts to the jazz scene of today.  A hoarse and impatient guitar accompanied by frantic drums dominates this track, and will likely leave you searching for more.