SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
SUMMER, 2020
BRIAN BLADE
Marc Cary
(b. January 29, 1967)
Artist Biography by David R. Adler
Raised in Washington, D.C., Marc Cary has become known as one of the most original jazz pianists in New York. A man of eclectic tastes, Cary has a strong post-bop foundation but has also explored Afro-Cuban rhythms, electronic groove music, and other directions with his various ensembles. Upon arriving in New York, Cary was taken under the wing of Mickey Bass and Beaver Harris. His first big-time gigs came in the early '90s with Arthur Taylor, Betty Carter, and Roy Hargrove. In 1994, he became Abbey Lincoln's pianist and arranger.
Marc Cary
Marc Cary stands on an unshakable reputation as pianist dedicated to the craft. His fresh styling shows his expansive vocabulary. Cary's earnest orientation towards jazz, where much of his musical foundation lies, proves that he has internalized the idiom. Take his seminal masterwork, Rhodes Ahead Vol 1., released in 2000, is considered by many to be a classic; the Fender Rhodes-laden record signifies 70s free jazz, where the electric piano was oft-times the sonic weapon of choice.
This time around, Cary is going retro and returning to a full acoustic setting. With the FOCUS Trio, featuring Samir Gupta on tabla and drums and David Ewell on bass, Cary's current vision is to bring together East Indian, West African and Native America musical traditions together in an all acoustic setting and blending it into African-American musical culture: jazz. “Jazz is the rhythmic approach I'm coming from with FOCUS Trio,” explains Cary. FOCUS Trio will release Focus on Motema on June 27.
Cary has had a penchant for cross-cultural musical fertilization. He has fronted several ensembles, each one different musical directions. Indigenous People, which mixes acoustic, electric and is heavily percussive, is an group that Cary constructed in 1998 and he refers to it as the blueprint of his signature sound. Indigenous People recorded a live album in Brazil in 1999 which was positively received. Cary also leads the XR Project (Crossroads Project) which he explains as an extension of Indigenous People but with more of an underground and hip hop flavor. Crossing over additional musical territories, Cary produces house music and electronica under the handle, Marco Polo and has recently worked with Louie Vega.
Cary has been an architect of the zeitgeist that championed the organic, acoustic sound during the late 80s, early 90s. He was part of the Young Loins collective that included trumpeter Roy Hargrove, on which Cary was part of the personnel on albums like The Vibe and Hardgroove, staples in Hargrove's catalog. Cary's own discography list solo records such as 1995's Cary On, 1997's Listen and 1998's The Antidote, have been each received with critical acclaim.
Cary foray into music began with playing drums and trumpet. As a youth in Washington, D.C. he paid dues as a member of the Hi Integrity Band and Show, one of the many Go-Go bands that defined the D.C. musical scene. His family carries a musical tradition: his great-grandmother played piano at local movie houses, her partner was Eubie Blake; his mother is a visual artist and father played trumpet.
Cary received a formal education from Duke Ellington School of Art. As an emerging artist, his circle of mentors included John Malachi, Mary Jefferson, Nat Turner. By age 18, he found himself playing with the Dizzy Gillespie Youth Ensemble at Wolf Trap.
In the spirited style of D.C. jazz pianists like Duke Ellington, Shirley Horn, John Malachi, Cary continues in that tradition of innovation composition. Cary has played and recorded with an impressive roster of musicians: Me'Shell NdegeOcello, Dizzy Gillespie, Betty Carter, Arthur Taylor, Abby Lincoln, Erykah Badu, Jackie McClain, Clifford Jordan, Carmen McCray, Milt Jackson, Curtis Fuller, Eddie Henderson, Arthur Taylor, Frank Foster, Wynton Marsalis, Max Roach, Shirley Horn, Ani Difranco, among a host of other talents.
As Marc Cary evolves as an artist, is it clear that his body of work will continue to expand with cerebral compositions and impressive projects. It is evident that Cary lives as a true jazz musician would, composing from the heart, approaching the music with an evident freedom in his vision.
Source: Laylah Amatullah Barrayn
Marc Cary is one of the best jazz pianists in New York and over his career has worked alongside countless legends from Abbey Lincoln to Dizzy Gillespie. His projects and influences are not limited by genre and he has worked with Brooklyn Raga Musicians on our Coltrane Tribute projects as well as longstanding collaborations with BRM co-founders Sameer Gupta, Arun Ramamurthy, Trina Basu and Jay Gandhi.
In this masterclass, Marc will introduce developed outside the realm of raga that can help musicians expand their vocabulary and conceptual approach. This masterclass is free and open to the public and is directed towards musicians of all levels. Join on Viewcy here: https://www.viewcy.com/e/marc_carey_direction
In a jazz world brimming with brilliant and adventurous pianists, Marc Cary stands apart by way of pedigree and design as one of New York’s best jazz pianists. None of his prestigious peer group ever set the groove behind the drums in Washington DC go-go bands nor are any others graduates of both Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln's daunting bandstand academies. Cary hails from a musically literate family--his mother is a cellist; his great grandmother was an ivory-tickler in silent movie houses back in that day who also rocked barrelhouse and stride duets with Eubie Blake. Ellington trumpeter Cootie Williams was a cousin of Cary's grandfather.
While New York City is Cary's birthplace he was raised between Providence RI and the nation's capital. The player-composer and improviser is a graduate of DC's world-renowned Duke Ellington School For The Arts, also the professional spawning ground for Dave Chappelle, Wallace Roney, Denyce Graves and Meshell Ndegeocello whom Cary jammed with in the school's orchestra.
Cary's Ellington education prepared him to take on the daunting Big Apple at the ripe age of 21. Besides Carter and Lincoln, the next decade of his life found him sharing stages and cultivating craft with Dizzy Gillespie, Arthur Taylor, Carlos Garnett, Jackie McLean, Wynton Marsalis and one more goddess-figure among jazz vocalists, Carmen McRae. His comfort with women bandleaders also made him a favorite accompanist among other modern chanteuses, notably Ndegeocello, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill and Ani Di Franco.
The pianist's debut recording as a leader was released in 1995. Since then Cary's released a baker's dozen albums of music under his direction--three of those within the past two years for Motéma. Devoted fans know Cary's ensemble profile has three distinct and mesmerizing faces, revered among critics alike with this year’s DownBeat Critics Poll ‘Rising Star – Keyboardist ’ honor: his Focus Trio (well-documented live on his 2013 Motéma side Four Directions); and his pan-ethnic collective Indigenous Peoples, which merges poetic rhyme flow, soulful chanting and a sense of groove at home in the stellar realms of'interplanetary funkmanship.' (Cary's homegrown connection to his Native American heritage, instilled by his Wampanoag mom, is also a percussive factor. In the group's recent Cosmic Indigenous incarnation the deep web of continental African ties is woven tighter by the electric presence of Malian vocalist Awa Sangho.)
Then there is Cary's Rhodes Ahead series--which his current Motéma recording indexes as Volume 2--the first of which on Jazzateria earned him the debut annual Billboard/BET ''Best New Jazz Artist'' award in 2000. What both volumes put on exhibit front and center is Cary's spectacular ability as a keyboardist and improviser to interweave electronic textures into a fast-moving improvisational context, sacrificing none of his musical complexity in the bargain.
Cary was no stranger to electronic tinkering in his youth. A neighbor down the road owned a repair shop. Through time spent there soldering deconstructing gadgets Cary became what he describes as a 'self-taught electrician.' This early hands-on training made him proficient at re-wiring and re-programming some of his own sound gear later on. About electronic sound in general he has this to say: ''From the first time (and last) I stuck my finger in the wall socket, I have had a thirst for understanding electricity. Using analogue synthesizers and effects pedals on the Fender Rhodes, I learned how to manipulate electricity and create musical sounds. I became fascinated with how to build, transform and manipulate synthesizers and other electronic gear. From that fascination, I began to build and transform these instruments into more useful tools for me. I learned how to create everything from microphones to midi controllers, and manipulate household electronics to become musical tools. All of this fascination has worked its way deep into my musical sound, even my acoustic works.''
Cary remains one of the progenitors of contemporary jazz, evident in his influence on peers. Live gigs with vibraphonist Stefon Harris and bandmate Casey Benjamin began the genesis of Robert Glasper’s recording Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and Cary's record "Taiwa" from Focus in 2006 evolved into "For You" on Glasper's Double Booked and Harris' Urbanus. Cary collaborator Roy Hargrove exalted him with "Caryisms" on 1992's The Vibe, an album whose title track is one of two Cary originals including "Running Out of Time"--now part of the lexicon of live repertoire among jazz stalwarts Hargrove, Dr. Lonnie Smith and Igmar Thomas' Revive Big Band.
As New York Times jazz critic Nate Chinen observed recently, “There isn’t much in the modern-jazz-musician tool kit that Marc Cary hasn’t mastered, but he has a particular subspecialty in the area of groove…with a range of rhythmic strategies, from a deep-house pulse to a swinging churn.” Mr. Cary richly embodies the spirit of diverse streams that feed into the ample body of what we consider jazz history today. Funk was a term originally applied to the combustive post bop of Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Jackie McLean and Lee Morgan. Electronic jazz evolved from Jimmy Smith's organ grind and Sun Ra's moody electric keys in the '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s to Tony Williams' prescient Lifetime prefiguring of Bitches Brew big name fusion spawn--Weather Report, Headhunters, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return To Forever, et al.--to Lonnie Liston Smith's tenure with Pharaoh Sander and Alice Coltrane's Vedic organ, to Doug Carn's sublime recasting of Coltrane and Blue Note classics with wife Jean; Norman Connors' bold casting of Pharaoh, Phyllis Hyman, Gary Bartz and McCoy Tyner on late '70s Soul singles.
Now we have the current day collaborations between hallucinogenic hip hop producer Flying Lotus with Herbie Hancock and Lotus' uncle Ravi Coltrane. That high-voltage jazz tradition is as core to the contemporary jazz esthetic as big-band swing and bop and its varied dialects. That tradition's vernacular is explosively and expobedient-ly deployed in Cary's Rhodes Ahead series. Volume 1 saw keyboardist Cary receive kudos from the jazz press for artfully recombinating fleet jazz pianistics and propulsive/convulsive rhythms from the realms of drum and bass, Indian ragas and Malian griot music.
To the electronic jazz tradition Cary noticeably brings his own lyricism, warmth and warp-speed chops. The familial use of longtime musical comrade Sameer Gupta's tabla, Terreon Gully’s drums and bassist Tarus Mateen's bedrock low-end support system insures the indelible and indispensable presence of what Dr. Funkenstein once identified as ''the preservation of the motion of hip.'' The tradition of a supple and virile Black futurism is abundantly evident.
He remains one of New York’s best jazz pianists, and as a leading improviser, now heads up the jazz improvisation classes at Manhattan School of Music and The Juilliard School.
https://motema.com/artists/marc-cary/
RELEASES
BIO
MARC CARY’s NEW ALBUM, RHODES AHEAD VOL. 2 SET TO ARRIVE
MARCH 17, 2015, ON MOTÉMA MUSIC
DOWNBEAT MAGAZINE’s 2014 CRITICS POLL RISING STAR-KEYBOARDIST REVISITS ELECTRIC/ECLECTIC CONCEPT OF HIS ACCLAIMED ORIGINAL 1999 ALBUM, RHODES AHEAD VOL. 1
GRAMMY®-NOMINATED COMPOSER, ARRANGER, PRODUCER BRINGS DRUM N’ BASS, JAZZ, FUNK, ETHNIC, ‘GO-GO’, AND HIP-HOP INFLUENCES INTO THE MIX FOR RHODES AHEAD VOL. 2
“[Cary] creates a massive, resonant sound from the keys, unleashing complex, grooving explorations that spiral further upward with each successive phrase.”
– Jeff Potter, DownBeat
Jazz innovator Marc Cary, voted Rising Star-Keyboardist in this year’s 62nd Annual DownBeat Critics Poll, updates one of the most adventurous concepts of his career with the release of Rhodes Ahead Vol. 2 on March 17, 2015, on Motéma Music.
The upcoming album is the long-awaited follow-up to Rhodes Ahead Vol. 1, Cary’s breakthrough of 1999 (with its sly allusion to the ubiquitous Fender Rhodes electric piano), in which the former drummer and trumpeter incorporated elements of drum n’ bass, electronic funk and R&B, house, Afro-Cuban, ethnic, and the ‘go-go’ music of his teenage bands in Washington, DC. The result was a savvy, exotic mix that crossed rhythmic bridges between generations, much as his idol Miles Davis had done when he met Fillmore rock audiences head-on three decades earlier.
Rhodes Ahead Vol. 2 brings Cary’s vision forward into the heart of today’s urban-centric and digital environment. Yet two traditional Moroccan-inspired tracks, “Essaouira Walks” and “Spices and Mystics” percolate with the dense African outcroppings that devoted fans of one of Cary’s other projects, Indigenous People, have come to expect from the inventive musical explorer. To the album’s core trio of Cary (on Fender Rhodes, Access Virus, Hammond B3, Ableton Push, and programming) reuniting with Rhodes Ahead’s co-originators Terreon Gully’s drums and bassist Taurus Mateen’s bedrock low-end support system, “Spices and Mystics” adds trumpet (frequent collaborator Igmar Thomas), violin (Arun Ramamurthy), guitar (Aurelian Budynek), and percussion (Daniel Moreno).
With the exceptions of “You Can’t Stop Us Now” and pianist Harold Mabern’s “Beehive” (in which Thomas revisits the original acid jazz classic by trumpeter Lee Morgan), all of the compositions on Rhodes Ahead Vol. 2 are by Cary. Tabla player Sameer Gupta (Cary’s long time cohort from his popular Focus Trio) is co-writer of the steamy, sub-tropical “Below the Equator”; and Sharif Simmons’ recitation evokes the legacy of the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron on his original “The Alchemist,” whose verses are transcribed as the closing track of Rhodes Ahead Vol. 2.
The multi-grooved Cary’s dossier includes work with a pantheon of jazz legends, among them Dizzy Gillespie, Art Taylor, Betty Carter, Roy Hargrove, Carmen McRae, and a notable 12-year stint with Abbey Lincoln. Cary is also comfortable in electronic, ambient, and hip-hop surroundings, and has worked on high profile projects with Q-Tip and members of Wu-Tang Clan (as well as activist alternative rocker Ani DiFranco). Many of those influences were brought out on Rhodes Ahead, which contributed directly to Cary winning the Best New Artist award at the first annual Billboard/BET On Jazz Conference in Washington, DC, June 2000.
The multi-ethnic threads of Cary’s music also encompass Native American repertoire, as he explained to DownBeat’s Jeff Potter on the occasion of his Critics Poll win last summer. “I grew up in the sweat lodge,” Cary said. “We lived in Maryland – the Piscataway Indian Nation headquarters. My mother grew up fighting in the American Indian Movement – the AIM.” Back in 2004, Cary told All About Jazz interviewer Phil DiPietro that his mother was actually “a tribal chief of the Wampanoag people. A spiritual chief… Clarence-William Ponce, my great grandfather, was a Wampanoag man who was a marathon runner and swimmer… I have just as much African blood mixed with Indian blood, not to mention Irish and Cape Verdean, there’s a hell of a blend and thankfully, my mom traced it.”
Born in New York City, 1967, Cary grew up in Washington, DC in the turbulence of the 1970s and ’80s. But his was a musical household, and Cary’s life was suffused with music from every direction. He was playing drums when he started his first neighborhood band at age 12; when a better drummer showed up, Cary switched to trumpet. He was in a social rehab program for troubled teens when he auditioned for and was accepted to the prestigious Duke Ellington School of the Arts, the professional spawning ground for Dave Chappelle, Wallace Roney, Denyce Graves, and Meshell Ndegeocello, whom Cary jammed with in the school’s orchestra.
Cary’s attraction to the Fender Rhodes happened at Ellington and crystallized at a benefit concert where Don Cherry was playing with Nana Vasconcelos, and Cary was playing solo at the keyboard. A group called the Front Line Jazz Ensemble heard him and asked him to join, which became a springboard into DC’s bustling jazz and neo-soul scene. As he told DiPietro, “My biggest growth period as a jazz musician was from age 16 to 21,” and at age 21 he moved to New York City.
Within one year, in 1989, Cary had hooked up with Betty Carter, and made his first European tour as a working jazz musician. From there it was on to Roy Hargrove, where Cary’s name appeared in the credits on a succession of the trumpeter’s albums starting in 1992 (The Vibe, Of Kindred Souls, Family, RH Factor). Cary left in 1994, and his first album as a leader was issued in 1995, Cary On, featuring Hargrove as a guest, and flutist Yarborough Charles Laws, who would become a regular member of Cary’s Indigenous People band.
Today, Cary’s critically acclaimed album catalogue boasts more than a dozen separate titles under his own name, Indigenous People, his Focus Trio, and the Rhodes Ahead project, three facets of the same imaginative soul. As he told future New York Times jazz critic Nate Chinen in the Philadelphia City Paper back in 2000, “The Indigenous People band is also the Marc Cary Trio which is also Rhodes Ahead.” That first volume saw Cary receive kudos from the jazz intelligentsia for artfully combining fleet jazz pianistics and propulsive/convulsive rhythms from the realms of drum and bass, Indian ragas, and Malian griot music. In the profound words of writer, musician and producer Greg Tate, the tradition of a supple and virile Black futurism is abundantly evident on Rhodes Ahead Vol. 2.
FEATURED VIDEOS
PREVIEW THE ALBUM
Artist News
http://highbreedmusic.com/artist/marc-cary/
Starting his professional career at the tender age of 19, Marc Cary went on tour with the legendary vocalist, Betty Carter for a 6-week tour of one-nighters and never looked back. Since then he has worked tirelessly developing his own sound while also taking the time to work with some of the greatest musicians and artists to grace the stage. Marc has had the pleasure of working with artists such as Abbey Lincoln, Roy Hargrove, Erykah Badu, and Q-tip to name a few. Hailing from Washington D.C., Marc’s musical influences are an eclectic mix ranging from Bebop to Go-Go (a style native to D.C.) and classical Malian music to Hip-Hop resulting in a wholly unique and compelling sound that is all his own.
Reflections On A Dozen Years With Abbey Lincoln
Marc Cary's new album is titled For the Love of Abbey.
Marc Cary came to New York City to find and save his father. Instead, he found artists like Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln — and saved himself.
"I hadn't seen my dad in 10 years," Cary says over a recent lunch in downtown Manhattan. "He's a percussionist, but he was living another lifestyle, and I came to rescue him. He was living at the Port Authority Bus Station."
Cary was 21; he arrived with only $20 in his pocket. But he was also a talented jazz pianist. On the recommendation of a friend, he soon connected with the late Art Taylor, a venerated jazz drummer. Taylor was assembling a new incarnation of the Wailers, his own seminal jazz group.
"I called him that night, and he told me to come over immediately," Cary says. At the time, Taylor lived a block away in Harlem. When Cary arrived, Abbey Lincoln was there; she lived next door. "[Lincoln] checked me out, gave me a lot of encouragement and told me that one day we'll play together."
Cary's latest album, For the Love of Abbey, is his first solo piano recording. It honors his 12-year tenure with the late jazz vocalist, as well as her prowess for writing emotionally arresting lyrics. But he also pays homage to all those who shaped him, notably his family.
Today, his father is a barber. "When I got out of touch with him, I just let my locks grow," says Cary, who wears dreadlocks. "I never let anybody cut my hair but my dad."
Embracing A Heritage
Born in New York City, Cary was raised between Providence, R.I., and Washington, D.C. Cary's mother, Penny Gamble-Williams, is a cellist. Mae York Smith, his great-grandmother, was not only a classical vocalist and concert pianist for silent movies, but also practiced four-handed piano alongside pianist Eubie Blake. And his grandfather, Otis Gamble, was the first cousin of trumpeter Cootie Williams, best known for his work with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
Marc Cary performs "Throw It Away," by Abbey Lincoln:
Marc
Cary showcases music from his Abbey Lincoln tribute album, "For the
Love of Abbey", at a solo concert at the Yamaha Room in Manhattan.
Like his father, Cary played drums as a teenager, working in a go-go band. But at the time, Cary couldn't fully embrace his musical lineage. His personal life was in disarray, and when he was 15, his parents entered him into a rehabilitation program called RAP, Inc., based in D.C.
"I had a whole other life before music," he says. "I was like most kids these days and I had some problems with the law. To keep me from going to jail, they sent me to this program."
RAP brought him into contact with a gifted musician named Daniel Whitt — a man who could listen to a symphony and transcribe the score as it played. "He was [also] an incredible pianist who took his time to show me some very important things about the piano that I didn't know," Cary says. It marked the first time in his life when he imagined himself as a jazz musician.
Betty And Abbey
Years later, Cary got the gig with Art Taylor's Wailers. That brought him into contact with the late jazz vocalist Betty Carter, who was known for her work with emerging jazz musicians. Cary's name came up frequently, and she finally agreed to have him audition for her band. "By the end of the audition, she was asking me if I had my passport," Cary says.
Carter not only helped Cary obtain a passport, but also bought him a suit and brought him on the road for the next six weeks, traveling to a different city every day. When Cary reached the end of his two-and-a-half-year term with Carter, she told him that he was ready to play with the guys now. "She gave me a little envelope, put it in my vest pocket, smacked me on my ass and told me to get on about my business," he says. "Betty's the one who set me up properly as far as the etiquette of being a musician."
Cary's time with Carter also prepared him for working with another legend of jazz singing: Abbey Lincoln. He was reunited with Lincoln while performing at the memorial service for pianist Don Pullen, fulfilling the prophecy she made years ago in Art Taylor's apartment. He worked with Lincoln for a dozen years.
Cary says one of the most important lessons that he learned from Lincoln was to be "live" and in the moment. "There would be some nights when I would let the emotions kind of run me," he says. "I would try to feel each word and put a chord in that went with the emotion." Lincoln's advice was a great relief: It encouraged him to be more present and instinctual musically. "It's just a simple song," Lincoln would say to him. "I'm delivering the lyric, so just give me the thing that I need. Don't be too emotional. Just be there."
He also credits both Carter and Lincoln for giving him the sensitivity that he needed to approach this music. "A lot of times you won't get that from instrumentalists, because they're not dealing with lyric," Cary says. "Both Betty and Abbey taught me everything about how to accompany a vocalist and how to express myself as a soloist."
People In Me
For the Love of Abbey also proved as something of a cathartic release from the loss of the many musicians who have inspired Cary. Lincoln herself died in 2010 at age 80.
Prior to her death, Lincoln was living in a hospice. Due to an impasse on musician visits, it had been a year and a half before Cary was allowed to see her.
"When I walked in the room, I smiled at her," he says. "Abbey said, 'Marc, we got a gig tonight!' I had to tell her that I left my clothes at home and I'll have to go home and get them." Lincoln had not remembered anyone in months. "The fact that she remembered who I was lets me know that I made an impact on her that even dementia couldn't take away."
One of Lincoln's unfulfilled dreams was to create a physical place for musicians called Moseka House. (She was given the name Aminata Moseka during a ceremony in Africa as a guest of the late Miriam Makeba.) "Almost like a monastery, a place where [musicians] can go and be safe; where they can speak about things that they think about," Cary said.
Moseka House had only existed for Lincoln in her mind. Lately, Cary has been thinking about making Moseka House into a reality. "Because she could realize it in her head," he says, "it lives."
https://caryout.bandcamp.com/album/blackanomics
Owed To Mayor Barry 02:42
Blackhouse 03:19
The Emery Park Socket 04:43
Barry Farm 04:39
Sober Tones- featuring MC Naba and Mc Mello 04:27
Feel featuring Ron Grant 05:00
Baltimore featuring Alison Crockett 04:33
U Street Lights 05:40
Dollar Black 05:24
It's Right There featuring Donnell Floyd 04:36
Styles 04:08
About
It’s go-go music’s enduring legacy that acclaimed pianist, keyboardist, composer, and bandleader Marc Cary proudly toasts on Blackanomics. Since its emergence in the mid’60s, the genre has withstood various other popular black-American music trends, the crack-cocaine epidemic of the ’80s and ’90s, and more recently, the vicious gentrification in Washington, D.C.
As a jazz artist, Cary is both a torchbearer and a fire starter. From playing with titans such as Art Taylor, Clifford Jordan, Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln, and Dizzy Gillespie, he’s absorbed expansive jazz acumen. Beginning in the mid-’90s, when he started his solo career, he also collaborated with a galaxy of musical talent that includes jazz contemporaries such as Roy Hargrove and Stefon Harris; deep house heavyweights such as Ron Trent, Joe Clausell, and Little Louie Vega; and hip-hop royalty such as rapper Q-Tip. Cary deftly reconciles those idioms and genres into a singular, identifiable voice. He attributes part of his original voice to his involvement with go-go music while growing in Chocolate City.
“Go-go is in my sound; it’s the music that got me into jazz,” Cary explains before mentioning that he formed his first go-go band, High Integrity, when he was 14-years-old. He recalls the band’s humble beginning as the members started out playing on pan cans and buckets instead of conventional percussion. “Then we got donations from different churches,” he explains. “As we became more proficient on our buckets and cans, we modulated to timbales and roto-toms, congas, and drums, keyboards, and horns. It just started building into a real group.”
High Integrity won many battle-of-the-bands throughout Washington, D.C. After mid-school, Cary enrolled at the District’s famed Duke Ellington School of the Arts, which led to him performing in the Dizzy Gillespie Youth Orchestra. After that, he studied with veteran pianist and composer Walter Davis and trombonist Calvin Jones while attending the University of the District of Columbia. After two years in college, he moved to New York in 1988.
Within Cary’s fascinating discography, go-go’s polyrhythmic pulse is most noticeable on his three albums with his Indigenous People ensemble – Unite, Captured Live in Brazil, and N.G.G.R. Please. On Blackanomics, however, Cary recruits for the first time some of the District’s most respected go-go musicians to deliver a 21st-century masterpiece. The rhythm section includes percussionist Go-Go Mickey Freeman, and drummers Domo Youngman Lee, Kenny Kwick, Duane “Poo” Payne, and Russell Carter – all established go-go musicians. Blackanomics features a phalanx of go-go vocalists too – MC Mello, Donnell Floyd, MC Naba Napalm, NYC open mic legend Ron Grant, and DC’s Alison Crockettand Dennis Jeter.
“I wanted some of the original go-go players on this album,” Cary says. “I look at all the other Indigenous People albums as practice sessions for this one. I’ve always wanted these musicians on my records. But I didn’t have any of these musicians in my groups. I also wanted to present some original compositions. You don’t get too many original compositions in go-go music. Go-go bands do a lot of covers.”
The other musicians on the album are organist Matthew Whittaker; bassists Nate Jones, Tarus Mateen, and Rahsaan Carter; guitarists Flavio Silva, Teddy Crockett, and Ahmad Cary; singer Alison Crockett; and the Chops horn section. In addition to keyboards, Cary joins the percussion section by playing cowbell and timbales.
Blackanomics is not just an homage to Cary’s childhood soundtrack, it’s a love letter to the culture’s community-based economy that helped nurture many young talented musicians, producers, and sound engineers. “Go-go performances kept the dollar circulating within communities for well over two weeks after certain concerts. That empowered a lot of musicians to have to not leave D.C. in search of work,” Cary says.
Cary credits former Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry – who served four terms (1979-1991 and 1995-1999) – for facilitating the infrastructure for go-go music and culture to flourish, particularly through Barry’s Summer Youth Employment program, his Modern Music program, and his creation of various recreational centers throughout the city. “He enabled us to travel around the city on a city-funded stage that was pulled by a truck,” Cary recalls. “We would pull up in different neighborhoods and perform. That was just part of the summer Modern Music program. Throughout the year, pretty much every five or six nights a week, you could find many go-go performances in all four quadrants in D.C.”
Cary gives shout outs to a few of D.C. notable neighborhoods. For the city’s iconic U Street entertainment district – once referred as Black Broadway because it contained so many venues such as the Howard Theatre, the Lincoln Theatre, and Bohemian Caverns, where some of the nation’s top black Americans artists performed – he offers the haunting “U Street Lights.” There’s also the swaggering “The Emery Park Socket” and the snazzy horn-filled “Barry Farms.”
Cary explains that Emery Park – located in the District’s northwest quadrant near Georgia Avenue – was the epicenter for free live, outdoor performances during his teen years. “D.C. celebrated all kinds of music, but go-go was always on the set,” he recalls. “[The concert presenters] brought a lot of different bands to travel to D.C. The concert presenters paired those bands with go-go bands. There were a lot of go-go bands in that area of the city too – the Peacemakers, the Busey Brothers, and Backyard. Those outside events were beautiful because you could move around. The sound system was cranking. And you could hear that music from miles away, which brought people to the set. I used to run four miles to get up there.”
As for Barry Farms – located in the District’s southeast quadrant across the Anacostia River – Cary goes back to Mayor Barry, who revitalized the once impoverished community by building a recreational center, affordable housing, and community-based job opportunities. It was there at Barry Farm that the sensational go-go combo, Junk Yard Band, formed in the early-’80s. “Marion Barry provided a big touch-up for the community,” Cary says. “After the 1968 riots in the aftermath of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, many things needed to be rebuilt. Communities needed to grow. And Marion Barry represented the communities. Barry Farms was very significant in that way.”
Cary even toasts Charm City – sometimes considered D.C.’s twin city – with the reggae-tinged “Baltimore,” which features Alison Crockett singing lead. Cary recorded the song right after the 2015 tragic death of Freddie Gray at the hands of the Baltimore Police Department, which ignited major protests throughout that city. “I cried when I saw what happened to Freddie Gray,” Cary says. “Watching how he died just broke my heart. So, I really wanted to do something that gave recognition to the people of Baltimore and their struggles.”
Blackanomics contains more vocal-centric gems – the simmering “Sober Tones,” featuring MC Naba and MC Mello, and the sensual ballad “Feel,” showcasing Ron Grant’s impassioned baritone lead vocals. And of course, no go-go album would be complete with some carefree party jams. And Cary delivers those too with the infectious “It’s Right Here” and the glimmering “Styles.”
“I want people to understand the symbiotic relationship between jazz and go-go music,” Cary says. “Both allow freedom to express yourself. Both involve antiphonic communication and crowd participation. And you can’t get away with copying somebody else’s style in neither jazz nor go-go music. In both musics, it takes time to develop your own voice. And because copying someone’s style is a big “no-no” in go-go music, we’ve created so many unique versions of go-go within a community that’s only 12 square miles.”
John Murph is a Washington, D.C.-based music journalist and DJ. He’s written regularly for TIDAL, JazzTimes, Down Beat, JazzWise, NPR Music, The Root, and Washington City Paper.
credits
license
https://soundcloud.com/marccary
https://www.juilliard.edu/music-preparatory-division/faculty/cary-marc
Marc Cary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Cary
Marc Cary
Marc Cary (born January 29, 1967)[1] is a post bop jazz pianist based out of New York City.[2] Cary has played and recorded with several well-known musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie, Betty Carter, Roy Hargrove, Arthur Taylor, Abbey Lincoln, Carlos Garnett, Erykah Badu, Meshell Ndegeocello, Stefon Harris, Lauryn Hill, Ani DiFranco, Jackie McLean, Q-Tip and Carmen McRae.
Cary grew up playing on the go-go music scene in Washington, D.C. He eventually moved to New York City, and it was through his work with Abbey Lincoln that broad audiences were first introduced to his rhythmic style, which draws on the influence of Randy Weston and McCoy Tyner.[3]
As sideman
With David Murray
- Be My Monster Love (Motéma, 2013)
Honors and awards
- Best New Jazz Artist Award 2000—Billboard/BET
- Grammy Nominations for work with Roy Hargrove, Betty Carter, Stefon Harris & Abbey Lincoln
- One of Downbeat Magazine's "25 for the future of Jazz!"
- Nammy Nomination 2003
- Downbeat, "Rising Star: Keyboard," 2014
Notes
- Russonello, Giovanni. "Photos | Marc Cary at Bohemian Caverns: Believing in the groove (and out)". CapitalBop. Retrieved 10 May 2012. http://www.capitalbop.com/2011/04/26/photos-marc-cary-at-bohemian-caverns-believing-in-the-groove/
Marc Cary
MUSICIAN, COMPOSER, PRODUCER, EDUCATOR
“The main thing is the intention behind what you say musically; [that’s] the beauty. If you’re thinking something and you hit that note, the resonance of what you’re thinking actually goes through that note. It’s like a telephone frequency carrying your voice--literally. That’s the power.” – Marc Cary
In a jazz world brimming with brilliant and adventurous pianists, Marc Cary stands apart by way of pedigree and design as one of New York’s best jazz pianists. None of his prestigious peer group ever set the groove behind the drums in Washington DC go-go bands nor are any others graduates of both Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln's daunting bandstand academies. Cary hails from a musically literate family--his mother is a cellist; his great grandmother was an ivory-tickler in silent movie houses back in that day who also rocked barrelhouse and stride duets with Eubie Blake. Ellington trumpeter Cootie Williams was a cousin of Cary's grandfather.
While New York City is Cary's birthplace he was raised between Providence RI and the nation's capital. The player-composer and improviser is a graduate of DC's world-renowned Duke Ellington School For The Arts, also the professional spawning ground for Dave Chappelle, Wallace Roney, Denyce Graves and Meshell Ndegeocello whom Cary jammed with in the school's orchestra.
Cary's Ellington education prepared him to take on the daunting Big Apple at the ripe age of 21. Besides Carter and Lincoln, the next decade of his life found him sharing stages and cultivating craft with Dizzy Gillespie, Arthur Taylor, Carlos Garnett, Jackie McLean, Wynton Marsalis and one more goddess-figure among jazz vocalists, Carmen McRae. His comfort with women bandleaders also made him a favorite accompanist among other modern chanteuses, notably Ndegeocello, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill and Ani Di Franco.
The pianist's debut recording as a leader was released in 1995. Since then Cary's released a baker's dozen albums of music under his direction--three of those within the past two years for Motéma. Devoted fans know Cary's ensemble profile has three distinct and mesmerizing faces, revered among critics alike with this year’s DownBeat Critics Poll ‘Rising Star – Keyboardist ’ honor: his Focus Trio (well-documented live on his 2013 Motéma side Four Directions); and his pan-ethnic collective Indigenous Peoples, which merges poetic rhyme flow, soulful chanting and a sense of groove at home in the stellar realms of'interplanetary funkmanship.' (Cary's homegrown connection to his Native American heritage, instilled by his Wampanoag mom, is also a percussive factor. In the group's recent Cosmic Indigenous incarnation the deep web of continental African ties is woven tighter by the electric presence of Malian vocalist Awa Sangho.)
Then there is Cary's Rhodes Ahead series--which his current Motéma recording indexes as Volume 2--the first of which on Jazzateria earned him the debut annual Billboard/BET ''Best New Jazz Artist'' award in 2000. What both volumes put on exhibit front and center is Cary's spectacular ability as a keyboardist and improviser to interweave electronic textures into a fast-moving improvisational context, sacrificing none of his musical complexity in the bargain.
Cary was no stranger to electronic tinkering in his youth. A neighbor down the road owned a repair shop. Through time spent there soldering deconstructing gadgets Cary became what he describes as a 'self-taught electrician.' This early hands-on training made him proficient at re-wiring and re-programming some of his own sound gear later on. About electronic sound in general he has this to say: ''From the first time (and last) I stuck my finger in the wall socket, I have had a thirst for understanding electricity. Using analogue synthesizers and effects pedals on the Fender Rhodes, I learned how to manipulate electricity and create musical sounds. I became fascinated with how to build, transform and manipulate synthesizers and other electronic gear. From that fascination, I began to build and transform these instruments into more useful tools for me. I learned how to create everything from microphones to midi controllers, and manipulate household electronics to become musical tools. All of this fascination has worked its way deep into my musical sound, even my acoustic works.''
Cary remains one of the progenitors of contemporary jazz, evident in his influence on peers. Live gigs with vibraphonist Stefon Harris and bandmate Casey Benjamin began the genesis of Robert Glasper’s recording Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and Cary's record "Taiwa" from Focus in 2006 evolved into "For You" on Glasper's Double Booked and Harris' Urbanus. Cary collaborator Roy Hargrove exalted him with "Caryisms" on 1992's The Vibe, an album whose title track is one of two Cary originals including "Running Out of Time"--now part of the lexicon of live repertoire among jazz stalwarts Hargrove, Dr. Lonnie Smith and Igmar Thomas' Revive Big Band.
As New York Times jazz critic Nate Chinen observed recently, “There isn’t much in the modern-jazz-musician tool kit that Marc Cary hasn’t mastered, but he has a particular subspecialty in the area of groove…with a range of rhythmic strategies, from a deep-house pulse to a swinging churn.” Mr. Cary richly embodies the spirit of diverse streams that feed into the ample body of what we consider jazz history today. Funk was a term originally applied to the combustive post bop of Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Jackie McLean and Lee Morgan. Electronic jazz evolved from Jimmy Smith's organ grind and Sun Ra's moody electric keys in the '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s to Tony Williams' prescient Lifetime prefiguring of Bitches Brew big name fusion spawn--Weather Report, Headhunters, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return To Forever, et al.--to Lonnie Liston Smith's tenure with Pharaoh Sander and Alice Coltrane's Vedic organ, to Doug Carn's sublime recasting of Coltrane and Blue Note classics with wife Jean; Norman Connors' bold casting of Pharaoh, Phyllis Hyman, Gary Bartz and McCoy Tyner on late '70s Soul singles.
Now we have the current day collaborations between hallucinogenic hip hop producer Flying Lotus with Herbie Hancock and Lotus' uncle Ravi Coltrane. That high-voltage jazz tradition is as core to the contemporary jazz esthetic as big-band swing and bop and its varied dialects. That tradition's vernacular is explosively and expobedient-ly deployed in Cary's Rhodes Ahead series. Volume 1 saw keyboardist Cary receive kudos from the jazz press for artfully recombinating fleet jazz pianistics and propulsive/convulsive rhythms from the realms of drum and bass, Indian ragas and Malian griot music.
To the electronic jazz tradition Cary noticeably brings his own lyricism, warmth and warp-speed chops. The familial use of longtime musical comrade Sameer Gupta's tabla, Terreon Gully’s drums and bassist Tarus Mateen's bedrock low-end support system insures the indelible and indispensable presence of what Dr. Funkenstein once identified as ''the preservation of the motion of hip.'' The tradition of a supple and virile Black futurism is abundantly evident.
He remains one of New York’s best jazz pianists, and as a leading improviser, now heads up the jazz improvisation classes at Manhattan School of Music and The Juilliard School.
Marc Cary - JazzAhead 2014 (Live)
Marc Cary: Directions in Modal Music
Marc Cary Focus Trio - Taiwa
Marc Cary Focus Trio - Pori Jazz Festival
Marc Cary's Indigenous People Captured Live@ The Kennedy Center
Dreamlike. Featuring Pura Fé
Down The Rhodes Webisode: Marc Cary
Marc Cary - Focus Trio
Marc Cary & Ben Williams
Marc Cary - Wholly Earth (For The Love Of Abbey)
