The best improvised music in the Black American Tradition offers something for the head, heart and feet. A pair of concerts this weekend at BOP STOP offer a potent distillation of how much music can move us.
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In 1968, Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes took the unprecedented action of asking the Department of Housing and Urban Development to stop the construction of the so-called Clark Freeway. It was estimated that construction of the highway to connect I-271 with I-490 would sever existing neighborhoods and displace 20,000 Clevelanders, many of them Black residents of the East Side.
Stokes succeeded and the Clark Freeway was never built, but other cities were not so lucky. One of them was Nashville, where the construction of I-40 and the devastation it caused in the city’s Black neighborhoods became the inspiration for, Indivisible, a stirring musical presentation by the duo project Concurrence that will play at BOP STOP Sunday joined by Cleveland drummer Aaron Smith.
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When you think of all the challenges that have faced independent music venues for the past ten years, industry consolidation, soaring rents and the rise of streaming entertainment—then add the COVID-19 shutdown–it’s a miracle that there are any places left to hear live music. The jazz scene, which has lived on the economic knife’s edge for decades, was hit hard. Yet a few places survived, and that’s something to celebrate.
Welcome to BOP STOP, the little engine that could and the beating heart of Cleveland’s scene. This week the club marks its tenth anniversary in its third incarnation as part of the Music Settlement in Hingetown. There it cultivates a training ground for young musicians, brings the world’s most notable artists to northeast Ohio’s and connects our most notable artists to the world. Hell yeah that’s worth celebrating.
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Friendly experiencers,
Have the hints of summer earlier this week stirred you to come out of hibernation? If so, you’ve picked a good week to do so with a variety of musical styles to choose from. Your sense of tradition will be sated by a reappraisal of a beloved musical chestnut while a sense of adventure will rewarded by a paint-peeling excursion to the outer reaches by a young saxophone sensation. Get ready for the ride and remember to tip your servers.
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In the midst of a recording session with his New York big band, Columbus-born, Brooklyn-based trombonist, composer and arranger Sam Blakeslee noticed an interesting dynamic among the players.
“On the first take everyone in the band was like, ‘Who are these people? Why are they playing like this, because it just sounds so different? Why haven’t I heard stuff like this before?’” Blakeslee’s answer: “Because it’s Cleveland.”
“These people,” saxophonists Chris Coles and Nathan-Paul Davis, and the cream of Northeast Ohio’s jazz community, will join Blakeslee on the stage of BLU Jazz+ this weekend for a homecoming so packed with music that it will take two nights to play it all.
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