Jazz poetry is alive and well in Brockley. To prove it, Tony Kirwood reviews Jazz Circus's promising - albeit hit and miss - debut record.
I clicked Jazz Circus’s new CD What Jazz Can Do (For Your Life) into my player with a slight feeling of dread. The last time I heard jazz poetry was in a cellar in the 1970s as a bearded man repeated the same word over a flat saxophone until I had to dash out for an aspirin.
No medication was needed to listen to this Brockley-based quartet, who kick up a storm while frontman Jazzman John Clarke spits out the words with gusto.
Jimmy Beckley’s horn playing has furious drive and lots of colour, while guitarist Billy Jenkins adds salt to the stew with his spiky, jabbing phrasing. Rhythm section Charlie Hart and Mel Wright whip everything forward relentlessly.
The poetry is frenetic and words are spilt like a footballer’s lager. John Clarke’s lyrics are impressionistic, building verbal pictures rather than developing a line of thought. He develops a nice sense of call and response with the musicians. But somehow my early doubts kept coming back.
There simply aren’t enough surprises in the poems. Five out of the seven are about how wonderful Jazz is. A fine feeling but, well, I’m a convert, just like nearly everyone who will listen to this. The unchallenging subject matter leads Clarke to fall back on lazy lines like “Choose jazz as your partner to jazz up your life”.
The poetry tends to be formless. Things jog along nicely but without a sense of direction. Beckley and Jenkins are clearly capable of delivering blistering solos, but here seem constrained to sit behind the lyrics. And, while Clarke’s energy is admirable, his voice is rather harsh and strident.
His most successful track is the more personal ode “Bluebird”, which conveys a sense of loss and longing, with some inventive abstract imagery: “I’m like a bluebird in the shores of time/Like the lucky side of a dime”. The backing is haunting and discordant, the musicians showing their versatility with Charlie Hart picking up a violin and Jimmy Beckley his clarinet.
However, any attempt to wrest spoken word music from the confines of hip hop should be applauded. It’s great to have jazz musicians of this quality in south London. Who knows - Brockley could yet become the new Memphis.
Jazz Circus will play at the Telegraph Hill Festival, Narthex Hall, Kitto Road, New Cross on March 14. £8/£4.
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