New Heritage, New Standard?
Telemakus - The New Heritage
1 sentence review:
multi-genre expression of jazz, hip hop, r&b, soul with interspersed heavy compression effects, odd meters, and lush production textures
I am a fan of programmatic music, a la Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, and often I will title my own projects in a way that aims to tell a story or color the perception of the music, especially if it’s instrumental music. I will read into other’s song and album titles in order to enrich the experience of listening. Art is interpreted by the perceiver, and I believe that even when an artists means something specific, it can take a different shape or meaning depending on who is receiving the art. Allow me to provide some thoughts on this album thusly.
The New Heritage sounds like a lot of things: Brazil, soul, Detroit, hip hop, RH Factor, jazz, Chicago, sampled beats, Weather Report. In this way Telemakus is presenting a “new heritage” of influence, history, and lineage. This heritage is just one of many, and artists like Roy Hargrove, Robert Glasper, D’Angelo, Terrace Martin, as well as countless of Telemakus’ contemporaries, have been exploring and expressing through a common shared language and history of music and culture for the last several decades.
I can’t help make the connection to Herbie Hancock’s album “New Standards”, in which Herbie takes popular songs of the late 20th century and transforms them in a similar way to how jazz musicians took popular songs from the early 20th century and made them their own.
These cultural practices give dimension to art. Telemakus presents original music to us through this new heritage of music influenced by the global world, the entire 20th century, and the developments of Black American Music. This includes taking advantage of technological improvements allowing artists to produce themselves, opening doors to virtually any sound they want to emulate or evoke.
Is this what Telemakus meant by The New Heritage? I’m not sure, and the album is great so it also doesn’t really matter to me.
Happy Listening!
