Lakecia Benjamin wows at Jazz St. Louis

In 2002, as a grad student at Penn State, I took a course on free jazz under Professors Paul Youngquist and William J. Harris. That's when I really began to think about and listen to the music in more serious ways and started trying to write on what I was hearing, experiencing.   

I was taken back to some of those early moments of intellectual growth last night at the Jazz St. Louis when I bore witness to this extraordinary force of nature that goes by the name Lakecia Benjamin. Extraordinarily talented, boundlessly energetic, and vibrantly engaging. 

She was joined by her band that included Oscar Perez (piano), Elias Bailey (bass), Dorian Phelps (drums). The whole group was phenomenal. Benjamin moved through several pieces, moving at a swift pace for most of the show. 

A couple of highlights for me: for one, she spent time in at least two tunes doing a kind of dual solo, back-and-forth with Phelps. She said he's only being playing with her band since October, but it felt like they've been playing together for many years. They were incredibly in sync. 

She was blurting out all kinds of sounds, bits and pieces, and he's matching her energy and pace. I'm still searching for the words, but what they were doing was outstanding. 

She also paid tribute to the one and only John Coltrane by offering her own rendition of "My Favorite Things." Listen, it was a serious free jazz moment, because she took that familiar song apart, changed it into something else, and even, unbelievably incorporated the spiritual "Wade in the Water" into the mix. What the...? Nah, this was next level, old time spiritual and new music. 

Back in the day, Amiri Baraka explained that "Coltrane seeks with each new onslaught to completely destroy the popular song." Elsewhere, Baraka said that "Trane is a mature swan whose wing span was a whole new world. But he also showed us how to murder the popular song. To do away with Western forms." 

Those hard terms "destroy" and "murder" were likely related to the climate of the 1960s, and aren't as appropriate for now. But we do need something to talk about the incredible arrangement/re-arrangement that Benjamin was putting on this popular song.   

Later, extending the blend of spirituals and Black church music aesthetics into jazz, Benjamin and Perez did a rendition of "Amazing Grace." Similar to what Trane did with "My Favorite Things," Black folks have, for more than two centuries, made "Amazing Grace" our own. Benjamin reminded us of that with her playing. 

I've caught a few different jazz shows this year already, and I'm now going to keep the memory of this one with Benjamin in my mind for a while.  

Related:

• Amiri Baraka on those Albert Ayler "ruins" and "rumors"