Last month I participated in a unique presentation of Suite for Ma Dukes, Miguel-Agtwood Ferguson’s amazing orchestral reinventions of music by J Dilla. Today the piece’s original 2009 performance is released on DVD along with two other concerts featuring Brazilian legend Arthur Verocai and Ethiopian jazz great Mulatu Astatke. The Timeless shows were organized and filmed by LA-based Mochilla, with the goal of building bridges between influential composer/arrangers and the contemporary musicians who employ and build on their work.
The crew at Mochilla recently sent along a set of Timeless promos and I’ve been totally immersed in them since. A few initial responses, particularly to Miguel’s peerless arrangements of J Dilla:
- Very few orchestral arrangements are as good as these, and I perform lots of orchestral arrangements.
- I really appreciate the way these super-skilled orchestral musicians are so engaged with [and visibly into] what they’re playing.
- Suite for Ma Dukes is further proof of the importance of Dilla’s contribution to hip hop and contemporary music in general.
Have a listen to Jealousy as performed by the Ma Dukes orchestra with Karriem Riggins on set: [mp3]
So that you can get a better sense for Miguel’s achievement in the transformation of musical material, here is Dilla’s original from Fantastic Vol. 2: [mp3]
To see some of the video check out Mochilla’s collection of previews from Timeless. And do not sleep on picking up this unique and outstanding box set – the current release is limited to just 4000 numbered copies.
From Michael Morain’s Des Moines Register preview of tomorrow’s WCFSO concert:
Weinberger pointed out that the hip-hop tradition of borrowing, or sampling, ideas from other artists isn’t so different from what happened in the era of Beethoven or Brahms, and that’s what he finds so interesting.
‘I’m totally fascinated with influence in the artistic process, with the concept of creating sound from other sounds.’
The following is an excerpt from my interview with Joy Yoon at The Sounds of VTech about tomorrow night’s WCFSO concert. Follow the link or click the photo below for the full article and a cool slideshow of us in rehearsal.
People are listening, and those who can try to the best of their ability to find a way to share. This is what this show represents to me, sharing something new that would have been overlooked. I emailed Jason Weinberger to find out how he first came to discover the music of Dilla.
I’ve been listening to Dilla since the beginning, before I even knew who he really was. I think I first became more directly aware of his story and persona through his work in the 90s with A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul and Pharcyde, and from there my interest just grew with each new project. If I had to pick my absolute favorite Dilla records I’d probably go with Donuts and Jaylib, though I could easily spend days on end listening to his beats from the Slum Village Fantastic albums and Common’s Like Water for Chocolate. J.Rocc’s Thank You Jay Dee mixes are always close at hand too.
When did you first discover Suite for Ma Dukes?
I heard Suite for Ma Dukes when it first came out a year ago, and my first thought was that I needed to find a way to perform Miguel’s stunning reinventions of Dilla’s music. I’m always looking for ways to open up the traditional orchestra experience to new things anyway, so this seemed very natural. I looked around for Miguel on the web, found him on Facebook, and sent him a message to see if we could talk about getting these pieces in front of one of the orchestras with which I work. A few months later we met up in LA (where I’m from and where my family still lives) and connected over Dilla, Flying Lotus and Lutoslawski. The rest is history.
And about this upcoming Saturday…
I think one of the most special things about this weekend’s performance at the WCFSO - aside from experiencing the sheer beauty of Miguel’s orchestrations - will be the opportunity to appreciate Dilla’s achievements alongside those of other prominent African American composers who preceded him. To me it seems totally organic to hear Dilla alongside Duke Ellington and William Grant Still, and I think it’s a great way for audiences who may not be familiar with his work to get to know him.
Miguel Atwood-Ferguson is a multi-talented instrumentalist and composer from Los Angeles and the man responsible for Suite for Ma Dukes, the orchestral arrangements of J Dilla’s music we’ll be performing this weekend at the WCFSO. Did I mention he tears it up on the viola, too?
This is Miguel’s own arrangement for the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble of Rene Costy’s Scrabble, a tune that was sampled by Dilla. The video is by Mochilla, about whom I’ve posted here before. B+ and Coleman of Mochilla will be in Iowa this weekend to document our performances of Miguel’s Dilla arrangements; more on that soon.
Here is my earlier post about Suite for Ma Dukes, with links to information about the studio recordings and a history of the project along with my own mix of Nag Champa.
Here are the musical artists I heard most in 2009, a group dominated by very good [and generally under-appreciated] independent hip hop from around the world:
And for those of you wondering why there’s no symphonic music here: I keep my classically-oriented mp3 library separate from the rest of my collection, so that listening is not reflected in my Last.fm profile. If I can find some extra time this week I’ll post a list of the orchestral recordings that caught my ear this past year.
J Dilla [James Yancey, 1974-2006] was and remains one of the most important voices in independent hip hop. Earlier this month, just days before the third anniversary of his death from a rare blood disease, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson and Carlos Nino released four orchestral arrangements of his music under the title Suite for Ma Dukes. Read more about the project at Stones Throw. [Image by Grace Oh]
I hope to have a chance to perform Dilla’s music sometime soon. In the meantime here’s my own mix of Nag Champa, bringing together Atwood-Ferguson’s studio orchestra version and the chorus from the original track.
J Dilla – Nag Champa Orchestral Mix – Download from Miguel Atwood-Ferguson & Carlos Nino – Suite for Ma Dukes & Common – Like Water For Chocolate
