Duality

August 14, 2015
Duality
Damani Phillips

Can Jazz and Hip Hop Co-Exist?

My name is Dr. Damani Phillips, and I am jazz saxophonist from Pontiac, MI that currently lives and teaches in Iowa. If you haven't noticed, the popularity of jazz - particularly with young people - has been declining for decades now. Jazz is beautiful and complex music, and I feel fortunate to be able to play and teach it for a living. However, this problem with jazz turning into a fringe style that is unwelcoming to "outsiders" is a real problem, and if it is not addressed, we will end up playing ourselves into cultural and artistic irrelevance. We as practitioners DO have a say in our current dilemma, but we must be willing to make some adjustments in how we go about doing things musically if we are going to bring about change. I'm not alone in raising this issue, but I made the decision to stop just talking about it and try to (in some small way) do something about it! 

In thinking about ways to combat the trend stated above, I had the idea of using hip hop as the "bridge" to get young people to give jazz a fair shake. The challenge, of course, is finding a way to balance desires to make the music welcoming to new listeners, while at the same time, upholding my personal standards of musical substance and integrity. So began the idea of "Duality" - a double album which contains one disc of varying flavors of traditional jazz and a second disc of jazz on equal footing with hip hop. The idea is to attract younger/less experienced listeners with the familiar sounds and grooves on the hip hop disc while pairing that music with an album of quality straight-ahead jazz. Coincidentally, that road goes both ways in that the more seasoned listeners that are drawn to the jazz disc will have the opportunity to expose themselves to hip hop flavored with a musical sensibility that better resonates with their existing musical tastes. The overall goal: to try to get folks excited about jazz again, to show them a potential new direction for the music, and to dispel common myths that quality jazz simply isn't applicable to the sensibilities/tastes of everyday people. Striking the balance mentioned above is easily my most challenging artistic undertaking to date - but I think I may have pulled it off!