The young lions: jazz's saviors or pretenders? - young African American jazz musicians who are contributing to strong popular interest in jazz music and performance

American Visions, June-July, 1993 by Douglas Turner

In the last couple of years, there has been an explosion in recordings in and media attention paid to the noble art of jazz. Coinciding with this renewed attention has been the proliferation of a generation of ever-younger, but ultra-serious, adherents to the jazz tradition. These "young lions," as they have come to be called, take hard bop--a style of jazz developed in the 1950s and refined in the 1960s--as their starting point, if not their raison d'etre.

Although there have always been young lions in jazz, at least three factors distinguish the current young-lion "phenomenon." First, there is the sheer number of twenty-something musicians on the scene today, many of whom began to receive attention while still in their teens. Second, many of these young lions have recording contracts with major record labels, giving them a high profile. And third, most of them have some amount of university training (not necessarily a plus, according to certain critics and musicians). All of them owe their good fortune to the meteoric rise of trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who in many respects has served as the prototype for today's young jazz musicians.

The success of Marsalis, who won his first two Grammy awards in 1983, for jazz and classical music, opened doors for other serious young musicians and signaled a resurgence of interest in traditional and straight-ahead jazz by the musicians, the public and the record companies. This impact goes beyond mere record sales. According to Time magazine writer Thomas Sancton, "The [youth] movement is a lifesaver for club owners and festival producers, promising them new audiences and exciting artists at a time when older, long-established stars are disappearing from the scene."

The current crop of young lions in the limelight includes the Harper Brothers (trumpeter Philip and drummer Winard) and pianist Stephen Scott on Verve Records; trumpeter Roy Hargrove, saxophonists Christopher Hollyday and Antonio Hart, pianist Marcus Roberts and trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis on Novus Records; trumpeters Marlon Jordan and Ryan Kisor, organist Joey DeFrancesco and pianist Geoff Keezer on Columbia Records; tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman and guitarist Mark Whitfield on Warner Brothers Records; and pianist Benny Green on Blue Note Records.

Known alternatively as "neotraditionalists," "neoclassicists" and "neoboppers," these young lions proclaim and revere the nobility of jazz by acknowledging the contributions of such masters as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, who themselves were the young lions of their respective eras.

Not everyone in the jazz community shares this view, and this is where the debate begins. Critics and musicians scornful of the young lions label them as neoconservatives harking back to a time that neither reflects their own experiences nor produces anything new. During a panel discussion at the 1992 Atlanta Jazz Festival, jazz critic Howard Mandel stated it succinctly: "What they're trying to do is recapture that [hard-bop] feeling ... and it's not dealing with what's immediately in your life. It's dealing with what you studied and learned. ... It's not quite as direct an expression."

Moreover, there are many in the jazz community who dismiss the young lions as pawns in a larger marketing strategy devised by record companies to exploit what amounts to a fad. "We have to be very careful about confusing the development of an art form, the growth and aesthetic of jazz, with hype and marketing," said Mandel. "There are many, many musicians who are contributing to the growth of this music, and only a portion of those musicians are benefiting from the commercial publicity of the major record companies."

Adds veteran trumpeter Malachi Thompson: "There may be players out there who could be innovators, but they have been overlooked by the industry because of the marketing success of Wynton Marsalis. Wynton was a marketable commodity."

As the publicity and the success of the young lions have increased, a certain degree of animosity has surfaced as older, established musicians find themselves relegated to the smaller independent labels, or without recording contracts at all. Many of them complain that success has come too easily for the young lions, that they have not paid their dues. "They're getting a place in jazz history that they have not earned. I mean, at 19, 20, how much can you really know?" asks all-star bassist Ron Carter.

Such sentiments are not lost on the younger players. In June 1992 article in Downbeat, young pianist Stephen Scott remarked: "A lot of the older guys are so bitter that they miss a lot of opportunities because they're holding a grudge against us. They feel that we don't respect them; and there are a lot of us who don't show that respect like we should, so they start to resent us."

"There's been too much hype put on the young musicians," adds saxophonist Antonio Hart. "It's unfortunate that because of the record companies and medial we have a separation from the older musicians that was never there before."