Hotstar: Justin Brown – ‘The Music Is Not Dying’

Hadas – DRUMMER’S EAR:
Justin Brown has a busy 2019 with at least three different touring projects.

When drummer Justin Brown released his debut album Nyeusi in June, he set his sights on taking his band out on the road early this year. Then work got in the way. Rather than lead his own ensemble on the road, Brown has the first half of 2019 booked in the bands of trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, bassist Thundercat and saxophonist Chris Potter, and he’s hoping that the pianist he toured with in South America in November, Herbie Hancock, will give him a call as well.

“I was advised to keep the beginning of the year open,” he says. “Right now, we’re doing spot dates, but I’m working on touring Nyeusi in the summer, fall and winter. It’s kind of a long process, but I’m trying to be patient in a way that is conducive to everything going on.”

Brown, who also plays with Vijay Iyer and Flying Lotus on occasion and is considered one of the top drummers working today, is part of a new breed of musicians connecting the dots of modern music with jazz traditions to create hybrid styles that connect with hip-hop fans, jazzheads and just about anyone open to new ideas that unite composition and improvisation. 

His music, like that of fellow leading light among drummers Makaya McCraven and Tyshawn Sorey, is rooted in multiple worlds – the beats of hip-hop and Africa, the sounds of ‘70s jazz when Miles Davis and others started toying with electric instruments and the willingness to push out on melody like the free-jazz players of recent generations.

“It took some time to kinda figure out exactly what I wanted that sound to be,” he says of Nyeusi. “I was very intrigued by the ‘60s and ‘70s and the older I got, the more I found myself intrigued by the period when instruments were changing. People like Tony Williams, Billy Cobham, Weather Report. Also, being a part of this iPod generation, I just couldn’t help but to be influenced by music in general whether it’s hip-hop, gospel or jazz. The more I workshopped the songs, it just felt right with the sound being more electronic.

“I’m trying to figure out where I came from and where I’m going musically. In the midst of that, I’m trying to be honest.”

Brown is among the hundreds of musicians performing during the Winter Jazzfest in New York. For his set at the Bowery Ballroom on Jan. 12, he and the band will be backing singer Georgia Anne Muldrow, the prolific recording artist whose genre-busting style has been likened to J. Dilla and Nina Simone.

The band that appears on stage will be different from the unit on the album save for bassist Burniss Travis; Brown is using the word nyeusi, which means “black” in Swahili, for all his gigs going forward.

“I’m using the name because the idea is still rooted in the color black, it’s rooted in the spirit of black music,” he says. “I just want to bring Georgia together with that sound.”

Brown is managed by Meghan Stabile of Revive Music Group and booked outside the U.S. by Mike Bindrabian at Good Music Company. Following Winter Jazz Fest, he’ll be touring Europe with Akinmusire into February with a week at the Village Vanguard in March and playing with Thundercat Feb. 12-17 at the Blue Note in New York where the shows are being recorded for a live album. 

Akinmusire, a prominent bandleader in his own right, won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition and was promptly signed to Blue Note as a leader; Brown came in second in the 2012 competition and continued to work as sideman with the likes of Esperanza Spalding and Terence Blanchard.

“With Ambrose, he’s very understanding of my own career and situation,” Brown says. “When it comes to Stephen [Bruner aka Thundercat] and Ambrose, I try to stay as loyal as I can.

“Both of them are very understanding and if things don’t work out, they just get a sub or they don’t do the gig. It is a chemistry thing, a lifelong relationship.” 

Brown grew up in Richmond, Calif., outside of Oakland, the son of gospel singer-pianist Nona Brown. He started playing drums before he went to kindergarten and as a teen he earned scholarships to the UC Berkeley Young Musician’s Summer Program and the Stanford Jazz Workshop’s Summer Jazz Camp. His talent also got him a scholarship to Julliard. Frustrated that academia was not a right fit, he quit after one day. He found a day job at Guitar Center and worked there for about four months.

“I was going out and playing every night,” he says. “After four months, I said ‘Look, if I’m going to hustle, then this is what I’ll do even if I have play restaurants every night.’ So I just went on the grind and did the New York thing, playing with as many people as I could, going to the Steve Coleman workshop every Monday night to learn.”

He did that for about a year, getting his name out but not producing anything steady. He returned to school, this time to the Manhattan School of Music, and before the school year was out, the alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett, one of the top bandleaders at the time who had launched the careers of several young musicians, asked him to join his touring band. “I ended up dropping out of school again because I thought maybe I’ll get more opportunities. I’ll learn more from getting this experience.”

He sees his experience philosophically, and relates it to the way he conducts business as a bandleader. “We take action and initiative into our life by doing the work. It’s not like the days when the cats were trying to get the Art Blakey gig or the Betty Carter gig, but it’s still happening because the music is not dying.”