Jose James has a voice and a career well beyond his 32 years. The hip-hop inspired crooner made some time to chat with eBurban in London at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, to discuss origins, influences and relationships in the back room of one of London’s most legendary clubs. Jose James is arguably the hardest working, and possibly most creative, musician in modern jazz.
Growing up in Minneapolis, how did you become interested in jazz?
All the hip-hop, De la Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Cyprus Hill, the Beastie Boys, it all had jazz samples. So I started to hear these different sounds. All the 90s, early 90s stuff, you know, Ice Cube, even NWA, Rakim, it all had an acoustic base or a flute or some jazz sample. Talib Kweli or Nina Simone, Nirvana, you read the samples and then I would check out the source. That’s how I got into jazz. If these dudes are checking out jazz, then I’ll check out jazz. I just really liked it. It was a special thing to discover.
How did you start out in Minneapolis? Going from “Oh, this is something I’m interested in” to actually making it happen?
Well, my dad is a sax player, he’s from Panama, and he lives in Minneapolis so he plays jazz, but not only jazz… he’s a musician. I already had an example of a full-time artist. There are a lot of Chicago jazz musicians. So I met a lot of those dudes. Heavy dudes. They kind of helped me out getting started and gave me work and hired me to sing with them. It was just an early experience, you know 15, 16, and 17, it was really positive to be around all these men and women, too, who were mostly playing, jazz is very male dominated, except vocalists, and that was it. It got me hooked. I got this identity by the time I graduated high school. I was just a jazz singer.
And then you got the hell out of Minneapolis?
Yes.
Where is home then, since living in London, and Brooklyn, and touring?
It’s wherever I’m at. I’ve been traveling almost two years straight at this point. I’ve switched from the “well, I live here and I’m just on tour,” to “this is where I live today.” So today I live in London, and tomorrow wherever. You kind of have to live on the road instead of being on the road.
Do you like touring?
Yeah, it’s definitely difficult. I think you have to be hard-wired for it. You have to be able to function on five hours of sleep, and be calm when your flight’s cancelled and you have to get to your gig anyway. There’s a lot of potentially stressful things. I think Type A people might not be able to handle it, but I love it. I don’t want to do it forever. I’ve done 9 months this year and I’m going til November. I don’t want to do that when I’m 50.
- People classify your stuff as jazz, blues and even your solo stuff, as hip-hop. How would you classify your style?
- Who are your influences? Who do you aspire to in terms of style?
- If you could work with anyone dead or alive, who would it be? And what would you do?
Pages:
Leave a Reply