Call It Black American Music

Jazz started out as party music, velvety sound for moving your body. Today, Melanie Charles has reclaimed that legacy.

Charles is a flutist, vocalist and producer whose records blend electronic sampling with live instrumentation in a way that feels both spiritual and energetic. For several years, Charles has lived and gigged by the phrase “Make Jazz Trill Again,” even though the term “trill” — which signals a gritty energy — is more associated with hip-hop. On her latest album, “Y’all Don’t (Really) Care About Black Women,” Charles makes a bold statement while reimagining records from legendary Black women artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan by cutting the audio into pieces, rearranging them into different compositions and adding her own elements on top. It’s an updated take on the tradition of covering jazz standards note for note.

Listen to Melanie Charles’ “Y’all Don’t (Really) Care About Black Women.”

Charles also co-hosts the “Make Jazz Trill Again” podcast with fellow artist Yunie Mojica, with a mission to remind listeners that jazz is “for the streets, it’s for the people and it’s to dance to.”

Nicholas Payton isn’t the first musician celebrated by jazz fans and critics who has declined to call his work “jazz.” But perhaps no other artist of recent history is more linked to the effort to separate musicians from that label. Payton joins legends like Miles Davis and Max Roach, who have viewed the word “jazz” as a manufactured marketing term that creates artificial rules about what the music should be, and disconnects it from its roots.

Payton instead uses the term “Black American Music” (BAM) to refer to the music that he, his contemporaries and his predecessors play, which also includes elements of what’s known as R&B, funk, rock and hip-hop. By embracing the term BAM, Payton is making an effort to re-draw connections between sounds and communities that have separated over time. For example, to show the lineage between hip-hop artists and instrumentalists from decades before the birth of hip-hop, Payton will sometimes share on his Instagram page blends mixing the vocals of a rapper like The Notorious B.I.G. with the music of an instrumentalist like Thelonious Monk.

Payton is known best as a trumpeter, but it’s not unusual to see him on the bandstand playing keyboard or piano, making rhythm on the drums, owning the bass or doing vocals. His diverse and prolific catalog showcases his attention to melody, his dexterity as a soloist, and his willingness to experiment with new sounds and technologies.

True to BAM’s ethos of experimentation, Payton — during the early days of the pandemic — was at the forefront of livestream concerts. He hosted a plethora of virtual shows in 2020 and 2021 that saw him improvise entire sets on trumpet and keyboard alongside Sasha Masakowski on the drum machine, weaving in soundbites from clips off the internet. He later translated the electronic sound from those sessions into his 2020 album, “Quarantined With Nick.”

Listen to “Quarantined With Nick.”

Ben Williams is a Thelonious Monk International Jazz Bass Competition winner and is now one of the most sought-after bassists around. He has toured internationally, won a Grammy with Pat Metheny, and released two albums on upright bass — including an acoustic bass cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Williams then revealed himself as a gifted singer-songwriter with his latest album, “I Am A Man,” released in 2020 from Rainbow Blonde Records. At times reminiscent of Marvin Gaye, “I Am A Man” gives voice to the love, joy, struggle and frustration that comprise the breadth of experience of a Black man in America.

Williams has continued his run as vocalist, releasing a new duo with singer and actress Syndee Winters called “Butterfly Black.” This project sees Williams stretching into new territory yet again, with the duo’s first offering, “I Just Wanna Love You,” crossing into dance music that approaches a disco feel.

Listen to Butterfly Black’s “I Just Wanna Love You.”

on The Carlos Watson Show!

Maurice Brown has fully embraced a rockstar personality on trumpet and vocals, with his trumpet-twirling theatrics adding showmanship to the technical skill he displays on his horn. Brown won the Miles Davis Trumpet Competition as a teen, and established himself as a force on trumpet with bands across the jazz and blues-rock genres, while composing two instrumental albums, “Hip to Bop” and “The Cycle of Love,” in 2004 and 2010. Brown’s 2013 album “Maurice vs. Mobetta” saw him remix his earlier songs and take on the new persona “Mobetta,” rapping several verses himself throughout the album, and sharing the microphone with hip-hop heavyweights Talib Kweli, Jean Grae, Consequence and Mobb Deep’s Prodigy.

Most recently, Brown has been touring as the trumpeter for Anderson .Paak and his Silk Sonic duo with Bruno Mars — which has brought Brown’s talent on the trumpet and as a rapper to arenas packed with tens of thousands of fans.

Listen to Maurice Brown’s album “The Mood.”

With Corey Fonville on drums, Andrew Randazzo on bass, Devonne “DJ Harrison” Harris on keyboard, Marcus Tenney on horns and vocals and Morgan Burrs on guitar, the young Virginia-based outfit Butcher Brown has an impressive range. All five musicians are composers in their own right and dexterous on three or more instruments. After playing together and releasing music for five years, the group made its debut on the legendary record label Concord Jazz with “#KingButch,” an album that brings rap, funk, soul and relaxed melodies, for a sound that is unlike anything else the label has released in its storied 50-year history.

Listen to “#KingButch.”

Butcher Brown’s big band album, “Triple Trey,” will be released this Friday from Concord — and will include a re-imagining of the late Notorious B.I.G.’s “Unbelievable.”