Reflections on Blue Note Jazz Fest 2024

Every June, the Blue Note Jazz Club’s flagship location in Greenwich Village becomes the nexus of a month-long celebration of the United States’ first artform and its African roots. The 2024 festival’s featured artists came from every corner of the solar system — Brooklyn, Harlem, Agadez, Bali, São Paulo, Saturn — and ranged in age from teens to centenarians.

This year’s festival began on June 1 with two sets from Soulive at the club and finished on July 1 with two sets by Joey Alexander there, in keeping with the venue’s general policy of hosting early and late shows every night. The Blue Note was the festival’s home base all month, but some of its marquee shows were held in the inner sanctum of Midtown Manhattan’s Sony Hall, and one took place next to the echoing alleys of Brooklyn Bowl, among several other offsite events.

In the latter half of the month, I had the pleasure of seeing four Blue Note Fest shows. None of the sets I saw were straight-ahead jazz — and one of the artists I saw has been a vocal advocate for the movement to do away with the term altogether, instead referring to the multiplicity of styles so often crammed under the jazz umbrella as Black American Music. The breadth of modes of musical expression in only those four shows is indicative of the progressive, flexible vision that’s characterized the Blue Note’s programming all year.

On June 15, I descended into the depths of Sony Hall to see Sun Ra Arkestra, with support from intrepid Brooklyn indie rock experimentalists Yo La Tengo. YLT worked mainly with the slower, more introspective material from their latest album, This Stupid World, perhaps as an intentional foil to the colorful chaos of the Arkestra’s set, which was dedicated to the group’s longtime leader, sax god Marshall Allen, in honor of his 100th birthday. Allen did not perform with the group at Sony Hall, taking a well-earned night off, but the Arkestra’s love and respect for their longtime leader was evident throughout the evening.

Days later, I trekked to the midtown venue once more to see Ethio-jazz icon Mulatu Astatke. The 80-year-old composer and percussionist led a massive ensemble that rivaled the Arkestra in energy and volume. Still an elite bandleader at his advanced age, Astatke captivated the crowd with the dense but seamless rhythmic and harmonic interplay between himself and the world-class musicians surrounding him.

New Orleans brass ensemble The Soul Rebels played for a packed house at the Blue Note the following weekend, performing a set of original songs and rap covers. The first half of the show was a crescendo to the entrance of the night’s special guest Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah. During his brief segment of the show, Ghost was explosive, holding the crowd in his thrall with effortless charisma and an immaculate flow. When he closed out with a brass-backed rendition of Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya,” half the room rapped along word for word.

Kicking off the festival’s final weekend, tropicália pioneers Os Mutantes took the stage at Brooklyn Bowl, playing classics from their 1969 debut album alongside more contemporary material as the crowd swelled at their feet and bowlers bowled to their left. It was an odd setting, but the band’s frontman and sole original member Sergio Dias seemed to take it all in stride, projecting a joyful presence from his centerstage seat.

Back at the Blue Note, Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (fka Christian Scott) performed on the festival’s penultimate night. With a band of absolute killers, including 19-year-old bass wunderkind Ryoma Takenaga and, for several songs, superflautist Elena Pinderhughes, he played an expansive set of mind-expanding tunes, a time capsule from the future of Black American Music.

In July, as the dust settled in the wake of the month-long extravaganza, we reached out to our favorite Blue Note Jazz Fest artists to hear about their experience of this year’s festival, and some of them responded. Here’s what they had to say, in their own, unedited words:

A unique show, an unparalleled spectacle, it was yesterday in New York with the stars of the Aïr and the international star Bombino. An unprecedented show with a festive atmosphere, it‘s really a dream to experience this. Even from a distance fans are calling just to get the images and videos, a moment desired to be lived by all the music lovers of Etran de L‘Aïr (Agadez, Niger) and Bombino. This morning of June 29th, images and videos are circulating on different networks from the homeland, Agadez, from Niger, from the desert, a dream.

The Arkestra were huge and rocking. Venue was 50,000 leagues below 46th st but they still managed to levitate it. Spent the whole set in front of Dave’s amp, wow. Spotlight on Vincent Chancey, the universe’s greatest living French horn player!