Bassist, composer, and multi-Grammy winner Christian McBride on the continuing evolution of jazz

Jazz has always evolved in cycles. In every generation, there are many who believe jazz is either dying or losing its identity, yet it continually absorbs new influences while its central rhythmic language — swing — remains its defining thread.

You might be curious to know what I see in jazz right now, from my vantage point of the jazz world from many angles, as a bassist, an administrator, a broadcaster, a festival curator, and most of all, a fan.

It was 57 years ago, in 1969, that a young eight-piece, soul-jazz outfit opened for Nina Simone at the University of Rochester. The band left such an impression on Ms. Simone that she is on record as saying to the audience, “Was it me? Or did you see those bad young brothers just now? I’m glad they’re on my side.” She was referring to not only their music, but the seriousness that those young Nation of Islam-trained brothers emitted.

The name of that young band?

Kool and the Gang.

Between 1969 and 1971, a dramatic shift started to happen in Black music. A proliferation of bands started to emerge, combining the language of jazz and soul.

Heavy on the soul … which quickly turned into funk.

Kool and the Gang was just one of the first young bands that were unapologetically blending John Coltrane and Miles Davis with a heavy dash of James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone.

Soon came Parliament/Funkadelic; the Ohio Players; Earth, Wind & Fire; War; Mandrill; B.T. Express; the Fatback Band, and more.

Jazz musicians of an older generation were forced to either consciously rebel against the changing winds or join in. Most joined in, or at the very least, created their own version of this contemporary language.

It was known as fusion.

While the younger Black generation was leaning heavily into funk, some jazz musicians leaned more into avant-garde and rock — most famously, Miles Davis, who eventually started to lean more heavily into funk.

However, there was also the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, Return to Forever, Herbie Hancock’s Sextet (now more famously known as the Mwandishi sextet), and later on, his all-out funk unit, the Headhunters.

The ’70s were all about the powerhouse bands. Where did this leave the jazz icons of the older generation? Did Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Art Blakey, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Betty Carter, Max Roach, Horace Silver, Abbey Lincoln, and the Modern Jazz Quartet just become obsolete and irrelevant overnight?

It depends on whom you ask.

(Now I’m switching from my historian/fan hat to my festival administrator/curator/historian hat.)

I consider myself quite fortunate to have held the keys to the historic Newport Jazz Festival from 2016 to 2025 as artistic director. To know, respect, and learn directly from (Newport Jazz Festival founder) George Wein — in both his wisdom and ironies — is something I value deeply.

I came up being taught that “Jazz died in the ’70s.”

In short, if you weren’t playing fusion, rock, or some sort of electric-based music, as a jazz musician, you were doomed.

As I (we) all now know, McCoy Tyner was just fine. Elvin Jones was just fine. Keith Jarrett was just fine. Dr. Billy Taylor, Charles Mingus, the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, Oscar Peterson, Count Basie, Clark Terry, the Art Ensemble of Chicago — they all were just fine. They worked a lot and (for the most part) didn’t feel forced to play electric music or funk.

(Thad and Mel got funky here and there — even made an album for Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff at Philadelphia International Records — but they mostly kept on swinging.)

I’ve found George Wein’s lineups for the Newport Jazz Festival between 1969 and 1973 pretty fascinating from a historical standpoint: Rahsaan Roland Kirk, James Brown, Maxine Sullivan, Sly & the Family Stone, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Aretha Franklin, Buddy Tate, Sun Ra, Roberta Flack, Freddie Hubbard, Dionne Warwick, B.B. King, Ike & Tina Turner, Sonny Stitt, Donny Hathaway, Dorothy Donegan, Dizzy Gillespie, Curtis Mayfield, Jimmy Witherspoon, Mahalia Jackson, Ornette Coleman, and so many more were featured. As the decade progressed, more of the aforementioned young funk bands were also booked.

From a historical/musical standpoint, I find the musical diversity to be awe-inspiring. Who wouldn’t want to see Sly & the Family Stone and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers on the same stage?

There was one serious question that was being asked by a broad number of people, though: Is this jazz?

With the perfect storm of the growth of funk and fusion, and the reported demise of straight-ahead, acoustic jazz, it wasn’t an unfair question.

In the jazz community, the word “jazz” itself was being loosely used to describe various forms of funk and rock, but there were very few funk or rock musicians or writers loosely calling their music “jazz.” They called it either “funk” or “rock.” They knew exactly where they stood.

Latin musicians never had an argument about the clave.

That was a rule never to be broken.

Why was the word “jazz” seemingly thrown around so carelessly?

Was the word “jazz” being exploited for commercial purposes? Was it a way to stave off the people saying that the Grim Reaper had visited jazz’s domain? Or … had jazz actually sprouted some new branches on its huge tree?

I discovered jazz in the early ’80s just as Wynton Marsalis had become the face of a new, decidedly swinging, acoustic generation.

In the late ’80s, this is the jazz world that I’d entered into as a bassist. Being around Wynton helped me focus my goals on becoming a bassist who sought tutelage from the grand masters like Ray Brown, Milt Hinton, Al McKibbon — people who had been the mentors to the younger mentors: Ron Carter, Buster Williams, Stanley Clarke, and more.

I was a fully sworn straight-ahead messenger, if you will.

Then I got the gig with Freddie Hubbard.

At the time, Freddie’s chops were still strong. He could play just as fast and virtuosically as he did with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in the ’60s or with the VSOP Quintet in the ’70s.

But Freddie loved to get funky, too.

For all the blazing swing we played, it was a must that we played “Red Clay” on every gig. That was Freddie’s hit. It had become a bigger hit while I was in his band, thanks to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Sucka Ni**a.”

But then Freddie would also play a tune of his called “Managua,” which was a montuno.

In one night, we’d play straight-ahead, funk, and Latin — and it all felt like jazz. It felt authentic.

It didn’t feel like we were trying to be contemporary. It felt like we were strong musicians playing strong music — meeting each style head-on in its aesthetic.

I feel like this is where the question “Is it jazz?” takes a turn. Perhaps there’s a bigger question. A simpler question.

“Is it good?”

Duke Ellington famously said that there were only two kinds of music: good and bad.

I have absolutely no business adding an addendum to perhaps the most important, most prolific composer/intellect in American history, but if I may, I offer that there are two other kinds of music: What you like and what you don’t.

The question of “Is it jazz?” I find less important than I once did.

If it is jazz, does that automatically make it better? Is there no such thing as poorly executed acoustic jazz?

Trust me, there is.

Wouldn’t you rather hear a killer funk band than a bad acoustic jazz quintet?

Today, I find jazz in exactly the place I’d expect it to be. Jazz, in terms of swinging, seems to have mellowed among many younger musicians. There are certainly wonderful exceptions, but it also feels like another generation of groove-based bands has taken center stage.

Instead of Kool & the Gang, War, and Earth, Wind, & Fire, today you have Butcher Brown, Ghost-Note, the Nth Power, the Fearless Flyers, and many others carrying that tradition forward in their own way.

Meanwhile, our Latin brothers and sisters have never once broken the thread between the stage and the dance floor. They never argued over who they were. They simply kept playing the music.

After spending my life looking at jazz from so many different angles, as a bassist, a broadcaster, an educator, a festival curator, an administrator, and most importantly, a fan, I think I’ve finally made peace with the question “Is this jazz?”

Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes the answer is no. More often than not, the answer is, “It’s complicated.”

Jazz has always grown new branches. It always will. That’s what living art does.

Every generation believes it’s witnessing the end of jazz. Every generation worries that the music has drifted too far from its roots. Then another generation comes along, rediscovers those roots, adds its own vocabulary, and the conversation starts all over again.

Maybe that’s the point.

Jazz isn’t a museum exhibit. It’s a living language. It argues with itself. It borrows. It reinvents itself. It remembers where it came from while constantly trying to discover where it can go.

Which brings me back to Nina Simone.

That night 57 years ago, she looked at eight young musicians who were carrying Black music somewhere new and, instead of fearing it, she smiled.

Looking back, I think she understood something we’ve spent decades debating.

I’ve stopped worrying about whether jazz is dying. History suggests that it never does.

I do believe there is one ingredient that has always connected Louis Armstrong to Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker to Art Blakey, Betty Carter to Roy Hargrove, and, yes, even many of the young musicians finding their own voices today: Swing.

However broadly the branches grow, never forget the roots.

Christian McBride is a bassist, composer, broadcaster, educator, and 11-time Grammy winner. For more info, visit christianmcbride.com.