Review of Jazz From Detroit by Mark Stryker
Mark Stryker blends in-depth profiles, critical commentary, and historical perspective in one exceptionally crafted volume.
On a few occasions in the midst of reading Jazz from Detroit, I deliberately set the book down. I just didn’t want to get to the end. I wanted to savor it all. And I wanted to come to each reading session, each chapter ready to commit my full focus. It was worth protecting my time and attention — both all too scarce in a world of mobile and digital distractions — to give to Stryker’s exceptional book published by the University of Michigan Press.
Jazz From Detroit is Stryker’s case for the influence of the Motor City and its many amazing artists — composers, arrangers, vocalists and instrumentalists — on the idiom of Black American Music commonly called “jazz.” Soul, Funk, Rhythm & Blues, and Hip-Hop all have credible roots in the 313. Of these genres, despite the amazing, multi-generational lineup that Stryker profiles in this book, Detroit’s influence on jazz, specifically, may be the least well known and appreciated. Stryker’s goal, quite simply, is to change that.
The heart of the book is a set of carefully wrought and earnestly appreciative portraits of musicians with lives and bodies of work anchored in Detroit and vice versa. Whether born or raised in the city, the thirty individuals and four groups featured by Stryker were selected for their transformative influence on the jazz scene. While the roster is deep and long, Stryker imposes a high standard in selecting the individuals to write about (there is a longer list, still not comprehensive, in one of the appendices). Among the names are true giants who undeniably and indelibly influenced the music we know as jazz for all time: Thad Jones, Milt Jackson, Barry Harris, Ron Carter. Shoulder to shoulder with these legends are figures whose unique voices, styles, and influence are just as present in shaping the music today: Regina Carter, Marcus Belgrave, Kenny Garret, Karriem Riggins.
Stryker’s prose is clean and his joinery is tight and elegant like that of a master cabinetmaker. The writing also has a warmth that I believe emanates from the hours Stryker spent in conversation with many of the individuals he writes about in the book as well as in interviews with those who played with and learned from them. The fifty or so primary source interviews are the secret sauce here that allow Stryker to draw favorable and respectful details from his sources without relinquishing his own well-honed, critical voice. While there is warmth, there is not a hint of hagiography. Accounts of drug addiction or premature deaths are presented with appropriately solemn objectivity. And when he comments on recordings by each musician, Stryker’s astute ear is a consistent arbiter of what is yeoman’s work vs. what is truly ground-breaking. He does not hesitate to steer readers toward the laudable and away from less inspired performances.
Each chapter adds three records to a playlist that I have been listening to for a couple of months now at the same deliberate pace I took with the text. This, too, is worth your time. For those similarly inclined, you can visit the website for the book where Stryker has made playlists on Apple Music and Spotify with a generous sampling of artists featured in Jazz from Detroit.
As a scholar and a writer, there are a couple of features of the book that I especially appreciated. One was the care Stryker takes to trace the connections among the figures in the book, constructing a kind of cultural genealogy of jazz in Detroit as it unfolds over a little more than a century in the city. The book is arranged to tell that story chronologically. But throughout Stryker takes care to point to key intersections, moments when one player influenced another directly or indirectly. Short historical essays introduce the book and each major section to provide context and to artfully foreshadow these connections. The musical selections and commentary highlight them too, with recordings that feature artists playing with or playing music composed by other Detroit musicians. With these playlists, Stryker-as-DJ makes a strong case for the sound of jazz from Detroit as a unique force that shaped and is shaping the culture.
The other quality of the book that really resonated with me personally is the strong tradition of learning, teaching, and mentorship that emerges as a signature of the Detroit scene. This tradition is anchored by two NEA Jazz Masters, Barry Harris and Marcus Belgrave, and continues today in the work of two presumptive NEA Jazz Masters in the making, Rodney Whitaker and Geri Allen. The Maestro Ron Carter is no less a mentor but his home base and teaching practice has primarily been in New York. While Harris spent much of his career in New York as well, both he and Belgrave were influential mentors in Detroit for many many years. Harris died in 2021 but lived to see his legacy celebrated and appreciated by the jazz world. Belgrave’s legacy is richly illustrated in this volume, as his “children” and “grandchildren” merit a full section of Stryker’s book.
Stryker takes care to appreciate and name influential band and orchestra directors who taught the musicians he profiles, many of whom worked in Detroit public schools and music programs. Perhaps owing to his time as a writer for the Detroit Free Press for many years, those moments of praise in particular sound in an unmistakable minor key in the book. In a few spots, Stryker laments a now decades-long decline in funding for music education in Detroit. The legacy of programs like the one at Cass Tech that Stryker helps to document stands as a damning indictment to policies that have led to the erosion of an undeniably great arts curriculum. What have we done?
I would like to imagine that encountering this story of Jazz from Detroit might help to change some minds and make music education a priority again. Might we conjure a moment in the near future when folks realize what is possible, how a dedication to the kind of music education that was once present in Detroit public schools can change the world forever? With current master mentors like Vincent Chandler and Rodney Whitaker ready to be stewards of a new music education movement, might we see renewed energy and investment in jazz from Detroit?
I think it is possible. And it may be happening. My own institution, Michigan State University, is making some strides. We might add a new name on the list of figures carrying on the Detroit legacy — Kris Johnson. A student of Whitaker, Johnson is a grammy-nominated trumpet player and an alum of the Detroit Symphony’s Youth Jazz program, one of those public music programs that produced so much talent featured in Jazz from Detroit. And as of 2021, Johnson is director of the MSU Community Music School in Detroit.
I was lucky enough to hear Johnson play with the MSU “Bebop Spartans” ensemble last year for a celebration of Martin Luther King’s life and work. The concert featured several of his masterful arrangements, complete with those rich Thad Jones-style harmonies, and he joined the band for a couple of tunes. Whether he was holding his horn or a baton, jazz from Detroit was alive and well that day in Johnson’s twin efforts on the bandstand.
