Music Sin Fronteras

“New Jazz”: A Night with the Giberto Rios QTET

In her groundbreaking book, This is What It  Sounds Like , Dr. Susan Armstrong demonstrates  The Novelty-Popularity curve, the bell-shaped curve developed from her research on how music affects the brain. The curve graphs the data from hundreds of tests involving MRIs of brains listening to different kinds of music. It graphically displays the relationship of listeners’ familiarity with certain forms of music and their commercial popularity. 

The curve clearly shows that most music lovers’  brains respond to familiar music forms –  i.e. 4/4 time or 8-bar sections, or lyric-chorus-lyric arrangements –  that have patterns our brains recognize and light up to. Her research found that fewer people people respond to “novel” forms of music that don’t follow familiar patterns but surprise the listener. These forms sell fewer records and streams.

Rock, pop, rap, blues, and other music with predictable forms – i.e., the brain knows what is coming next and enjoys hearing it – are the most successful genres, while jazz, and especially progressive jazz, tickle fewer music-loving brains and are at the bottom of the commercial success rankings.

 In the center of the curve is pop, the most commercially successful music form, which is built on familiar forms like lyric-chorus-bridge, but then slips in a few bars of novel forms like rap or even jazz.  It seems that musically, the brain loves its comfort zone, but wants to be surprised once in a while.

But what happens when jazz follows the pop model, but reverses it – plays a surprising novel of music forms, but adds familiar elements? And what happens when an instrument that normally stays in the background, like the double bass, steps forward–in a novel music arrangement?

Sunday night the long-time progressive jazz double bass player Gilberto Rios, premiered his new Gilberto Rios QTET, which explores answers to those questions by playing jazz he composed that slips into familiar music forms and enhances the role of the usually invisible double bass. He has been writing new compositions, and revising old compositions for some time. Recently he put an all-star quintet together to play these new compositions and those of the band members. 

The band, dubbed the Gilberto Rios QTET, is made up of Rios on bass and double bass, Eleazar “Chuco” Soto on sax, Tzintzuni Varela on vocals, Guillermo  Nunez on drums and Christian Jimenez on keys. Each artist is a superb professional in her or his own right. Together, they laid a foundation for a “new jazz” that lights up all of the brain – the familiar music parts and the surprise music parts. 

Each musician played a part in blending the familiar with the surprising, especially in songs like “Over the Rainbow” which immediately resonated with the audience as soon as Tzintzuni Varela launched into it. Others were new to the audience, but the familiar beats and structures, not to mention the virtuoso playing, grabbed them immediately.

The set list ranged from pure Progressive jazz to swinging dance music. Breakdowns with the keyboard, the sax, and of course the double bass, brought the familiar back to the audience who grooved to the amazing talent while their brains lit up. “Dulos” with Gilberto on the double bass and Guillermo on the drums was magical as the drums sounded like rain at one point with the bass walking in it.  My favorite was the danceable swing jazz (is that a contradiction in terms?) where the beat just goes on as the artists swirl around each other’s notes. A true blend that hits both sides of the brain.

Rios is still road-testing the music, tinkering with it, trying different things and different ways. At some point, there will be a recording session and album or EP available. Until then, check out the YouTube Videos and let me know what you think.

the keyboard, the sax, and of course the double bass, brought the familiar back to the audience who grooved to the amazing talent while their brains lit up. “Dulos” with Gilberto on the double bass and Guillermo on the drums was magical as the drums sounded like rain at one point with the bass walking in it.  My favorite was the danceable swing jazz (is that a contradiction in terms?) where the beat just goes on as the artists swirl around each other’s notes. A true blend that hits both sides of the brain.

Rios is still road-testing the music, tinkering with it, trying different things and different ways. At some point, there will be a recording session and album or EP available. Until then, check out the YouTube Videos and let me know what you think.