In the historical period that we live and breathe, putting oneself to listen to musical proposals from the international jazz universe means freeing the mind from stereotypes and prejudices regarding genres and styles, in order to be transported by sound expressions from different places and histories but universally united by the continuous search for contamination.
The diverse and, at the same time, qualitative programming of the Roma Jazz Festival 2023 further convinces us, if any more were needed, how the future of music is encapsulated in the fusion of fragments of multifaceted musical forms to be grasped from different parts of the globe.
It is no coincidence that the underlying theme of the Roman festival is summarized in the term “transition,” connoted, as Mario Ciampà, artistic director of the festival as well as a historical founder in the mid-1970s of the Saint Louis Jazz club, explains in a “jazz music, always attentive to change” generating further stylistic transition. Today, the line between jazz, electronic music, contemporary music, popular music, rap or pop has become increasingly thinner and blurrier. Contemporary avant-garde artists are creating a unique fusion in constant flux that defies convention and is not afraid to evolve into something new. Contemporary jazz has become a fertile ground for individual exploration and expression, allowing artists to push the limits of their abilities and be spokespeople for a message of sharing, integration and freedom.”
Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Judith Hill’s performance on the third night of the Roma Jazz Festival was the litmus test of the jazz festival’s programmatic manifesto. The American artist performed Saturday, Nov. 4, in the Sala Petrassi of the Auditorium Parco della Musica as part of a tour that is taking her around Europe.
In Judith Hill’s somatic features, East and West merge, or rather meet: her mother is Japanese pianist Michiko Yoshimura, while her father Robert Lee “Pee Wee” is an African-American bassist.
Noted by Prince ina video clip aired on the digital network Revolt in which the musician expressed a desire to work with him, she came to prominence in 2015 with the album Back in Time, produced by the Minneapolis leprechaun and recorded in his legendary Paisley Park recording studios.
Previously, Judith Hill had collaborated as a backing vocalist and guest singer with the likes of Michael Jackson, Josh Groban, Rod Stewart, George Benson, John Legend and several others, taken part in the documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, for which she was honored in 2014 with the Black Reel Award for the song “Desperation,” and participated in four seasons of the American music competition, The Voice.
Endowed with a powerful vocality and at the same time imbued with light, enveloping and hypnotic overtones, the singer during the concert in the Petrassi Hall, accompanied by her parents and drummer John State, embodied with passion and technical quality at the highest level the ambivalent faces of the Black Music, earthly and spiritual: moments of voice and piano, intimate and dripping with pure evocations of secular gospel, alternated with soaring songs built on funk and blues structures with jazz references, Hendrixian rock, hip hop declamations, during which the singer divided herself with nonchalant technical preparation between electric guitar and piano.
In short, a musical liturgy shared with the audience over which loomed overbearingly the tutelary shadow of the genius of The Artist, Prince, particularly the latter part of his career, in records such as The Rainbow Children, Musicology, One Nite Alone and LOtUSFLOW3R.
Despite the references to the cornerstones of African-American musical culture, we are dealing with a well-rounded artist, with her own original physiognomy, as moreover already evident in her first record work Back in Time and, again, in the new single “Runway Train”, which anticipates the release in the coming months of her fifth studio album.
Paolo Marra
