Herbie Hancock Plays “The Song Goes On”

Listen to this track by jazz innovator, keyboard wizard, and all-around musical boundary-pusher Herbie Hancock. It’s “The Song Goes On”, the final track on his 2010 concept record The Imagine Project. That record boasts a cavalcade of musical talent from all over the world in addition to Hancock’s own prowess as a player and musical director. There are so many musical luminaries that you’ve heard of on the record that it would take too long to list them here. It seems that the received wisdom when Herbie Hancock calls is that you pick up the phone and say yes.

With as many guest artists that appear on the album, the music is rooted in Hancock’s keyboards and the contributions of his core of musicians. This includes bassist and co-producer Larry Klein, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, guitarist Lionel Loueke, and percussionist Alex Acuña. These musicians establish a solid jazz foundation for each track on the record to support a range of musical guests and their styles. Among other things, this illustrates how resilient jazz has become as a base ingredient and catalyst for musical exploration and expression that’s inclusive of other musical genres.

The central concept for The Imagine Project is about connecting humanity’s drive toward artistic expression and collaboration and how all that connects with the concept of achieving world peace. Much like Hancock’s general approach to making music, the celebrated figures who appear on the record come from a wide spectrum of musical traditions and categories, communicating the multifaceted nature of music made all over the world. They hail from nearly every corner of the globe to help Hancock showcase what’s common between people and their cultures across oceans and continents through their music, with a vision for human-centric globalization as a goal.

The song selection on the record reflects these themes of peace, transcendence, and positive change centering mainly on interpretations of some well-known Western pop songs. “The Song Goes On” is an exception, with music written by Larry Klein and with words based on a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). Pop soul vocalist Chaka Khan sings the English lyrics translated from the German while South Indian singer K.S. Chithra to sings in Hindi. Renowned sitarist Anoushka Shankar and Hancock’s fellow Miles Davis Quintet alum Wayne Shorter on soprano saxophone support the tune instrumentally while Hancock himself interjects minimalist phrases on the piano.

Shankar and Shorter are almost supernaturally in sync with each other’s phrasing on this cut. The timbre of their respective instruments turn out to have such an affinity that it is easy to mistake where one ends and the other begins, if that even occurs to anyone to try. Rhythmically, “The Song Goes On” is suspended in a drone-like tension that keeps the music teetering on a precipice as if it’s in a single and extended moment in time. That’s deliberate, with this tune being about an eternal song that goes on even if the tension in the moment is the focus. That’s where we live as people in the short span of our lives – from moment to moment.

This concept informed Hancock’s approach as a musician even when he was coming up as a young protege in the early 1960s. His apprenticeship at the feet of Donald Byrd and then Miles Davis taught him valuable lessons about being in the moment, and of maintaining awareness of what’s happening as the music unfolds between musicians; that each musical phrase or rhythmic pulse that emerges during a live performance or a take in the studio can be a force to shift the whole sound. The music defines itself between the musicians who create it together in a kind of mobius strip; prompted to follow where it leads, but also with the agency to change its direction, too.

By the time he cut “The Song Goes On” and the record it comes from, Hancock’s attitude remained consistent when it came to what being in the moment with other musicians. An an interview conducted around the time of the album’s release, he explains what collaboration is all about for him:

“I try to be a real collaborator. The result of the collaboration is more important than the individual collaborators. When all is said and done there’s this piece on the record. When you listen to it, you listen to the whole thing, not just the piano player. The most important thing about a record like this is, what the record is about, what it says, what it demonstrates. There’s a certain behaviour on the record and it’s a behaviour of sharing, that’s what is important.”

~ Herbie Hancock, London Jazz News, August 2, 2010 (read the whole article)

In a sense, this is one of the definitive attributes of jazz, which is about finding what’s common in the midst of differences, and creating something out of that ratio in the moment. No matter what traditions or genres are applicable, music itself is an act of sharing between musicians and then between them and the listener. It’s about trust, generosity, and inclusion. As it turns out, that’s not a bad model for redefining civilization either with cultural diversity and varied perspectives informing the whole to make the world a reflection of all humanity; recognizable, multifaceted, and built to anticipate change as needed even as it preserves what’s common and good for everyone.

After a forging a career that spans seven decades by now, Herbie Hancock is an active performer and composer today. You can learn more about him, explore his discography, and his more recent projects at herbiehancock.com.

The Imagine Project was a very ambitious undertaking, with sessions and contributions from musicians across multiple countries and continents. To get a full sense of that and the impressive range of talent that made it what it is, there’s also a documentary on how Hancock made the record. You can watch the extended trailer for that film right here.

For more on Herbie Hancock’s career from the 1960s to this very album, check out this Herbie Hancock top ten article on toppermost.co.uk, also written by your humble host.

Enjoy!

Jesus Jones Play “Right Here, Right Now”

Listen to this track by Bradford-on-Avon indie dance-rock outfit Jesus Jones. It’s “Right Here, Right Now”, their biggest and most recognized hit single released in September of 1990 ahead of their second LP Doubt that came out in January of 1991. That album would be their international breakthrough. This single was the primary force in placing them in top chart positions in the UK and in top ten positions Europe. It also gained them respectable showings in North America, Australia, and New Zealand, becoming threaded into the cultural fabric of the era in the process.

“Right Here, Right Now” hit the airwaves right on time for a young generation who had lived through an era of constant geopolitical tensions, highly publicized Third World famine, and the rise of the AIDS crisis. By the end of the 1980s and early into the following decade around the time frontman and guitarist Mike Edwards wrote this song, it remained to be seen what might come next after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Revolutions of 1989. The song’s BMI accolade as the most played song on college radio by 1992 tracks pretty well in an era that felt like a held breath before a great exhale.

Jesus Jones put out their first record and were touring Eastern Europe around the time that Edwards wrote this song as an optimistic answer to Prince’s “Sign O’ the Times”. With so many longstanding authoritarian regimes suddenly in the rearview as a new decade was on the verge of dawning, the zeitgeist seemed to call out for a new anthem. “Right Here, Right Now” fit right into that space as the troubles of one era gave way to the open-ended possibilities of the next one. The signs of the times had indeed changed and things didn’t look so bleak as before.

For their part, anthemic music was Jesus Jones’s stock and trade by the time their most recognized song came out. Their amalgam of indie rock and dance music included influences like Janet Jackson, The KLF, and also the British bands of the mid-to-late 1960s that paved the way for what would become Britpop later into the Nineties. Jesus Jones geared their guitar-based but groove-oriented sound for communal consumption on a dance floor or in a live crowd in much the same way as bands on the vibrant club scene in Manchester around the same time were doing.

“Right Here, Right Now” is built for that same communal context on a thematic level, too. This is a tune about a whole generation of people being acutely aware of something positive in the cultural and political air after a harrowing period of doubt and fear. Gen-X had been living on the leftover hopes and glories of the past in a deadlocked era of political polarization. Very few pop songs captured the belief that things would ever change. It felt like we were on a course toward the end of the world as we knew it without feeling even remotely close to fine about it.

But by the time this song came out, Gen-Xers suddenly had their own anthem to capture the spirit of times they’d lived through that didn’t fixate on mutual destruction. There was a feeling that the old patterns set by previous generations were gone, or at least were not as much of a barrier as before. Something entirely new was suddenly possible. After living with the consequences of decisions made before Gen-X were born, at last the era felt like a good time to be young and alive. As the song itself says: Bob Dylan didn’t have this to sing about.

Crucially and as idealistic as it is, “Right Here, Right Now” isn’t really a political song in the sense of taking a specific stance on any of that. It doesn’t deal in ideologies. Like all the best pop songs, it’s about feelings. It’s about being alive and aware in the moment and of the times one is in. It’s about being excited about what comes next at a turning point in history. It’s about bearing witness to how the times have unfolded into something that looks entirely new. It’s a celebration of greater clarity on what the possibilities are for the next step into the future, whatever that next step will be.

It’s about relief and hope.

American conservative publication The National Review disagreed on the point about ideology. They named “Right Here, Right Now” at number 14 in their list of top 50 “conservative rock songs”. Yet, as is the conservative’s wont in claiming cultural territory that isn’t necessarily (and usually isn’t) their own, they missed the point pretty spectacularly. That goes for most if not all of the songs on that list.

“Right Here, Right Now” is about empowerment and both recognizing and embracing change. There’s not much room for conservatism there. In portraying this song as a dance on the grave of Eastern European communism, they completely miss how joyful it is well beyond any perceived attempts at crass political point scoring.

As much as this song is tied to the era out of which it came, “Right Here, Right Now” is applicable to any era and any generation where its themes are concerned. The core of this song that celebrates feelings, hopes, and ideals reflect human impulses and experiences that do not ever get old no matter how much time passed. And hey; even if the fall of the Berlin Wall happened before you were born, this tune is still a bop!

Times like these in our modern era perhaps preclude the feelings of optimism heard in this song that served as an anthem to an era long past so well. But the hopefulness in the song remains. That’s the great thing about the best pop songs like this one. They hold sentiments and the best feelings of their times in amber. They await discovery by the generations that follow.

Even today, “Right Here, Right Now” represents a hope for times when worry and oppression are removed, and everyone feels a lightness of being that wasn’t possible before. It’s also a reminder that it’s possible for people to feel that way about their times and to be hopeful of where the world can go beyond what the powers that be prescribe. The power to wake up from history is still there. If it was true for people then, it can be true for anyone today and in times to come.

Jesus Jones is an active band today. You can learn more about them and what they’re up to at jesusjones.com.

For more on how they wrote “Right Here, Right Now” and their reaction to how it impacted the culture, check out this interview from the Guardian with the song’s writer Mike Edwards, plus keyboardist Iain Baker.

Enjoy!

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