Jazzoetry

Poetry that sings, screams, jumps, and jives like an unfettered sax solo or an unstoppable bass run? Surely that's the dream of every literature professor, because — let's face it — if all verse sounded as good as these Jazzoetry Essentials, no one would ever want to leave school. Head straight to the roots of the movement with a series of lilting licks from one of the original jazz poets, Langston Hughes, whose first collection, The Weary Blues was published in 1926, then soak up the eloquent militancy of the Last Poets, who coined the term jazzoetry with the track of the same name on 1972's Chastisement. Rappers, salute your roots. The poetry of the soul and the street keeps on flowin' . . . to Next Steps.

Minds were expanded at an alarming rate in 1993, when alternative hip-hop renegades Digable Planets arrived with debut album Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time & Space), which brilliantly embodied the spirit, verbal dexterity, and sheer cool of jazzoetry — their incisive yet relaxed rhymes, laid over a Sonny Rollins sample on "Time & Space (A New Refutation Of)," have the power to flip us into a parallel dimension. Meanwhile, Harlem-born poet and teacher Sekou Sundiata (who died in 2007) rolls soulfully towards profound insight on "The Sound of the Memory" from Longstoryshort, released on the Righteous Babe label run by one of his former students, Ani DiFranco. West Coast jazzoetry features prominently in Deep Cuts.

The parameters of jazzoetry are fluid and wide, so long as the core elements of soulful expression and lyrical substance are present in abundance. Here we've set the abstract rap of L.A.'s Busdriver (a.k.a. Regan John Farquhar) — marvel at the head of steam he picks up with Aceyalone on "Jazz Fingers" from 2002's Temporary Forever — alongside fellow Angelenos, the Watts Prophets, who were kickin' it with pieces like "Tenements" even before the Last Poets arrived bearing the word jazzoetry, and Madlib side-project, Quasimoto, which gave us the scattergun underground classic The Unseen, featuring "Jazz Cats Pt. 1." Montreal's Ian Ferrier echoes back from the East with the spiraling, trippy "No Blue Guitar."

African-American street-poets and musicians, professional or otherwise, have been toasting and signifyin' for eons, but it shouldn't be forgotten that just before hip-hop made its first forays into the wider public consciousness at the end of the '70s, the Last Poets fused jazz, funk, and poetry into a kind of proto-rap they called "jazzoetry." And the spirit of their groundbreaking cuts, rather than being lost in the deluge of rap styles that followed, has been kept alive ever since . . . hence this collection of cultured Essentials, which draws on the various talents of Gil Scott-Heron ("The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" still adrenalizes like it did back in '72), Herbie Hancock (caressing the keys behind Leonard Cohen on "The Jungle Line"), and Common (joining forces with the Last Poets and Kanye West on 2005's "The Corner").