Happy International Jazz Day 2020! After a spell of beautiful spring sunshine, the British weather has gone back to its usual rainy habits. What better way therefore to celebrate with another Herbie track released a couple of years prior to his funky ‘Hang Up Your Hang Ups’.
‘Rain Dance’ is the opening track on Hancock’s 1973 album Sextant, the third and final album in his ‘Mwandishi’ series. During this period, Hancock and his band explored and built upon the fusion approach pioneered by Miles Davis on albums In A Silent Way (1969) and Bitches Brew (1970). The music on Sextant is some of the most ‘out there’ music Hancock has recorded in his prolific career. From the electronic opener of ‘Rain Dance’ to the offbeat funk of ‘Hidden Shadows’ and 19 minute epic ‘Hornets’, the music on Sextant was a departure from the cool, swinging Blue Note sound of his 60s work. In contrast, the album is rooted in the experimental and avant-garde and signalled the start of the jazz funk era that was just around the corner.
One of the defining features of this period in Hancock’s career was his fearless and pioneering inclusion of electronics in his music which resulted in much disapproval from the narrow-minded jazz critics of the time. Little did they know that later that year Hancock would record his jazz funk masterpiece Head Hunters, one of the best selling jazz albums of all time, which greatly widened jazz’s mainstream appeal.
On listening to ‘Rain Dance’, it’s easy to understand why so many critics were up in arms about Hancock’s new musical direction. The music sounds alien, like it has been beamed down from a far off planet, a quality reinforced in the psychedelic album artwork by Robert Springett. The track is built around a repeating motif played by Hancock on an electric piano, run through an Echoplex delay, accompanied by synth wizard Dr. Patrick Gleeson on the ARP synthesizer. The result is hypnotic and echoes the similar approach used by Miles a couple of years prior where the band would riff on one musical idea for long extended passages.
What’s striking about ‘Rain Dance’ is how futuristic the music sounds even by today’s standards. Much electronic music of the 60s and 70s often sounds very much of its time but to my ears, ‘Rain Dance’ has an otherworldly and futuristic appeal with the synthesizers echoing those used in certain genres of dance music today.
In a short video I watched this morning, Hancock extolled the virtues of jazz and International Jazz Day. He encourages us to embrace and nurture the values of jazz which include ‘freedom of expression’, ‘peace’, ‘dialogue among people’ and ‘human dignity’. For me, ‘Rain Dance’ represents the essence of ‘jazz’ in that it illustrates musical freedom combined with a forward-thinking and progressive approach to music-making. Hancock recognised that he couldn’t get stuck in the musical trends of yesterday and so fearlessly set his eye on a future full of new musical approaches and possibilities.
As Hancock famously said: ‘Don’t be afraid to expand yourself, to step out of your comfort zone. That’s where the joy and the adventure lie.’ An important precept not just for music but for life in general.
Find more experimental sounds from Herbie in our ‘Kings Of The Keys’ and ‘Fusion Intrusion’ playlists over on Spotify.
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