Everyone should listen to From the Plantation to the Penitentiary at least once. And after the first listen, you’ll probably want to listen a couple more times. Wynton Marsalis is the greatest jazz musician of the last 25 years and maybe the most audible and respected voice in the history of jazz, period. When he talks, people listen. What he has to say on Plantation is a mouthful. It’s his first release of original work since Hurricane Katrina destroyed the Nola-boy’s hometown. He’s mad – not just mad at American domestic policies, but the world in general. And, as has been the case since hip hop took on a more street mentality, he’s upset with how wayward the hip hop generation is. He’s also frustrated with how the marchers and radicals and do-gooders of the 60s, specifically those that were protesting on college campuses back then, have become listless and institutionalized now that they’re the generation in power. His spoken word on “Where Y’all At”, the album’s closer, is spewed in near rage.
Since he stepped on the scene in the early 80s and drew a line in the sand against, of all people, the great Miles Davis, Wynton has been a fan of righteous indignation and his own personal judgments. Plantation is an album full of this. “Supercapitalism” features singer Jennifer Sannon on the hook singing rapidly, “Gimme that, gimme this, gimme that.” Yes, Wynton, Americans are mindless, hyper-consumers. “Love and Broken Hearts” laments the death of romance and chivalry and shames rappers who call women “b******” and “hos”. The title track is the album’s big boy. Wynton is basically saying that Black America has traded slave chains for gold chains. It’s all some heavy stuff and we should clap our hands and celebrate a heavyweight artist speaking his mind this freely, even if it comes off curmudgeonly.
But once you get past everything Wynton intended with this album and his sociopolitical rants (many that we’ve heard before), you are left with the music. And jazz, more than any other genre, is about the music, the musicianship. On a fundamental level, the theme of Plantation is very gimmicky. We get Sannon singing easy-listening hooks, Wynton blowing a very modest trumpet and his sidemen – namely drummer Ali Jackson, one of the great young voices in jazz – being held hostage. Plantation is supposed to be a frustrated black man calling for a change, yet you don’t hear that pain or struggle in Sannon’s voice. And why is Jackson playing with brushes half the time, like he’s at a piano bar? To make Plantation a lasting statement and to really drive home his point, Wynton’s theme would have had to feature musicianship as angry, frustrated and inspired.
Albums like What’s Going On? and Joe Henderson’s Multiple were powerful social critiques; so was Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Million To Hold Us Back. The difference with those classic albums made by iconic artists is that the music was insane, too. Although Wynton is an icon and Plantation had the potential to be a classic, landmark album of the early 21st Century, it misses the mark.
