The passing of acid jazz and Neo soul originator Roy Ayers, 84, hit me, as a mere fan (and not personal friend), pretty deeply.
Ayers died on March 4, but I didn’t learn of his passing until a day later.
So I’m writing this piece not only as a tribute to the man, but also to process my grief.
Ayers was a G.
G is for Godfather, and he is considered such to both the acid jazz and neo-soul sub-genres, two extremely important threads of American music history.
If you’re into psychedelic music, Ayers’ music is a treasure trove of cool funk worth exploring or revisiting.
I’ve narrowed down at least some of the reasons this loss has brought me so much sadness.
It starts with hip-hop, which is where I first became familiar with his music.
When I was a kid, a grade schooler, I was drawn both to hip-hop and thrash metal. Hip-hop was first and even led me to thrash metal, but that’s another story.
Digable Planets’ classic, sophomore LP, Blowout Comb, featured a couple of Ayers samples. The more notable to me was on “Borough Check,” which features the late, legendary emcee Guru, who also was one of many artists to collaborate with Ayers.
Ayers’ badass, almost dark “We Live in Brooklyn, Baby,” provides the loop, which was sampled with a bit of genius.
Guru’s Jazzmatazz project and Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti produced were two notable collaborations with Ayers.
The hip-hop aspect, and its place in my life’s progression of music appreciation, gets me to a very important relationship with my only and little brother, whom I share a lot of music taste with. He gave me a copy of Wu-Tang’s “C.R.E.A.M.”, about 30 years ago and my crate-digging vinyl obsession was born, and I’d also grown up with my parents’ collection.
A side note to the Wu-Tang Clan: Ayers performed with GZA and a live band a few years back at New York’s Blue Note and GZA continues to tour with a live band, the Phunky Nomads (and has been touring with jam-funk band Lettuce). The melding of hip-hop and live bands has long given me great joy.
But my deep dive into improvisational jazz started out with finding the originals that the best hip-hop beat makers were sampling in the 90s.
I have long believed that the 70s was the golden era of psychedelic music (even if the 60s were significant because of both Miles Davis and the Grateful Dead), and the proof is in the jazz and early psychedelic rock ranks. I believe them to be the foundation of the most powerful psychedelic music we’ve ever heard.
I don’t hate. I love music from every decade and era from the 60s on, up to this day. There’s so much amazing stuff coming out these days.
This music has inspired my career, even when I wrote mainly about conservation. Music has always been deeply important and personal to me.
And that’s why this hurts so much, because we’ve lost a lot of amazing artists over the decades, many too soon: Jerry Garcia and Jimi Hendrix are two that I think about often. I wish they both could have lived longer. There were a couple of artists in 2019 (Jeff Austin and Neal Casal) whose loss both deeply affected me.
Thankfully, Roy Ayers had a long, beautiful life. His impact and gifts were great, even if he’s a complete unknown to many psychedelic music lovers.
Thankfully, that music is there, recorded for eternity.
It’s the best medicine for this pain I feel, and I hear the influence in a psychedelic soul playlist I have been working on and listening to today. The music has soothed my soul.
It’s there for you, too, regardless if you’ve been listening for years, or never heard of him before.