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Mallets Aforethought

Good Vibes: Roy Ayers keeps evolving.

Vibraphonist Roy Ayers influenced

a generation of forward-thinking,

backward-looking hip-hop artists

By Nicky Baxter

On "Borough Check," a track from their hip-jazz excursion Blowout Comb, the Digable Planets use vibraphonist Roy Ayers' "We Live in Brooklyn, Baby" to celebrate their beloved home turf, and Gangstarr's Guru pitches in some smooth jazzmatazz rhymes for good measure. "Borough Check" is only one of many sound bites illustrating the influence of Ayers. Two years ago, Guru, a self-confessed jazz junkie, snatched the vibraphonist from unwarranted anonymity, recording 1993's Jazzmatazz Vol. One with him. A Tribe Called Quest and Brand Nubian, hip-hop vanguardists both, and new-soul divas Mary J. Blige and Vanessa Williams have also come up with new uses for Ayers' old-school jazz-funk.

Or funk-jazz. See, one of the prevailing paradoxes enveloping Ayers' musical legacy is that it fits no single genus. Yet to hip-hop's new breed, he is jazz quintessence. In hardcore improvisational music circles, however, artists like Ayers have been steadily dissed for diluting "The Music" with pop's "impurities." But what pop artist would have the temerity to record albums with Afrobeat renegade Fela Anikulapo Kuti? A longtime fan of jazz, pop, blues and R&B, Ayers incorporates elements of each to come up with a new kind of soul stew. Polydor's Evolution, a two-disc collection of his best cuts, provides a good overview of his method.

Digitally remastered, these tracks range from his best-known pop offering, "Everybody Loves the Sunshine," to the more experimental collaborations with Fela. Sandwiched between are some 30 tunes reflecting Ayers' predilection for making jazz go pop. If bumptious ditties like "Pretty Brown Skin," with its thick slabs of dissonant organ and clamorous percussion, reveal that Ayers has been keeping tabs on the competition (in this case, prime-time War), others suggest that he is a self-made man musically. Emphatically bass-o-centric and designed for dancing, most of the tunes feature Ayers on vocals, vibes and an array of keyboards, backed by a sharply percussive phalanx of brass and strings.

As a singer, Ayers is no threat to Gerald or Eddie Levert but he manages to finesse his way through his mostly self-penned material without causing too much damage. As an instrumentalist, he is on firmer footing. Although his solos are uniformly brief, they command attention, as on the Zappaesque "Fikisha" and the blues-funk instrumental "Change Up the Groove." If Evolution suffers from the inclusion of material from marginal efforts such as the lackluster You Send Me, the album is at the very least an honest effort to bring us up to speed on an acid-jazz progenitor.

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