After decades of decline, the city of Detroit has regained its former glory in recent years, a renaissance with a soundtrack all its own.
Motown’s spectacular musical legacy, which stretches back long before Berry Gordy’s “sound of young America” transformed the Motor City’s moniker into an international brand, is rooted in jazz but encompasses pop, rock, R&B, funk and hip-hop.
Acclaimed bassist, producer, composer and bandleader Don Was, co-founder of Detroit funk rock band Was (Not Was) and president of famed jazz label Blue Note Records since 2011, is doing his part to keep the movement going.
He brings his Pan-Detroit Ensemble to the SFJAZZ Center September 26-27 before heading to the Monterey Jazz Festival, where the talented combo will close the Garden Stage Saturday night.
He’s been touting the music of his hometown for years (it was widely performed with his Detroit All-Star Revue in 2018), but these days he’s on a roll, propelled by studies like music journalist Mark Stryker’s essential 2019 book, “Jazz From Detroit.”
“I’ve had conversations in the last three weeks with three different entities that are trying to make films about Detroit music,” Was said. “There’s definitely something in the zeitgeist. It’s just unprecedented the amount of great music that’s coming out of this city.”
Drawing on the city’s talent pool, the Pan-Detroit Ensemble weaves similar musical idioms into a high-octane presentation inspired by Detroit icons such as bluesman John Lee Hooker, hard-bop trumpeter Donald Byrd, funk legend George Clinton, radical rocker Mitch Ryder and proto-punks The Stooges. The group is directly linked to Eminem via Puerto Rican keyboardist Luis Resto, who has been a key collaborator with the Detroit rap superstar since the release of “The Eminem Show” in 2002.
“I hired him for his first session with Was (Not Was) when he was a teenager,” Was said. “He’s probably the biggest producer in America, he’s worked with Eminem, Post Malone, Jay-Z. But this band is not a producer project. It’s more improvised and relaxed.”
The three-piece horn section includes tenor saxophonist Dave McMurray, who has released two Blue Note albums interpreting Grateful Dead songs through a jazz prism. It’s no coincidence that Was was captured by the Dead’s gravitational pull as a founding and touring member of Bob Weir and the Wolf Bros.
The band’s secret weapon (well, secret until she opens her mouth) is singer Steffanie Christi’an, a Detroit star steeped in the sounds of the Motor City since birth. A hard rock singer who masters a wide range of African-American musical idioms, “she’s led a super interesting life, and it shows in her singing,” Was said. “She’s got a lot of experience, and I find it impossible to pigeonhole her by genre. That’s the ultimate compliment.”
He credits SFJAZZ artistic director Terence Blanchard with providing the impetus to bring the Pan-Detroit Ensemble together when the trumpeter/composer programmed Was as part of a series presented by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The invitation was extended two years in advance, but six months before last May’s concert, “I still don’t have a band,” Was said.
Considered a producer and label head, he looked at what sets him apart as an artist, believing that “what makes you different is your superpower,” he said.
“You have to play to your strengths and there’s something I can do that Robert Glasper and Jason Moran can’t do. Those guys are great musicians, but they didn’t have Funkadelic and the Stooges playing at their high school. I’m a Detroit guy, I figure you just have to go home, be yourself and surround yourself with like-minded people.”
With his unique status as executive producer and musician, Was has landed a series of high-profile contracts. But he also adapts to the times with a repertoire that covers a wide range.
“They’re covering a lot of musical territory with a rich repertoire,” said Darin Atwater, the polymath pianist, composer and conductor who has hired the Pan-Detroit Ensemble for his first year as artistic director of the Monterey Jazz Festival. (He’s only the third person to hold the post in 67 seasons.)
“To know Don as the guy from Blue Note and to see him make his own band with his own defined sound is really something. That said, it’s not easy to know where to place him. In a live setting, there’s so much flexibility, and I love the way this band grabs a groove when it comes together.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
DON WAS
With the Pan-Detroit Ensemble
At SFJAZZ: 7:30 p.m. Sept. 26-27; SFJAZZ Miner Auditorium, San Francisco; $35-$115 (livestream Sept. 27 for $7); www.sfjazz.org
At the Monterey Jazz Festival: 9:30 p.m. Sept. 28; Monterey Jazz Festival Garden Stage; $88; festival runs Sept. 27-29 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds; montereyjazzfestival.org
