After opening with a torrentially jagged brass-powered blues, Howard Wiley threw down the gauntlet. On Saturday, May 24, at Miner Auditorium, the Oakland saxophonist concluded his two-season stint as an SFJAZZ resident artistic director with “Love, Kale, Pride & Revolution — California Love Series Part II,” and the performance seemed eager to sum up what amounted to a master seminar in the malleability of Black American music.
Like a magician explaining an impending illusion yet pulling it off without detection, Wiley introduced one of his trademark mashups, a seamless melding of Duke Ellington, Jefferson Airplane, and Oakland hip-hop combo and West Coast rap pioneers Digital Underground.
With a fierce funk beat laid down by drummer Dante “Taz” Roberson and electric bassist Elijah Green, the band reimagined the growling fanfare of Ellington’s 1927 Cotton Club anthem “Black and Tan Fantasy” before sliding into “Somebody to Love” belted by R&B powerhouse China Moses. Jumping up from the piano, Kev Choice transformed the Airplane’s angst into a thumping party as Wiley transitioned into a hip-hop beat weaving in and out of “The Humpty Dance.” Abracadabra! With a shake of the booty, three disparate tunes were now made one.
Wiley has been a standout on the Bay Area music scene since he was a teenager in the mid-1990s, and he’s taken on the mantle of mentor, sage, and prophet of jazz. More specifically, jazz as a populist art form that thrives best when its shared roots with blues, funk, R&B, soul, hip-hop, and gospel live close to the surface.
Each piece on Saturday illustrated the potent potential of this mission. Martin Luther McCoy, a vocalist who continues to reveal new facets, sweetly crooned “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and was answered by the distilled lyricism of Los Angeles trumpeter Tatiana Tate’s solo.
Backed only by L.J. Holoman’s organ, Wiley played the opening lines of Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life,” which transitioned into McCoy’s gospel-powered “Fear or Faith.” Trombonist Robin Eubanks, a former member of the SFJAZZ Collective, contributed a series of thrilling solos while providing heft and gravity to the surging three-piece horn section. The band’s secret sauce was rhythm guitarist Tim Landis, a veteran of John Turk’s Glide Ensemble whose understated accents provided the essential torque for each groove. By the end of the show, the dance floor was packed, and a conspicuously large contingent of teenagers bounced to the beat at stage left.
As if closing the circle he opened in 2024 with his first show as resident artistic director, “Saturday Night to Sunday Morning,” Wiley brought up vocalist Camille Thurman and drummer Darrell Green, a childhood friend from the neighborhood. The couple had been featured last year in the Joe Henderson Lab weaving together nightclub revelry with worshipful fervor, and here, Thurman raised the roof on Wiley’s rollicking gospel number “I Know I Got God.”
In his often profane patter between tunes, Wiley tends to mock his faith, but his commitment to the music and culture out of which it emerges couldn’t be more serious. With “California Love,” he offered the Golden State a big funky embrace, celebrating the musical bling that can keep us dancing even through the most trying times.
