Christian McBride’s New Jawn: Tiny Desk Concert

Suraya Mohamed | August 30, 2023 The start is chaotic for sure, but that’s the intent. Two minutes of craziness is an accurate description of the intro and outro of “Head Bedlam.“ “A sonic description of us looking at Twitter particularly during the pandemic,“ leader Christian McBride explains after the first tune of his Tiny Desk set, “when you put your phone down, that’s when the groove starts.“ The groove is funky too. For almost eight years, McBride and his bandmates — trumpeter Josh Evans, Marcus Strickland on woodwinds and drummer Nasheet Waits — have been playing exploratory post-bop music without a polyphonic instrument — one that can easily play more than one note at a time — like a piano or a guitar. This makes for a genuinely distinct sound, one that’s less dependent on strict harmonic understructures and more creative interplay between instrumentalists. Strickland wrote the soulful second song, “Prime,“ which is also the title tr