The Big Picture and the Closeup

As the sun was sliding down the horizon, carrying her away, the song in my cassette player was Teach Me Tonight, in Al Jarreau’s then-recently-released version. I kept replaying it, and it made me feel a little better.

The big draw, of course, was the main title and the rest of the source music and score by Herbie Hancock. Unbeknownst to me, Hancock was providing me a brief (far too brief) glimpse of the main current of jazz at that moment: modal jazz. If you listen to that main title, you’ll hear that about half of that brief minute-and-a-half is taken up with powerful rhythm guitar and then blasting trumpets doing complicated things that resonate with the G-major 7th and G-minor 7th chords Herbie Hancock is laying down on the piano. This willingness to work away at single chords for extended musical passages, along with not worrying much about orienting entire pieces toward single keys, is the hallmark of modal jazz. For me, a marker had been laid down.