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Jazz is a conversation—an exchange of ideas between players, as well as between band and audience. Aside from pointing out, via the title’s wry joke, that the genre is very much alive, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge’s Jazz is Dead series has also revealed that jazz is a vital dialogue spanning generations and genres, and in each entry, the duo’s hip-hop, funk, and soul roots engage with venerated players like Roy Ayers, Doug Carn, and Marcos Valle. The most recent entry pairs the duo with reedman Gary Bartz, and it’s their heaviest to date.

Younge and Shaheed Muhammad started by mining Valle’s back catalog for direction and inspiration. Unlike most artists of his stature, Valle is still actively recording and releasing music, but Marcos Valle JID003 is different from all of his others. If spontaneity and improvisation are trademarks of jazz music, then this album stands out in the maestro’s lengthy discography as the closest thing to a jazz album. Valle impressed Shaheed Muhammad with his professionalism and confidence in this new environment with limited time to capture the music: “Marcos is so focused on getting it right. A couple of songs he sat down in the moment and wrote some lyrics about what was actually happening, and that’s how free and open he is.”

Jazz Is Dead is Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad's joint venture project where for #5 they recruit Spiritual Funk/Jazz Innovator Doug Carn for this distinctive Jazz-Hip Hop-Funk-Noir Record. Carn's newest project, his entry in the Jazz Is Dead album series helmed by Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, takes his unique and timeless art and places it within the context of a musical culture that has always taken cues from his ‘70s classics. There's no mistaking the musical mind that created legendary albums like Infant Eyes and Adam's Apple, but the encounter of that with the distinctive jazz-hip hop-funk-noir that is the Younge/Muhammad/JID trademark creates something worthy of comparison to Carn's past work but which could only have been made right now. One can detect nods to musical motifs by Carn's jazz peers that have served as frequent sample fodder, but his compositional and improvisational integrity remain indisputable throughout.

Roy Ayers is joined by Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad for an entire album of new material. Born out of the 'Jazz Is Dead' concert series, which has epitomized a vast demographic connection for years. In February 2018, Roy Ayers performed four sold out shows in Los Angeles as part of the Jazz Is Dead Black History Month series. It wasn’t until 2020 that fans of Ayers discovered that in addition to those shows, the legendary vibraphone player had also recorded an entire album of new material with Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. The 8 tracks on this album testify to the love not only of a legendary musician’s legacy, but to the vitality & necessity of this music and these sounds in the present era, a thread that will likely run throughout all of the upcoming releases from Jazz Is Dead Records.