The entire building began
to shake beneath my feet. It was a massive tremor that made me forget where I
was momentarily. In fact, I almost had convinced myself that there was some
sort of minor earthquake while standing in the Vega Theater in Copenhagen, Denmark
watching the Youngblood Brass Band. But it wasn’t until the tuba player stepped
forward and revealed himself under the luminous center stage light that I
realized the reverberation causing the seeming tectonic shift was the sound
blasting forth from his massive instrument. The sound system was not
particularly loud, or at least I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary
until that point. But this told me one thing: the tuba didn’t need a bunch of
speaker technology to augment its sonic effect on a crowd. It was capable of
standing on its own.
Youngblood is a group of
musicians that take pride in their roots from the African American-New Orleans
Jazz movement of the early 20th century. But this New Orleans Brass Band (NOBB) vibe is
absolutely not what Youngblood emits at all. Part of the reason that Youngblood
is so successful and has been for over fifteen years is that they have reshaped
their sound with an evolving agenda. They have reinvented what brass is to them
in one of the most inventive ways possible. Youngblood is one of (if not the
only) brass band that fuses the genres of NOBB and Hip-Hop/Rap. As a result,
despite their name, Youngblood is not a traditional brass band or a NOBB.
Youngblood is challenging the status quo as to how brass can be performed and
who listens to it.
To really instill the idea that Youngblood is not a traditional brass band, it is integral to compare their work to the standard NOBB sound that they claim to hail from. After their opener, lead man David Henzie-Skogen introduced the next song as “one of the old New Orleans Brass Band standards that inspired them to do what they do”. They continued to play a mardi gras tune that sounded nothing like the rest of the songs on their setlist in any way. The standard NOBB sound is one that is heavily intertwined with the jazz movement. The format of the New Orleans archetype (classic example below) is one that features each brass instrument as a soloist to some degree. Similarly to jazz, the dialogue between the voice and the instrumentation is a collaborative one and often implements a repeated response, which involves everyone in the band and perhaps even the audience in some way. Even without vocals on NOBB tracks, the dialogue between the different instruments is a complicated one. Each brass instrument is playing its own improvised supplemental harmony or melody while one instrument takes the solo. In addition, in standard brass band music, the drums are merely for rhythmic stability. There are rarely any percussive embellishments and the classic formula consists of the hi-hat, snare and bass drum interplaying to form a groovy swing beat with an occasional fill.
The Youngblood creates a sound that is so far removed from this NOBB standard, that calling themselves a brass band is in the traditional sense is a hard thing for me to do. And this is because the aforementioned formula created by the classic NOBBs is not followed at all. To address the points in the previous paragraph, Youngblood does feature each of their musicians in solo form, but the improvised dialogue happening beneath the solo is close to none. The melodies unfolding underneath (when they happen at all) are simple and often consist of unvaryingly simple brass rhythms. A majority of the time, the only sound underneath their brass solos consists of intricate drum beats. In addition, more often than not, all of the supplemental melodies underneath the soloist are played in unison and this carries through all of their music. Youngblood truly enjoys and implements the loud, brass unison to their advantage to realize a bigger sound. The interplay between the vocals and the instrumentation for Youngblood is not nearly as collaborative. The rapping tracks heavily feature the soloist Henzie-Skogen with the rest of the band in the background intermittently revealing their sound. The lyrics and rhythms are inaccessible to the audience and are too individualized to resemble anything close to the call and response, collaborative sound of NOBBs.Perhaps the most striking difference between Youngblood and other brass bands is their use of percussion. In many of the Youngblood songs, percussion is not only the rhythmic stability, but it is the most important element of the song. Drum and percussion solos frequent their live sets and the complicated rhythms carry over into the arranged sheet music for the other brass instruments as well. The YBB takes advantage of percussive sound and completely abandon the swing rhythm of standard brass. All of these differences can be observed in their hit: Brooklyn.
Despite this, I am not saying Youngblood is an abomination to New Orleans Brass. They are just very different. They represent a modernized take on brass instrumentation. It was clear to me throughout the show that the thing that sets Youngblood apart is its approach to the brass music scene. Their fans and followers identify Youngblood more as a hip-hop group than they do a brass group. This is the most prolific difference between YBB and other contemporary brass bands. The intensely complicated and staccato-like, rhythmic sounds of songs like Brooklyn and Camouflage were more likely to make the crowd groove to the “sick” beat than it did make them want to grab a plate of gumbo and move to New Orleans. The brass sound (chords, progressions, dynamics) is undoubtedly there in every one of their arrangements; it is just reinvented in a way that creates their own genre of brass.
Their encore song expertly summed up this concept. They gave each other silent nods and charming smiles before embarking on a musical journey of the R&B classic: Killing Me Softly. I found this interesting because even though they chose to perform a song that wasn’t even theirs, they had every single person in the Vega Theater moving their feet and embracing this song (at least for those 5 minutes) as if it were an original brass song. Youngblood may have had to sacrifice a lot of their original New Orleans sound to get where they are now, but it was because of these sacrifices they were able to become more accessible to millions of listeners who may not have previously been brass fans. Their name alone is cleverer than their encore choice. Youngblood is not a traditional brass band. But in the same way they convinced me that Killing Me Softly was a brass standard, they have convinced millions that they belong in the brass band genre by adding those two words at the end. Despite their different, innovative and arguably separate sound, they stand alone atop the genre that they helped to augment.
To really instill the idea that Youngblood is not a traditional brass band, it is integral to compare their work to the standard NOBB sound that they claim to hail from. After their opener, lead man David Henzie-Skogen introduced the next song as “one of the old New Orleans Brass Band standards that inspired them to do what they do”. They continued to play a mardi gras tune that sounded nothing like the rest of the songs on their setlist in any way. The standard NOBB sound is one that is heavily intertwined with the jazz movement. The format of the New Orleans archetype (classic example below) is one that features each brass instrument as a soloist to some degree. Similarly to jazz, the dialogue between the voice and the instrumentation is a collaborative one and often implements a repeated response, which involves everyone in the band and perhaps even the audience in some way. Even without vocals on NOBB tracks, the dialogue between the different instruments is a complicated one. Each brass instrument is playing its own improvised supplemental harmony or melody while one instrument takes the solo. In addition, in standard brass band music, the drums are merely for rhythmic stability. There are rarely any percussive embellishments and the classic formula consists of the hi-hat, snare and bass drum interplaying to form a groovy swing beat with an occasional fill.
The Youngblood creates a sound that is so far removed from this NOBB standard, that calling themselves a brass band is in the traditional sense is a hard thing for me to do. And this is because the aforementioned formula created by the classic NOBBs is not followed at all. To address the points in the previous paragraph, Youngblood does feature each of their musicians in solo form, but the improvised dialogue happening beneath the solo is close to none. The melodies unfolding underneath (when they happen at all) are simple and often consist of unvaryingly simple brass rhythms. A majority of the time, the only sound underneath their brass solos consists of intricate drum beats. In addition, more often than not, all of the supplemental melodies underneath the soloist are played in unison and this carries through all of their music. Youngblood truly enjoys and implements the loud, brass unison to their advantage to realize a bigger sound. The interplay between the vocals and the instrumentation for Youngblood is not nearly as collaborative. The rapping tracks heavily feature the soloist Henzie-Skogen with the rest of the band in the background intermittently revealing their sound. The lyrics and rhythms are inaccessible to the audience and are too individualized to resemble anything close to the call and response, collaborative sound of NOBBs.Perhaps the most striking difference between Youngblood and other brass bands is their use of percussion. In many of the Youngblood songs, percussion is not only the rhythmic stability, but it is the most important element of the song. Drum and percussion solos frequent their live sets and the complicated rhythms carry over into the arranged sheet music for the other brass instruments as well. The YBB takes advantage of percussive sound and completely abandon the swing rhythm of standard brass. All of these differences can be observed in their hit: Brooklyn.
Despite this, I am not saying Youngblood is an abomination to New Orleans Brass. They are just very different. They represent a modernized take on brass instrumentation. It was clear to me throughout the show that the thing that sets Youngblood apart is its approach to the brass music scene. Their fans and followers identify Youngblood more as a hip-hop group than they do a brass group. This is the most prolific difference between YBB and other contemporary brass bands. The intensely complicated and staccato-like, rhythmic sounds of songs like Brooklyn and Camouflage were more likely to make the crowd groove to the “sick” beat than it did make them want to grab a plate of gumbo and move to New Orleans. The brass sound (chords, progressions, dynamics) is undoubtedly there in every one of their arrangements; it is just reinvented in a way that creates their own genre of brass.
Their encore song expertly summed up this concept. They gave each other silent nods and charming smiles before embarking on a musical journey of the R&B classic: Killing Me Softly. I found this interesting because even though they chose to perform a song that wasn’t even theirs, they had every single person in the Vega Theater moving their feet and embracing this song (at least for those 5 minutes) as if it were an original brass song. Youngblood may have had to sacrifice a lot of their original New Orleans sound to get where they are now, but it was because of these sacrifices they were able to become more accessible to millions of listeners who may not have previously been brass fans. Their name alone is cleverer than their encore choice. Youngblood is not a traditional brass band. But in the same way they convinced me that Killing Me Softly was a brass standard, they have convinced millions that they belong in the brass band genre by adding those two words at the end. Despite their different, innovative and arguably separate sound, they stand alone atop the genre that they helped to augment.
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