Jasper Grooves Collective

How does a “jasper groove” sound, you might ask? Hybrid. Diverse. Roots oriented. All of these words come to mind. It’s a sound served up piping hot from a cosmopolitan melting pot of simmering sonic ingredients. It’s an ageless tree whose branches have its roots in soul, blues and jazz but have since expanded, incorporating diverse influences: African rhythms, poetic excursions, syncopated Caribbean seasonings, and forays into hip-hop urban landscapes. That’s all well and good, you might say, but how about breaking it down into one word? “That would be tricky.” Why? Because labels are restrictive, and Jasper Grooves Collective isn’t interested in getting pigeonholed or constrained by narrow definitions. Underlying the project is a commitment to exploration: sonically, poetically, and stylistically. You might call it “exploratory soul” or “globetrotter soul” if you insisted that their style needed a name. In short, the Collective’s sound, while digging deep into the archives of American roots music, is one that is simultaneously always looking forward, reaching to find new territories of sonic exploration. It is also about finding the unique sound that each song needs to embrace its full potential. So what, you might ask, is a “jasper groove?” For starters, jasper grooves are vehicles for storytelling. Like words with melodies shouting out into the silence or melodies without words stuck searching for its poetic embodiment, every story inevitably finds the accompaniment it needs: a reggae vibe, a hip-hop beat, an afrobeat groove, a candomblé inspired rhythm pulsing like the heartbeat of a poem. The possibilities are endless. Jasper, the mineral that inspired this musical collective’s name, is a mineral born from fusion. Its diversity can be traced to the intense volcanic event at its origin. Jasper is an aggregate stone formed from multiple other minerals that were once fused by an event such as through the intense heat of a lava flow. So the Collective’s music, like jasper itself, is synonymous with the surprising blends of color that come about when unexpected influences collide and engage in interplay. What’s more, Jasper Grooves Collective is a project that dances on the margins of composition and improvisation. Whether it’s re-envisioning the songs themselves or trying to delve deeper into the poetic inspiration behind them, they are always looking for ways to perform their music in ways that are fresh and true to the moment. It’s not enough to just play it exactly like it was on the recording. Just as each garlic clove has a freshness that is unique, each song has the potential to be shaped by the unique time/space elements coming together at the particular moment of their performance. The music will continue evolving. As the late great Sun Ra put it: “The earth cannot move without music. The earth moves in a certain rhythm, a certain sound, a certain note. When the music stops the earth will stop and everything upon it will die.”