From The Dancehall To The Battlefield And Beyond With Jason Moran

[DudeAsInCool]

Pianist Jason Moran does things on his own terms. Since leaving Blue Note Records almost a decade ago (his final album for them was 2014’s All Rise: A Joyful Elegy For Fats Waller), he’s become the Artistic Director for Jazz at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and started Yes Records, releasing his own music on Bandcamp since 2016. He charges $20 for his albums, which is about twice what most people charge, and when I asked him about that in 2017, he said, “I think about music as, ‘What do you value it at?’…I could charge $50 for this, and if a person wants it, they want it. If they don’t, they don’t. It’s totally fine…The way music has been sold, this thing where I should be able to stream the entire thing before I buy it is unfair, and I think it’s unfair that musicians should fall into the mode where they would do that automatically. I don’t believe in that.”

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