Released the year the 80th anniversary of Blue Note was celebrated,
Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes took pains not only to tell the story of the venerated record label but to illustrate how its sound and sensibility were manifested in modern ways in the 21st century. On the accompanying double-disc soundtrack, the scales tip toward history. Over the course of 21 tracks, many of the label's seminal sessions are sampled, including dates led by
Bud Powell,
Thelonious Monk,
John Coltrane,
Miles Davis,
Art Blakey,
Cannonball Adderley,
Lee Morgan,
Horace Silver, and
Lou Donaldson. The latter makes a great impression in the film, as do
Herbie Hancock and
Wayne Shorter, two titans of the 1960s who function as a fulcrum in the film, tying the past to the present. Part of this is how they jam with some of the label's contemporary stars in a session that's documented in the film and represented by two cuts from the Blue Note All-Stars here. "Bayyinah" and "Masquerlero" hail back to the modernist sound of the mid-'60s but also bear the imprint of funk and fusion, elements that make the cuts seem bracingly contemporary and help underscore the narrative goal in the soundtrack. Comparatively,
Us3's jazz-rap "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)" seems passe, but the '90s smash is the label's biggest hit, and helped revive the Blue Note imprint so
Norah Jones and
Robert Glasper could thrive in the 21st century. Those two are here, and while this may not amount to a lot of modern music, when heard in the context of the rest of
Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes, they help underscore the film's point that Blue Note doesn't belong to the past: it still has a sound and sensibility that flourish in the present.