Najee Plays Songs From The Key Of Life: A Tribute To Stevie Wonder CD

 This is a love-fest between Najee and Stevie W.
This album cooks. Just looking at the names on the liner notes tells you something would have to go radically wrong for this album to fail. Nothing went wrong. From the haunting flute solo on “As” to the rocking ensemble on “I Wish,” this is a rocking but reverent tribute to the music of Stevie Wonder. Najee’s mastery of the soprano sax belies that it is not an effortless instrument to play, and especially difficult to play in tune. Najee embraces the melody lines and floats with them. There are many who say this is not legitimate jazz, but let them. It’s better than that, it’s a masterpiece and unlike “real” jazz is exquisitely unflawed. The liner notes also indicate this album was not made overnight. It sounds as if it really took “work” to create a “work of art.” Before this, I liked some of the things I heard by Najee, but I can’t hear enough of “najee PLAYS SONGS FROM THE KEY OF LIFE.” To my mind, this is a high-water mark in “contemporary jazz,” or “contemporary instrumental,” or whatever you choose to call the genre.
Submitted by John (Manteca, CA.)
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