"Chan's Song" (Hancock). Herbie Hancock, piano; Christian McBride, bass and Jack Dejohnette on drums.Herbie Hancock and Jack DeJohnette's musical relationship spans five decades of deep listening and fearless exploration. Though they never formed a permanent band, their intersections at crucial moments reveal how two master musicians expand each other's creative horizons.
Their first major collaboration came in the late 1960s, when both were moving beyond traditional post-bop forms. Hancock, recently out of Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet, was experimenting with electric keyboards and freer harmony. DeJohnette, having played with Charles Lloyd and then Miles himself, was redefining jazz drumming through combinations of swing, rock pulse, and open texture. On The Prisoner (1969), DeJohnette's brushwork on "I Have a Dream" creates atmospheric space that allows Hancock's Rhodes to shimmer and breathe. Rather than marking time, DeJohnette suggests it, creating elastic rhythmic environments where Hancock's harmonies can stretch and contract organically. This approach continued on Fat Albert Rotunda, where DeJohnette's loose, melodic drumming gave Hancock's writing extra dimension.
DeJohnette appeared with Hancock's Mwandishi sextet during its formative period, contributing to the group's exploration of collective improvisation shaped by electronics and African rhythm. Though not a permanent member, his presence in those early performances helped establish the ensemble's approach to treating rhythm and harmony as fluid landscapes rather than fixed grids. DeJohnette's sense of pulse—simultaneously flowing and propulsive—matched Hancock's harmonic risk-taking perfectly. Together they demonstrated that swing could exist in free time, that structure and freedom weren't opposites but complementary forces.
Through the 1970s and beyond, they moved along parallel paths through fusion, funk, and acoustic revivals. While Hancock led the Headhunters and DeJohnette formed Directions and Special Edition, both groups shared similar aims: blending groove with freedom, accessibility with adventure. They reconnected often onstage—Hancock sitting in with DeJohnette's ensembles, DeJohnette joining Hancock's projects, both meeting at festivals and all-star sessions. Each reunion revealed their enduring chemistry. Hancock's phrasing naturally invites space; DeJohnette listens and paints around it instead of driving through it, creating dialogue rather than accompaniment.
Their duo and trio concerts in the 2000s and 2010s showcased this relationship at its most intimate. Exploring standards and spontaneous composition, they demonstrated how decades of mutual understanding translate into telepathic communication. DeJohnette's touch in these settings—brushes whispering, cymbals coloring, snare accents barely there—lets Hancock float, then surge. A performance at the Montreal Jazz Festival in 2007 captured this perfectly: during an improvised passage, DeJohnette dropped to near silence, using only his fingers on the snare while Hancock explored the furthest reaches of harmonic possibility on acoustic piano. Then, sensing the moment, both musicians erupted together into cascading polyrhythms without any visible cue—pure musical conversation made manifest.
What makes their relationship extraordinary isn't any single album or tour but their shared philosophy. Both treat improvisation as spiritual practice rather than display. Both dissolve boundaries between rhythm and melody, understanding that a drummer can sing and a pianist can be percussive. Each trusts silence as much as sound, knowing that space creates tension and release. Most importantly, they don't accompany each other; they co-compose in real time, anticipating motion, completing thoughts, building architecture from air.
This is the legacy of two musicians who learned from Miles Davis that freedom without empathy becomes chaos, while empathy without courage turns stale. When Hancock and DeJohnette play together, you hear the balance they've spent lifetimes perfecting: intellect meeting intuition, structure embracing release, sound dancing with stillness. Their relationship stands as testament to jazz's highest ideal—that true communication happens not when musicians play at each other, but when they listen so deeply that individual voices merge into collective truth.
Nico Geelen
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