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kottke.org posts about Snarky Puppy

An Epic Improvisation

Hahaha you thought I was kidding about this being a Larnell Lewis fan site today, but I’ve got one more video for you. This is a live recording of a song by the jazz fusion band Snarky Puppy and โ€” hold on, before you wander off having heard that collection of words, let me preface this by saying that I am not really a jam band person or a jazz fusion person and I thought this was pretty amazing.

So anyway, legend has it that Snarky Puppy were all set to record a live record in Holland and their regular drummer couldn’t make it, so they called Lewis to fill in. He learns the music on the plane ride over to Europe and โ€” what? yeah, he learned the music on the plane ride over and then when he gets there…just watch the video above to see what happens.

I admit I didn’t quite get what was so special about this at first, but around the 4:20 mark things really start to get interesting and by the end I was grinning like an idiot. Cory Henry does the keyboard solo and Lewis backs him on it like they’ve been playing together for three lifetimes. As one of the YouTube commenters put it:

I just discovered this about 2 hours ago… I’ve been a musician for 20+ years… After watching this performance, I’ve now been a musician for about 2 hours.

(via @caleb, who noted the many reactions to this video on YouTube)