Makaya McCraven – The Rhythm Scientist

Now that we've reached the midpoint of 2026, a year that has proven rich in events both large and small, joyous and sad, mainstream and niche, cutting across audiences as well as speaking to specific circles of devotees, we can say with confidence that Makaya McCraven is a presence destined to leave an important, indelible mark both on record and in the live circuit that has crisscrossed our peninsula in recent months. Buoyed by the acclaim garnered by the lush “In These Times” and by the monumental recap that is “Off The Record”, almost a dialogue between the musician and his own decade-long path of research, the “beat scientist” toured Italy before summer for three dates at Santeria in Milan, at Teatro Asioli for Correggio Jazz, and at Teatro Comunale in Vicenza, as part of the Vicenza Jazz festival. McCraven literally enchanted audiences with fresh, engaging sets, just as he had on other occasions, from the magnificent performance at Club to Club in autumn 2022 to the opening concert of the 49th edition of the Roma Jazz Festival in November 2025. In this latest run of three shows, which we caught on May 13th in Milan, Makaya — joined by Marquis Hill on trumpet, Junius Paul (formerly of Tortoise) on electric bass, and a young but spectacular talent, Mike King, on keys — plumbed every level of his energetic arsenal, drawing together the threads of a journey that began with the now-classic “Universal Beings”, continued with its expansion “Universal Beings E&F Sides”, then with an intriguing duo album alongside French trumpeter Antoine Berjeaut, and also with a modernist reinvention of pages from the repertoire of Gil Scott-Heron, such as “We’re New Again”. Then came the breakthrough of “In These Times”, which drew sustenance both from the spiritual nomadism of the record with Berjeaut and from his study of Gil Scott-Heron's repertoire; as much from the editing work done on the improvisations for the E and F “sides” of “Universal Beings” as from a fruitful exploration of the compositional possibilities offered by orchestral arrangement. All of it in pursuit of that alchemy Makaya prefers to call “organic beat music” rather than jazz, and which finds its perfect expression on “Off The Record”. This isn't a matter of definitions, nor of turning his back on the jazz tradition, but rather a firm assertion of creative freedom and of the possibility of venturing into territories that pure jazz grammar wouldn't countenance, not even in its most free-form variants. Organic beat music is characterized, on one hand, by rhythmic impulse as the engine driving the entire creative process, and on the other, by the importance of improvisation and instant composition as methods. In Makaya's records, both are raw material and tools for arriving — in the case of recorded work, also through an editing process that's an integral part of the creation — at a final score. That score can then be performed, explored, used as a fresh point of departure. All three modes were on display at the Milan show: ideas bounced from one side of the stage to the other with a depth and sharpness that make McCraven's outfit one of the most brilliant antidotes to jazz whenever it falls prey to academicism. And indeed there are digressions, cross-contaminations, heterodoxy in the name of organic wholeness. McCraven, then, is a jazz musician of open mind, perception and spirituality, who on the Chicago scene has had the chance to experiment with improvisational languages borrowed from rock and its post-rock offshoots, from experimental avant-garde, from contemporary classical music. Over the years Makaya has worked alongside jazz musicians like Greg Ward and the excellent Marquis Hill (whose presence was essential to the latest live shows), as well as musicians from other fields, from Jeff Parker of Tortoise on guitar to Junius Paul of the Art Ensemble of Chicago on bass, from globally minded voices like the tuba of Theon Cross and the harp of Brandee Younger, to the aforementioned King, a disciple of Monk who also plays with Soul Understated and Dee Dee Bridgewater.
We interviewed the “beat scientist”, as he calls himself, during a break in the soundcheck for the Milan date, and he came across as warm, empathetic and brimming with creative energy and clarity of vision — the very qualities with which he would, shortly after, send the sold-out crowd, us included, into raptures. And it could hardly have been otherwise.

The first question is about tonight's set. The sound struck me as full of all kinds of nuances, in some cases even softer than the sound of “Off the Record”. What do you think?
It really depends on the moment — maybe your presence softened us up, standing there silently by yourself at the foot of the stage… Joking aside, we always try to work with a wide dynamic range and to feel free to play in lots of different ways. When I put a band together to play, we learn arrangements with the idea of performing them like songs, and from there every path is open. Every experience is different, and every moment within every experience is different, depending on who's on stage with me and how we're reading the audience and the space around us. Even within the same tour, if we're playing to a smaller crowd, we play very differently than when there are more people. If people are standing, we play one way; if they're seated in a theater, we play another way. And as a result, not only the way we play changes, but the music itself changes too.

Today we're here listening to you live, but “Off the Record” is a compendium of ten years of research. How much does the post-production stage matter to you?
It's a defining stage. Post-production is one of my most important creative and research tools. With my records I live through a completely different experience than listening to a live set. For me the difference between what happens in a live space and what happens when recording an album is a creative space I get to immerse myself in. If you listen to the original recordings that “Off The Record” grew out of, there's a lot of improvisation played in small venues, in front of small audiences, without much acoustic amplification. Using these minimal performances — very improvised, maybe a little jammy, or a little avant-garde — I compose my pieces, adding overdubs, or creating new music out of the music itself.

Let's talk about your relationship with jazz music. You often prefer to call your music simply improvised music, and you don't want it to be, in a sense, labeled as jazz stricto sensu. Why is that?
Thank you, because the question is framed exactly the way I prefer to approach the issue. To me, jazz music and the jazz label are two profoundly different concepts. The secret is to keep the music at the center. It's the music that interests me — in fact, I believe it's what should interest everyone who makes it or listens to it. Labels get in the way both of creating music and of understanding it. For lack of a better term, I'll happily tell you I'm a jazz musician, because I feel you won't judge me based on that answer, but on my music, and that you'll invite others to do the same, freeing themselves from preconceptions. What I want to inherit from the great fathers of jazz is their freedom, not the cages other people have built to contain it. A word like rock covers a very broad spectrum, and the same should hold true for jazz. Instead, when people talk about jazz, some people — not just critics or audiences, but even a fair number of musicians — think of it and define it very rigidly. That's why I push back against the jazz label. Look, I'm not the first to see it this way. Truly great musicians like Duke Ellington or Miles Davis knew perfectly well they were playing jazz, but they didn't want their music labeled as such. That's who I take inspiration from. When I ask that my music not be called jazz, I mean to express essentially a critique of the genre's framework, not of the musical heritage itself, from which all modern music originates.

On that note, I also find it very interesting that over time you've played with musicians from very different backgrounds, often with improvisational attitudes not strictly tied to jazz interplay. I'm thinking of Jeff Parker of Tortoise, for example. How does the interaction between you two work?
You're right to speak of improvisational freedom, and right to point to the possibility of instant composition even apart from the rules of jazz improvisation. What matters above all is listening to each other. If your particular grammars allow you to connect deeply with the musicians playing alongside you, then they're useful — necessary, even, just as it's necessary to know an instrument in order to play it. But if those grammars become absolute truths, an end in themselves rather than a means, then communication — especially with the audience — becomes sterile, because the musicians end up circling around themselves and their own technical skills. Nothing gets through to the outside.

Do you think there's a “Chicago sound”? Do you feel part of it?
My journey with International Anthem, the Chicago label that releases my records, coincided with a turning point in my career. Just as important was meeting Jeff Parker, thanks to a college friend who was a Tortoise fan and introduced me to them. There are affinities between me and the many musicians I've met in Chicago. I couldn't tell you whether those affinities add up to a defined sound. Really, it's quite simple. People talk about Kamasi Washington and a Los Angeles sound, then about Nubya Garcia and a London scene, but the point is that musicians end up wherever they find the chance to make a living from their work and to make music at the level they aspire to. Everything else grows out of the practice of playing together within a given logistical and economic context. That's all there is to it.

You call yourself a “Beat Scientist”. Can you explain to our readers what you mean by that?
When I chose the term “Beat Scientist”, I was a young musician trying to promote myself. That's a very hard thing to do on your own. I read an article on Sonicbids, a site that helps independent artists develop their careers, that explained how to write an artist bio, and it said the first thing to do was open with catchy, distinctive, colorful language. So I thought: I'm a drummer, which means I study rhythm and the science of rhythm, so I can call myself “a Beat Scientist”. All drummers study rhythm. And rhythm runs as deep as any science. If you think about it, it's also the only way humans know how to keep track of time in the universe. We apply a rhythm to it, and that's how we perceive the difference between one second and the next, and the fact that time is passing at all.

So DJs too, for instance, are “beat scientists”
Yes, them, and a reggae musician too, for example. Beat scientist is a definition that works on many levels. I'm thinking of someone who's interested in rhythm, who studies it deeply and consciously, and who's interested in how rhythmic impulse interacts with human experience, with people, through pathways that are measurable, mathematical in some sense.

Does it work with hip-hop too?
Of course. In hip-hop, colloquially, people say: “We're in the lab” to mean that the beatmakers are creating something new. So I think it works on several levels. I never meant to be “THE Beat Scientist”, but “A Beat Scientist” — one among many possible ones.

On that note, do you think there are connections between your music and hip-hop culture?
Absolutely. First of all because of the shared African-American origins, and consequently, as we were saying, because of the importance of the percussive element in hip-hop, an importance so strong that it makes even the spoken word rhythmic. I feel a strong influence from hip-hop, even though I don't make hip-hop music, in the same way that, in a sense, I don't make jazz music either. What fascinated me about that genre, after having been a young fan of it, is its relationship with technology, with the history of music, with sampling, and the continuity that consequently gets established with jazz, blues, and all black music. And not only that. Take the Beatles, their way of layering things, take a genius like Les Paul, or an invention like the Mellotron, which when you get down to it is already a device conceived for sampling. I'm fascinated by how technology, music and composition develop in an interconnected way, and by how this relationship has shaped, over time, creative approaches, sounds, repertoires and styles, all different from one another and yet all sharing a common origin.

You were talking earlier about jazz as the origin of modern music. This deep interaction between technology/technique, music and composition, if I understood correctly, should characterize jazz from its very birth. Is that right?
Exactly, that's how I see it. And I'd trace the whole process back to the very earliest jazz, right at the point when the drum set was developed. When the drum set was developed, the goal was to combine different types of percussion instruments into a structure that a single person could play within a small group. That literally revolutionized the way music was played. Moving from marching bands and big bands to a band with a drum set at its center is, to me, the birth certificate of modern music, of jazz, of rock'n'roll, and of everything we listen to today. In fact, even today, when you pick up a sampler, a drum kit, a drum machine, you always have a kick, a snare, a hi-hat, a cymbal, a woodblock. The structure always stays the same. The invention of the drum set, to me, is one of the first examples of technology and innovation that lead us into the world of modern music. That combinatory logic which conceives of music through layering is the same logic behind sampling, recording with overdubbing, multitracking, all the way up to digital recording.

Listening to your albums, I thought I could sense a political feeling, a precise relationship with a decade and more that ranks among the saddest and most difficult phases of our world. Do you agree with that reading?
Yes, absolutely. One thing I love about improvised music is the fact that it belongs to this moment, to the present. I once heard Miles Davis call it "social music", meaning music of the people. Even in traditional jazz, musicians would draw on pop themes, or tunes taken from Broadway shows, repertoires that people knew and felt familiar with. But jazz musicians played them with a sense and urgency of the present, tied precisely to improvisation, to the idea that whatever happened on stage interacted with whatever was happening in that very moment. To me this approach is intrinsically political, because it has to do with life. It's about playing in symbiosis with what's happening and communicating with everyone listening in a visceral, human way. And to me that's political, because politics isn't only about those who hold power. To me, politics means talking about human experience, feeling it, being mindful of the material conditions people face, understanding, empathizing and expressing all of that through art. I think it's very hard to separate music from politics. Life itself is like that.

It seems to me there's also a ritual conception of the act of making music…
The way we interact with and through music runs very deep. Science and mathematics can help us understand a great deal. For instance, they teach us that even harmony is, at its root, rhythm, because a pitch is a frequency, and a frequency is a pulse, and therefore itself a rhythm. A perfect ratio creates a perfect harmony, so it's possible to achieve it by knowing and applying precise laws that humankind has discovered and refined over millennia. But there's also something that goes beyond our knowledge and our capacity to understand. For some it's imagination, for others something spiritual, but it's certainly a much deeper dimension than the rational and scientific one, and a great deal of music surely belongs to it. One thing I love about instrumental music is that, however much words can carry metaphors and colors, the language of sound manages to convey ideas and thoughts in a much freer, more immediate and deeper way than a text can. And that brings musicians and audience into a magical place of interaction that coincides with the space and time of the performance. In the past there wasn't a performer and an audience: music existed among us. The idea of performance is something modern, tied to capitalism, to selling, and to the separation between the artist and the product. But I really think that, in its original form and in its substance, music is a broad and profound communicative rite that transcends rational details.

Hearing you talk about ritual, I have to ask you about your father Stephen and his anthropological approach to music, and about your mother Ágnes Zsigmondi and her research into Hungarian folk music together with Kolynda…
Their fields might seem worlds apart, but at a certain depth, differences are made to be in dialogue and to create synthesis. And so, while as a teenager I was listening to Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix, I was at the same time learning enormously from them. The relationship between music and the cultures of different peoples is a gift given to humankind, one that should be non-negotiable. And music is made to unite, not to divide. As a couple, they can stand as a symbol of what I'm saying. I think my impatience with the barricades between genres also comes from what they taught me.

"Off The Record" is a compendium of ten years of music, so what comes next?
Actually, I'm already working on several things. I spent some time in South Africa recording musicians. I'm also continuing to work on my project with a larger ensemble, the one for "In These Times", for which I'm writing new music and new arrangements.

You mean more orchestral pieces?
That too. But I'm always listening to and sampling everything. There are a lot of projects I'm working on at the same time. That's why sometimes I disappear for a while and then several records come out one after another. It's just that I set a number of things in motion and let them mature. They'll arrive when they arrive, and they'll be however they need to be, depending on the influences that shaped them along the way.

(August 30, 2026)

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