BEST OF TASTY CLIPS: Norman Brown on his spiritual rise and the state of jazz
By Bill Vaughan
Entertainment Writer
Grammy winning guitarist, singer and producer NORMAN BROWN has been on a spiritual journey since his days as a little boy looking for a truer understanding of his being. In an interview with TASTY CLIPS in promotion of his Shanachie Entertainment release “The Highest Act of Love,” he testified about his sojourn.
“I’d been looking for the answers to three questions,” he said. “What is God? What am I? and What is this place were in? Why are we here? This creation we call Earth. I never really got a good answer to that from the conventional religions.
“We grew up Baptist,” he added, “I had a lot of questions especially for the guy telling me what God said. I kept hearing stuff like God is a jealous god. Wait a minute. Why does God need to be jealous? That didn’t make sense to me. It didn’t add up. Just trust and believe. In what?
“Finally, I talked to my mother. I was about10. I said I don’t want to go anymore. I know what God is. God is in me. She looked at me and said, ‘You’re a good kid. You don’t give me any trouble. I believe you do know God. You don’t have to go to church anymore. Unless you want a suit on Easter.’”
Brown affirms that he had a natural connection of what right and wrong was and that Tao and Confucius spoke to his soul.
“The Asians had an understanding,” he explained. “The It means the way of God. They reasoned it out that in order to understand God, which is something I can’t see, study God’s way. So, they studied nature. The wind, the trees, the direction, because that is God. They made themselves close to God by studying God’s way.”
His learnings informed his 11th recording which consists of 11 soul-stirring and thought-provoking tracks of mostly originals songs which reflect his understanding of the ancient Egyptian wisdom taught to him by his Sage, Ra Un Nefer Amen, the high priest and founder of the Ausar/Auset Society.
Among the highlights is the opening ballad “Inside The Garden of Peace and Love” with longtime collaborator and fellow guitarist Paul Brown; and a reworking of the 1970s hit “Free” with its original vocalist — R&B legend Deniece Williams.
“I go on this cruise and Deniece is on the cruise,” Brown said relishing the moment. “I pulled it out and after listening, she told me this: ‘A lot of people paid me to redo that song, and I showed up at the studio and ended up giving their money back because they don’t get it right. I really loved what you did with this song. You kept the integrity of it and brought it into the now.’ She said thank you very much and didn’t charge me a penny to sing on the song. That’s incredible.”
“This record took me back to the core of what I am, who I am, why I am, and how I am, and it tied that all together and brought me into the now and what I’m going towards in the future,” he explained. “It’s a beautiful thing.”
A graduate of the Musician’s Institute in North Hollywood, where Brown would go on to teach, the guitarist landed his first deal on Motown subsidiary Mojazz in 1992 where he recorded the albums “Just Between Us,” the Gold selling “After The Storm” and “Better Days.”
“[Motown’s Mojazz is] responsible for me being here now,” said the Kansas City native who currently resides in Atlanta. “None of the other labels would give me a shot. They said I sounded too much like George Benson and all that kind of stuff.”
“Nobody cares about that now,” he added. “They want to see [Jennifer Lopez]. Nothing against her, but it’s supposed to be about legacy. And legacy goes all the way back to our ancestors.
“Unfortunately, my people don’t know their ancestors that well. Therefore, we don’t know ourselves. It’s a brainwashing that’s going on,” Brown continued. “People’s minds are being conditioned. People are taught what to think and now how to think.”
Despite a string of successful albums including 1999’s “Celebration,” 2002’s Grammy-winning “Just Chillin’,” and his BWB recordings with saxophonist Kirk Whalum and trumpeter Rick Braun, he feels that jazz isn’t getting the respect it deserves.
“This is intelligent music,” Brown said. “Even the stuff we’re doing, which is mostly groove, kinda contemporary, popish, R&B oriented. It’s not all heavy like [John] Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie and Miles [Davis] and those cats, but it still moves people. Moves the spirit of people. It’s clean. We get to play our instruments.”
“It’s a challenge to write a song where somebody understands the melody and there’s no words,” he added. “That is so difficult. With the words, people can get that because we talk to each other. So, we understand that … but for me to write a song that says something to the spirit and there’s no words there, that’s a real feat to achieve with an instrumental. We’re doing that. And here we go. We’re taken off radio. Jazz radio is gone pretty much.
:There’s no major label recording jazz music these days,” Brown added. “That’s a shame. Everybody’s into the trend whatever it is. The latest trend that the kids like that they blast all over the place. Those kinds of things are the effects of a cause. We’re taught to be separate. We’re not taught to grow from the inside out.”
“We are divine beings,” the practitioner of Tai Chi, Ti Gon, Kung Fu, and meditation explained of his mission. “We are more than human. We’re not taught that. There is where our true power lives. It’s about this continuity tree of life.”
Brown will be performing his hits along with his silky smooth latest single, “Chillax” at the Las Vegas City of Lights Jazz and R&B Festival 2026 on April 25 joining Johnny Gill, Jeffrey Osborne, Moonchild, Melanie Fiona, Stokley Williams, October London and more.
As for the artist he would most like to work with, famed keyboardist Herbie Hancock was mentioned.
“I haven’t recorded with him yet,” Brown said. “There’s a host of others, but he’s at the top of the list.”
For more than 11 years, Bill Vaughan has kept Wave readers up to date with the latest news in entertainment. Now, we are collecting some of those past columns into what we call the Best of Tasty Clips. To contact Vaughan, visit his social media pages on Facebook and Instagram or @tasty_clips, on X @tastyclips, and on LinkedIn to William Vaughan.
