This past March, the world lost a musical genius. I lost a great friend of 32 years. A chosen brother. Today is his birthday. This is my tribute to him.
In 2021, still in the thick of the pandemic and not quite up from under the lockdown, I launched the Milestones: Celebrating the Culture podcast. Exhausted from the pressure of my overall writing workload and deadlines, I wanted to take a mini hiatus from that particular grind and find a new way to connect my audience to the musicians I wrote about. I had always enjoyed the conversational element of the interview process that precedes the actual writing, and I also thought it would be cool to let people gain a little more insight about me outside of my byline through the thoughtful dialogue I would have with artists I hold in great esteem. I figured a podcast is a perfect platform to do that, so without much deliberation, I dove into developing the program.
The timing was perfect. With the music industry all but shut down, and touring having come to a screeching halt, every musician I wanted to talk with was likely home, and available. All I had to do was find out if there was interest. Luckily, everyone I asked gave an enthusiastic “Yes!” The pandemic and lockdown certainly taught us that despite the smartphones that we are incessantly typing and scrolling away on, true connection is what we’re really designed for. Folks were happy to talk and reflect on all the things that we were perhaps taking for granted before the world turned upside down — especially each other.
I decided that the premise of the podcast would be to use milestone anniversaries as a catalyst to celebrate people and projects important to “the culture.” And it so happened that in 2021, a milestone of my own was approaching: my 25th high school reunion. While that may sound more like an anniversary best celebrated with your comrades at a banquet hall instead of on a music podcast, my high school classmates, respectfully, weren’t your ordinary classmates. Our school was home to some of the most amazing people in the world. Also subjective, I know. But here’s what’s not up for debate: I went to high school with one of the greatest musicians to ever live. His name is Casey Benjamin.
It’s hard to encapsulate all that Casey is to music. He was a polymath. A virtuosic saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist (alto, tenor, and soprano sax; keyboards, vocoder, aerophone), writer, arranger, producer, and DJ. Yet, it is Casey’s synthesis, his approach as a musician and technologist, his mastery, feel, and melodic ingenuity, that distinguished his giftedness from all others of that rare caliber. A wizard of sound and texture, Benjamin pioneered a unique lane that shifted music and culture.
It was his distinctive magic that made a wide spectrum of elite artists seek him out, including Patrick Stump (Fall Out Boy), Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga, John Legend, Anderson .Paak, Nas, Common, Arcade Fire, Beyoncé, Kanye West, Wyclef Jean, Pusha T, Maxwell, Solange, Drake, and so many more. His close collaborations with hip hop legend Q-Tip, and contemporaries vibraphonist Stefon Harris and pianist-arranger-producer Robert Glasper, helped lead a movement to expand the ways in which we create, talk about, and experience black music, and reimagine and reconsider how we conceive the possibilities of jazz.
His innovative fashion, love of vintage cars, and colorful locs were all a part of Benjamin’s rock star appeal, untypical to what most would envision when thinking of jazz. He brought retro pop, funk, soul, and yacht rock to his sound and image, inspiring musicians and keeping his global audiences spellbound.
I tapped two more of my close friends and classmates for the reunion episode: Queens and hip hop historian and musician, T L Cross; and marketing and branding expert, Drego Moore, Jr.
When the day came, we taped for about 2.5 hours. None of it was expendable, but the conversation was much too long for one episode — so I split it into two parts. Over the course of those two episodes, we talked about so much: our favorite black movie soundtracks, family upbringing, and our experiences in high school — from the audition process to how we met — and how I managed to be absent the one day David Foster came to our school during the peak cultural moment of Whitney Houston’s historic The Bodyguard.
After we wrapped the taping, the three of us stayed in the Zoom room for another five or six hours. It was always the best of times speaking with any of my three brothers, so getting all of us together, for me, was something of a celebration in and of itself. It was nightfall by the time we all hung up, and my spirit and heart were so full.
Casey and I talked about how much we enjoyed the day. Soon after, he followed up with a text: “We’ll have to do this again when my record comes out!”
“You already know!” I responded, with a “praise hands” emoji for emphasis.
I met Casey Benjamin in 1992, during our freshman year at LaGuardia High School, when we were just 13 years old. The school, a storied institution in visual and performing arts education, is designed to be separated by studio — vocal majors on one floor, instrumental majors on the next, dance and art on another, and so on. Casey was an instrumental major and I was a vocal major. Throughout the day, students became more integrated through our academic courses, and Casey and I had 9th grade algebra together. Our kindhearted yet easily flustered teacher had gained a reputation from his students for being unintentionally hilarious — like something out of a sitcom — and we could hardly keep it together reminiscing about that class during our podcast confab, Casey’s signature smile on full display as we leaned to our sides with laughter, falling out of the camera’s frame, remembering simpler days that were filled with newness, excitement, and art.
It was discernable almost from the beginning of those days that Casey was ahead of his time in so many ways. Even at a specialized school, where students have a bit more focus and sense of direction than the average adolescent, when you’re a young teen, you’re not always surefooted about where you’re going and where you see yourself landing. You’re still finding your way, weighing your options, deciding on your path. But Casey’s vision was clear, and he seemed to be fast-tracked for greatness. He knew what he wanted to do, he knew where he was going – and he was doing it. It was palpable. He was light years ahead of us all.
By our sophomore year, Casey had already been featured on national television, playing with one of his all-time saxophone heroes, the legend Grover Washington Jr. He was in all the best bands at school, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that he was a favorite among faculty. During those four years, he was also a member of the GRAMMY® Jazz Band (’95 and ’96). But more than an undeniable rising star, Casey was a giving and selfless mentor with a modesty that was as admirable as his achievements.
“He was extraordinary,” said Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra bassist Carlos Henriquez. “I met Casey my freshman year of high school. He was a junior. I got into the first-place jazz band with Bob Stewart, and we became very good friends. Such good friends that he’d asked me to play in his R&B band. I would take trips out there to the backside of Queens with his homie, Stephen [Roberson], another great drummer who was in school with us. We would play all these R&B songs that he wrote, and some covers. Man, he was a lover of soul music, R&B, and jazz.”
This giving spirit was innately Casey, and also a result of his family foundation. The son of Grenadian and Panamanian parents, Casey’s father, Gentle Benjamin, came from a musical family and was himself a multi-instrumentalist and jazz enthusiast. His mother had vocal talent with a musical bloodline as well, including bassists Alex and Russel Blake. Support was abundant in the Benjamin home, with both parents seeing the great potential that Casey showed as a small child.
“When Casey got his saxophone, he would stay up and play his instrument in his room,” his mother, Julieta, shared with me on a phone call. “Casey was never one to go out and play in the streets. He’d come home, he’d do his homework, and go right to his instrument.”
His father, a professional cameraman and television producer, got his start documenting Casey’s middle school and local performances. When he established his CultureShare program on G.B.T.V. (Gentle Benjamin television) in 1990, Casey’s performances would become a core part of his programming, which also focused on the music and festivals of the Caribbean diaspora. As a result, Benjamin has created one of the most extensive musical archives of modern jazz musicians that is available.
The support of his family was one element. The other part of that foundational support came from his Jamaica, Queens neighborhood, which was brimming with jazz musicians who formed something of an incubator for young, promising musicians. Queens has a tremendous jazz lineage and tradition, with legends like Tom Browne, Don Blackman, Marcus Miller, Lenny White, Bernard Wright, and Weldon Irvine all raised there. Casey was a student of them all in some capacity, and went from pupil to bandmate in many cases, eventually performing with the heroes he was so proud to call neighbors, friends, and mentors. No matter how much his star was rising on a global scale, Casey always brought it back to Jamaica, Queens. To Jamaica Funk. It was important to him to always lift the names of those musicians — sung and unsung — who were vital to his own career. He was always happy and proud to talk to you about their genius.
By senior year of high school, Casey’s leadership, incredible talent, and rapid development had gained him one of the highest honors in the country as the recipient of The White House Commission on Presidential Scholars and The National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts Award, which he personally received from President Bill Clinton.
The day Casey graduated high school he shared a sentiment on his newfound freedom that all high school graduates gain. “Now I can do what I want to do, rather than doing the requirements.” Watching him say that to the camera his father was behind as they walked through Lincoln Center, still gives me chills. The warm seriousness in his eyes when he said those words was the foreshadowing of an innovator who would extend the concept of jazz with an imprint so inimitably his own that it made our heads spin.
At The New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, Casey formed a friendship with fellow freshman, pianist Robert Glasper. Before they took the jazz and R&B worlds — and the music industry, as a whole — by storm, with their genre-defying, sonically pioneering quartet, The Robert Glasper Experiment, the likeminded college musicians shared a penchant for unconventionality while simultaneously having a deep erudition of the history, and mind-blowing virtuosity across the tradition.
“Casey is one of the most incredible musicians I’ve ever known,” said Glasper of the Experiment frontman. “One of one. His look, his sound, his feel, his understanding of music... how spread out he was musically. There was no genre that he didn’t feel like he was already a part of.”
Personally, I don’t know anyone who loved music more than Casey. All music. Born on my uncle Thelonious Monk’s birthday, Casey shared an unorthodox brilliance and fearlessness that made him more than a musician. He was a marvel. A literal lifelong student, he was learned, studied, educated, and fully immersed. He was always enthusiastic about knowing more and going deeper. He was a singular force of sound and emotion and enchantment.
“One of the things that made Black Radio what it was, is Casey Benjamin’s amazing solo on ‘Cherish the Day,’ which was one take,” Glasper said of Casey’s spontaneous inventiveness. “That, and Lalah Hathaway’s singing. Both of those things were one take. That was the sound check that you hear. Casey not only did vocoder backgrounds on ‘Cherish the Day,’ but he put the vocoder down, ran over to the saxophone, played the saxophone solo, then put the saxophone down and ran over to the vocoder to continue singing background with Lalah — all in one take in the studio.”
Glasper will be headlining a tribute concert at Sony Music Hall on October 30, which, in partnership with the Benjamin family, aims to capture the essence of Casey’s musical legacy. The event, benefiting the Casey Benjamin Memorial Fund, is a luminary-filled celebration that includes Hathaway as well as Stefon Harris, DJ Logic, DJ Spinna, and band members of the various iterations of the Robert Glasper Experiment, including Derrick Hodge, Chris Dave, and more.
“Every once in a while, a truly original being shares this limited space and time with us,” said Harris, a close friend and collaborator of Benjamin, who was also an essential element of Harris’s Blackout band. “Casey occupied a rarefied space that was brimming with genius, audacity, kindness, and humility. We are all so incredibly lucky to have been blessed with the opportunity to create beauty with a true musical master.”
“I’m thankful to have traveled part of my creative life as a man, as a musician... alongside him,” shared Hodge, who met Casey when he was a guest with Harris’s group. “I was filling in and just hoping not to mess up the music, and Casey was on the stage sound-checking. He was the first person to just start playing with me, and his energy and his light... it just reminded me what this is all for.”
Hodge, Benjamin, and drummers Chris Dave and Mark Colonburg would join Glasper on a journey called the Robert Glasper Experiment, performing, touring, and recording for over a decade, while winning two GRAMMY® awards along the way.
“The Robert Glasper Experiment was something that could not have been without Casey’s brilliance,” said Glasper. This was in part due to Casey’s pioneering sound and technique on saxophone, aerophone, and vocoder. Coming out of the school of Herbie Hancock, George Duke, and others, Casey brought a newness and expansion to the technology.
“I think what makes him different is that he’s a saxophone player and most of the time, when a person doubles on vocoder, it’s a piano player,” Glasper explains. “That’s what we’ve seen; they’re a rhythm section player, piano player or guitar player, but Casey plays saxophone, so when he’s doing his vocoder stuff, he’s coming from his phrasing on saxophone. It’s a breath of fresh air how he approaches it, you know what I mean? It’s just a Casey approach, I don’t even know how else to say it. There’s nobody else to compare him to!”
“When I was around him, it was always this feeling of we’re gonna give something from the heart,” adds Hodge. “Whatever we have to give, however our day went, however our week has gone, we’re gonna give it all to the people. Not in a way of seeking empathy. Not in a way of giving anything other than our honesty. And fortunately, the people have always felt it. People can talk about Casey’s genius. I’m proud to say that I can definitely speak to that. His mind was just brilliant and still being discovered by so many to this day. And I’m thankful to say, I knew that brilliance. I hear the beauty in the world as he hears and sees it.”
An essential and profoundly significant guest at the upcoming tribute concert is vocalist and writer Nicky Guiland, Casey’s longest musical partner and closest friend, who is the other half of the duo HEAVy, which they formed in 2001 after attending high school and college together. The electro-pop duo was our first glimpse into the eccentricity and addictive appeal in the music Benjamin produced. HEAVy was free black music that drew from the ’70s and ’80s jazz, soul, and pop that Casey loved so much.
“Who Casey was from day one of meeting him at LaGuardia High School is the man that he will forever be,” says Guiland. “Casey had an affinity for a term — this thing about being a ‘consummate gentleman.’ Nothing more, nothing less. You know, this idea of being there to support the one he loves. To hold their hand, to lead the way, to hold them up, to always be there. That is who my friend was in music, and in life. ‘Consummate Gentleman’ is one of the songs that I hope will one day make it to [the public’s] ears.”
A significant piece of the legacy work ahead for Benjamin’s family is releasing his long-awaited solo projects. “Casey’s legacy consists of three parts as of right now,” says Casey’s older brother, Kevin, who has been at the helm of it all. “The first being his album, the second being The Casey Benjamin Memorial Foundation, and the third would be some of his projects that will soon come to life or have recently come to life that he’s been a part of.”
One such project is G.O.A.T.ed emcee LL Cool J’s brand-new buzzed-about release, The Force, produced by Casey’s close friend and collaborator, Q-Tip, that features Benjamin on keyboards. Another exciting venture on the horizon is ALI, a forthcoming Broadway musical about the boxing icon, where Benjamin served as associate music producer. “It made him feel so proud,” his girlfriend Whitley Davis recalls. “Especially hearing the musicians that he had brought in to play the music and seeing the reaction of everybody from the play. I was so excited and so proud of him as well, to see the light in his eyes shine.”
“[Casey’s] album is probably 98% done. There’s some mixing and mastering that needs to be completed,” Kevin shares. “He probably has enough for two albums, to be honest. So that’s something that the family is hoping to complete in the near future, and it will be something that the world is going to love. We want to make Casey proud, and really respect and cherish his wishes of how he would want this to be released, but also, circumstances have changed,” Kevin reflects. “He’s no longer here, so there’s going to be some pieces that we have to fill in. But we want to honor his artistic intentions. It is going to be something really special, and people are going to be amazed by the beautiful work that he’s put together. [Whether] new fans, old fans. It’s going to be magical.”
Of simultaneous importance to completing the album is the Casey Benjamin Memorial Foundation, which, Kevin explains, is “founded on two initiatives that were dear to Casey’s heart. One of the key focuses is the next generation of musicians and how we support them to realize their dreams. Whether it’s a new instrument, or lessons, Casey loved mentoring and sharing his knowledge. The second initiative of the Foundation centers on helping established musicians who may be going through rough times economically. The road of a musician is not an easy one, and there are ups and downs for artists in general. We aim to support those areas where musicians need extra assistance.”
The Sony Music Hall event on October 30 is the official fundraiser to launch the Casey Benjamin Foundation. The family hopes to have a great turnout in order to convert those ticket sales into helping the music community Casey embraced, elevated, and loved so deeply.
“The first thing about Casey that immediately comes to my mind when I think of him is how he always said to ‘Remember who you are and your worth and what you mean,’” Ms. Davis reminisces. “And he had a lot of worth in this world.” That goes beyond music, to how he moved through life in general.
"Casey was not only my brother but my best friend,” Kevin said. "The secret sauce that Casey brought was his joy, his love that he had for not only the music itself, but also the process of making music, the collaboration with great artists, as well as performing for people. He loved to connect. You could see it on stage. Anyone who’s seen him play, you can see how he feels the music. He would go into these zones where I’m sure the crowd and everyone else just disappeared for a moment, and he was on another plane, a level that few reach. And then he would come back down and join us mere mortals, and make sure we were still there on the journey.”
And on that journey we remain, gifted with the legacy of the indelible trail blazed by Casey Benjamin. Shine on, intrepid sonic explorer and eternal celestial traveler.
