Listening Now: Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage
Right Here, Right Now
By Rafi Mercer
I’m listening to Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage right now. The piano has just opened, the horns are easing in, and already I can feel that slow suspension of time. It is a record I know, but every time I play it, it feels like it has only just been written. The ocean imagery is not metaphor — it’s physical. The music rolls and drifts like tide. You can almost hear salt air in the cymbals, sunlight in the chord changes.
It’s one of those albums that demands stillness. You can’t rush it, and you don’t want to. Freddie Hubbard’s trumpet is like a horizon line, Ron Carter’s bass holds the keel steady, and Tony Williams’s drumming is water itself — restless, unstoppable, alive. The pace of it resets me, and right now, sitting with it, I can feel how it rearranges the air in the room.
And then my mind wanders, because jazz does that. From Maiden Voyage my thoughts drift straight to Masters at Work and their Nuyorican Soul project. Wild leap, maybe. Yet not really. Louie Vega and Kenny Dope brought the same sense of respect for musicianship, the same trust in improvisation, the same willingness to let a groove breathe. Where Herbie painted with modal brushstrokes, they layered percussion, soul, and house until it felt almost orchestral. Both projects share a belief that music should be a journey, not a product.
That’s how listening works when you give it space. You start with Hancock in 1965, and suddenly you are in New York in 1997 with Jocelyn Brown singing “It’s Alright, I Feel It.” The line between them is not about genre, it’s about spirit. It’s about the way music lets you drift into unexpected waters.
The record is still playing as I write this. Herbie’s piano just came back in, lighter this time, like a glint on the surface. And I’m smiling because I know that later tonight I’ll probably put on Nuyorican Soul and the connection will feel inevitable. Jazz minds do that. They wander, they join the dots you didn’t expect, they make the world larger.
So yes, I’m listening to Maiden Voyage right now, and it is carrying me further than I thought I’d go this afternoon. That’s the gift of sound when you give it your attention. It is not just music. It is direction.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters. For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe here, or click here to read more.
