In early 2025, the KNKX studios were graced by the Brubeck Brothers Quartet, a group co-led by bassist Chris Brubeck and drummer Dan Brubeck, featuring Mike D'Amico and Chuck Lamb on guitar and piano.
During their appearance, these sons of jazz legend Dave Brubeck, who passed away in 2012, celebrated their father's musical legacy and explored how his music was connected to his sense of social justice and solidarity.
One particular example stands out to the brothers.
In 1958, Dave Brubeck's quartet toured the world for the U.S. State Department following similar trips by jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Through these musical ambassadorships, President Eisenhower wanted to spread a very important message.
"Believe it or not, it was that great jazz hippie, President Eisenhower that sent all the musicians out on the road to say 'America's a great place. America is freedom. Jazz is the music of America, it's original art form. You can hear the basis of constitutional freedom in jazz. Everyone has a voice,'" Chris said.
And yet, as they spread such an inspirational idea, Chris said his father was unsettled to find that integrated American jazz groups traveling with them weren't experiencing freedom back home, or abroad.
"They were amazed that these integrated groups, that were telling everyone how great America was, could not stay in the same hotels even," Chris said.
Brubeck decided to do something about this injustice in the best way he knew how. He wrote a musical called The Real Ambassadors about how jazz musicians of color, like Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, were the most famous Americans in the world at the time and represented the country in the best possible way.
Brubeck's tour as an American ambassador also led to one of his biggest hits: "Blue Rondo a la Turk." The brothers note how this song crosses cultural boundaries and brings people together to this day.
"He heard Turkish street musicians playing a beat he had never heard before, and it's weird because my father grew up as a cowboy, and believe me, they did not hear that kind of music out on the plains of California," Chris said. "Anyhow, he set a melody to that and, it makes no sense this tune would become popular all over the world, but it is."
Several of the Brubeck children have carried on their father's legacy of musical activism.
Chris and Dan's oldest brother, Darius, carried on the tradition of musical ambassadorship when, in the 1980s, he brought university-level jazz education to South Africa under apartheid. While he was there, he formed a multi-racial jazz ensemble with his students called the Jazzanians.
Likewise, Chris and Dan feel that the music they make in their quartet, a combination of their father's hits and their own originals, is inextricably linked to the political struggles of the day.
"There's a lot of crazy stuff that happens in the world and yet, music and love of music and particularly, our father's style of music, transcends all the negatives that are out there," Chris said. "People get together and just try to focus on the music and you probably say, 'well, why don't you shut up and stop talking about politics?' But you know, they are infused."
Revisit The Brubeck Brother Quartet's 2021 KNKX Studio Session for more background on Chris and Dan Brubeck's swinging ensemble, as well as the life and music of their father, Dave Brubeck.
