Liner Notes: Big Vibin' with Bassist Giulio Xavier Cetto

When bassist and composer Giulio Xavier Cetto hears jazz, he instinctually hears hip-hop. The same way he hears hip-hop when he hears jazz. There are no divisions between the two genres, each compliment and mirror the other.

The synergy between the styles permeate Giulio’s sound.  Take for instance, the recent NPR Tiny Desk show he performed with Kassa Overall or the sundaySlap!, a jazz infused hip hop jam session he regularly leads at the famed Black Cat Jazz Supper Club.

Drawing from his Venezuelan-Italian heritage, the San Francisco based musician has studied a range of music and can adapt with ease to any musical scenario on the upright bass and electric bass.  He brings an energetic vibe to his performance style that beckons audiences to move.

“My main goal is to support as a bass player.  I want to be like the  floor for someone to stand on. I want to be the rock. So I’m going to just listen as best as I can, and  be super honest with what I think the music needs best. Sometimes I need to go into a situation and kind of try to be a blank slate.  Not think too much. Just kind of be a vessel.”

On this week’s Rightnowish, Giulio sits down to talk about his craft, his favorite bay area venue to play in,  and what it’s like leading his band Big Trippin with former Mars Volta drummer Thomas Pridgen, saxophonist John Palowitch and pianist Javier Santiago.

Read the podcast transcript

Below are lightly edited excerpts of my conversation with Giulio Xavier Cetto. Listen to the podcast for the full conversation.

MEDINA-CADENA: I first saw you two years ago perform. And I remember going up to and being like, “How can I keep up with you?” And you were like, “I’m on the Instagram, I’m at @thejazzthug.”

GIULIO XAVIER CETTO, GUEST: The jazz thug that’s my, my alias.

MEDINA-CADENA: Yeah. What’s the story behind the alias?

CETTO: It kind of just speaks on my love for hip hop and jazz music. My friend actually made it up one time, he said it and I was like, I like that. I want to go with it. It stuck. And people like it more than I do now. I get called that. I’ll see a flyer and they won’t even put my name. They put the jazz thug. And I’m like, well, I still want my name on there. But yeah, I thought about changing it recently and a bunch of people were like, No, don’t change it.

MEDINA-CADENA: A reoccurring show you sometimes lead at The Black Cat is called sundaySlap! It’s described as Dilla meets Coltrane.

CETTO: There’s a good chance we’re going to play some Dilla and a good chance we might do some Coltrane. But yeah, I’m constantly featuring different emcees, rappers, singers.

CETTO: We’ll play a jazz song and make it hip hop. We’ll do a hip hop song and make it jazz. Okay, we’re going to take the feel from this song, the bass line from this other song, and we get to play this jazz standard over it until it’s unrecognizable. We’ll do all that stuff and we’ll cover a lot of ground in sundaySlap! It’s usually with my band Big Trippin, and we can do anything.

MEDINA-CADENA: You play the upright bass and the electric bass. So like when folks approach you [to collaborate] how do you make that judgment call? Like, Oh, I think upright would
do better or…

CETTO: Yeah, I’ll get asked just to play a gig and, they won’t say which one they want. They are just like, “Can you do this?'”And I’ll show up with both basses and then see what the music tells me to do. It’s usually clear to me like, this is this is an upright song or this is an electric song.

CETTO:  Super different energies to both. One is just the sound of wood and has all that percussion behind it to the upright.  Then with the electric bass, I hit one note that lasts for thirty seconds and just has that big, powerful guitar player kind of energy.  It’s such an important part of the music that is easily looked over.

CETTO:  I get people telling me all the time that, “Oh, I didn’t even think about the bass until I saw you play. Then I realize how much I like the bass and how important that is to the music.” I’m like yeah, it’s the heart of the music! It’s the dance floor!

Rightnowish is an arts and culture podcast produced at KQED. Listen to it wherever you get your podcasts or click the play button at the top of this page and subscribe to the show on NPR One, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.

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