Afro-Caribbean Mixtape

New Orleanean trumpeter Nicholas Payton has built a dazzlingly eclectic body of work over the past 20 years, exploring everything from Dixieland standards to warped, Prince-inflected soul. Maybe his most ambitious project yet, Afro-Caribbean Mixtape juxtaposes spoken-word collage (“Jazz Is a Four-Letter Word”) with riffs on South American music (“La Guajira”), and pre-electric Miles Davis ballads (“Othello”) with trip-hop abstractions (“Kimathi”). The result is a compelling musical essay on tradition and innovation.