Any critic who didn’t take a prurient interest in Spike Lee’s 2004 battle of the sexes, She Hate Me — in which the super-svelte actor Anthony Mackie is down on his luck until he scores a gig, uh, impregnating lesbians — would surely concede that the film’s plot pales in comparison to its slinky jazz soundtrack, scored by New Orleans trumpeter Terence Blanchard. Best known as one of the players in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers from 1982 to 1986, Blanchard actually composed music for several Spike Lee films, among them 25th Hour, Malcolm X, and the new Hurricane Katrina documentary, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. As Quincy Troupe points out in the liner notes to Blanchard’s 1986 album Nascence — which he cut with alto sax player Donald Harrison — we’re predisposed to think of New Orleans jazz as a combination of Dixieland washboard music and the music of traditional second-line funeral processions. But once you listen to Blanchard and Harrison’s cryptic rendition of John Coltrane’s “Alabama,” or the weird “Chong Chong” — which sets different time signatures against each other — you’ll realize that’s not the case at all. Blanchard performs Thursday through Saturday at Yoshi’s, with shows at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. $12-$22. Yoshis.com
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