[JPL] A stellar compendium of interstellar jazz oddities

[r durfee]

King Britt Presents The Cosmic Lounge, Vol. 1
A stellar compendium of interstellar jazz oddities
by Phil Freeman
July 17th, 2007 5:31 PM 
King Britt Presents The Cosmic Lounge, Vol. 1

In the early '70s, jazz got spacey, Afro-spiritual,
and overwhelmingly weird. From Sun Ra to Alice
Coltrane to Pharoah Sanders to Kalaparusha Maurice
McIntyre, artists began incorporating synths, African
percussion, flutes, chanting, tablas, mbiras, and all
manner of other exotic instruments into
album-side----long pieces with titles often in Swahili
or Hindi. 
DJ King Britt has compiled 11 relatively concise and
lesser-known examples of this decade-long musical left
turn and sequenced them (without mixing) into a
trance-inducing yet thrilling glimpse of the way
things used to be. Herbie Hancock's disc-opening
"Kawaida" features a recitation of the principles of
Kwanzaa over synths and flute; trumpeter Eddie
Henderson, a member of Hancock's pre-Headhunters band
Mwandishi, blows hot 'n' funky on the shimmering,
rattletrap "Scorpio-Libra"; and Don Cherry's "Moving
Pictures for the Ear" mixes North Africaninfluenced
percussion with chanted vocals. (In fact, chanting or
other vocalizations adorn seven of the disc's 11
tracks.) 

Elsewhere, Mtume, the percussionist in Miles Davis's
mid-'70s Afro-funk-metal band, offers the sizzling
"Yebo," while trombonist Grachan Moncur III's "Space
Spy," from his 1969 BYG album New Africa, is one of
the most organic and least baroque pieces here. Other,
weirder tracks by Flora Purim, Brother Ah, Michal
Urbaniak (siring a cello-led skronk-funk workout
reminiscent of Miles's On the Corner), and
Detroit-based trombonist and Tribe Records co-founder
Phil Ranelin's ensemble are also featured. Doug & Jean
Carne close out the disc, adding vocals to John
Coltrane's "Naima," transforming the track—and, for a
short while, jazz as a whole—into an astral-traveling
meditation. 
 
http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0729,freeman,77271,22.html

Roy Durfee
P.O. Box 40219
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87196-0219
rdurfee2003 at yahoo.com


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