[JPL] Dafnis Prieto Cuban-born drummer/composer ¹ s quintet mixes jazz, Latin and classical textures at the Outpost

[Jazz Promo Services]

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Dafnis Prieto
Cuban-born drummer/composer¹s quintet mixes jazz, Latin and classical
textures at the Outpost

By Mel Minter

Alongside the equipment commonly found in a jazz drum kit‹toms, snare, kick
drum, wood blocks, high hat, cymbals‹drummer Dafnis Prieto mounts an
unorthodox percussive instrument: a frying pan.
The pan echoes his Cuban background, in which rhythmic noise-making is a
communal art form. ³People in Cuba, they use it for Carnival and stuff,²
says Prieto.
No special materials or characteristics are required. ³I picked up the one
that sounds good,² he says.

Prieto¹s astonishingly clean and complex drumming is distinguished by a
composer¹s attention to every detail of sound‹tone, timbre, timing, touch,
dynamics. Playing sounds off one another, polyrhythmically at warp speed,
Prieto transforms the drum kit into a percussive orchestra. Over that
rhythmic engine, he floats tightly structured compositions that bring
together elements of European chamber music, native Cuban music and American
jazz.
Thursday night at the Outpost, Prieto¹s Absolute Quintet (with Jason
Lindner, Hammond B3 organ and keyboards; Yosvany Terry, saxophone; Ilmar
Gavilan, violin; and Dana Leong, cello) will fry up irresistible rhythms
from his 2006 Grammy-nominated CD, Absolute Quintet (zoho), along with new
music.
A Universal Language
Born in Santa Clara, Cuba, and educated at the National School of Music in
Havana, Prieto came to the United States in 1999. While he had played jazz
on the side in Cuba, his exposure to American jazz drumming traditions was
limited.
³I started playing congas and bongos,² he explains. ³When I started playing
trap sets, it opened my mind. It¹s a universal instrument basically, so
therefore, it¹s a universal language for me.²
Prieto can play many types of music‹jazz, Cuban, funk, whatever‹but he
doesn¹t divide drumming into stylistic categories. ³It¹s all music to me,²
he says. ³It¹s not really about classification of the rhythm. I play the
rhythm that music needs at that moment, and for me, it doesn¹t matter what
name we put on it.²
Once the technical conception for a piece is in place, he says, ³you put the
sound in it that it really needs. That¹s the part that I like.²
His approach has won him work with a long list of leading musicians, from
the boundary-pushing Henry Threadgill and Steve Coleman to the more
mainstream Ed Simon and Michel Camilo to the Latin jazz icons Eddie Palmieri
and Jane Bunnett.
Composer at Work
The close attention to the sound reflects Prieto¹s exceptional and widely
recognized talents as a composer. The music he writes for the Absolute
Quintet consciously blends several styles. European chamber music, native
Cuban music and American jazz are all represented in the group¹s unusual
instrumentation.
³I want to join these things‹the chamber [music] and the jazz and the Latin
stuff,² he says.
Prieto¹s compositions, though rigorously structured, seem to evolve along
natural pathways. (The same can be said about his drumming, which seems to
flow as effortlessly as a stream running down a mountain, burbling, kinetic
and free but precisely responsive to the demands of terrain and gravity.)
Communicating the nuances of his complex, emotional music to the quintet can
present something of a challenge since Prieto¹s primary instrument is
percussive, not melodic or harmonic. But he¹s found a way around that
obstacle, and it reveals an important aspect of his music.
³Any time I have to give them an example of how I want them to solo in each
part‹because I¹m really specific‹it¹s not just ŒJump in and do whatever you
want to do.¹ There¹s a certain language that I wanted to use in different
parts of the tunes. So I have to sing that to them,² he says.
³I like to sing the ideas, even the ideas on the drums,² Prieto adds. ³For
me, music has to be singable. How is it going to stick in your brain if you
cannot sing it?²

Dafnis Prieto Absolute Quintet appears at the Outpost Performance Space on
Thursday, Nov. 1, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20, $15 for members, at the
Outpost (210 Yale SE, 268-0044).