AHMED ABDULLAH’S EBONIC TONES

Tara’s Song
TUM CD009

KAHIL EL’ZABAR'S RITUAL TRIO/BILLY BANG
Live At The River East Art Center
Delmark DE-566

Recorded in different cities seven months apart, these CDs are connected by the presence of violinist Billy Bang and a profound respect for all variations of Black improvised music.

In addition to two originals by Brooklyn-based trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah, Tara’s Song is a compendium of hip heads from Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra and others. In many ways a showcase for the percussion implements of Chicago’s Kahil El’Zabar, Live At The River East Art Center, takes its inspiration from the drummer’s twin influences, Pan-Africanism and the city’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).

Neither CD lacks animation, and it’s a tribute to the Ebonic Tones that the nine songs the band plays in a studio don’t sound any less “live” than the five recorded by the Ritual Trio in concert. If there’s any overriding complaint about either session it’s that both groups adhere a little too closely to the timeworn head-solo-solo-head formula. But what they lack in original arrangements, they more than make up with polyrhythmic fire.

Although Bang is odd man out in two more-or-less established bands, he has such a long history with most of the other players as to fit tongue-in-groove when the music starts. He and Adullah were both in the Sun Ra Arkestra for a time and first recorded together more than 20 years ago. Drummer Andrei Strobert, who is also a producer and recording engineer, recorded Sun Ra, among many other musicians; and even bassist Alex Blake, best-known for his 30-year association with pianist Randy Weston, played with Ra at one point. Detroit-born baritone saxophonist Alex Harding is younger than the others, but besides his other gigs is a member of the post-Ra Arkestra under Marshal Allen’s direction.

Bang’s association with the Ritual Trio goes back to another live recording date with the band in 1994, since then he has often played in duo and other situations with leader El’Zabar. One of Chicago’s master improvisers, tenor saxophonist Ari Brown can hold his own with anyone from AACMers, pianist Muhal Richard Abrams to reedist Anthony Braxton, and excitingly often combines tones with Bang’s lines here. Bassist Yosef Ben Israel, who usually powers Ernest Dawkins’ New Horizons band, has replaced the late Malachi Favors in this group. Favors is saluted in two of the compositions here.

Favors’ main group, The Art Ensemble of Chicago (AEC) was one of the first to reflect the AACM ethos and the primacy of jazz that wasn’t made in New York. Instructively, Abdullah who states that “I have never believed in any one city being the origin of this music” pays tribute to a clutch of modern thinkers from elsewhere on TARA’S SONG.

Not only does the band honor Fort Worth, Tex.-born Coleman, Memphis-born Frank Lowe – another long-time Bang associate – and Ra whose roots were variously Birmingham, Ala., Chicago and Saturn, but it also doesn’t neglect less acknowledged traditions. “Iko Iko”, the traditional New Orleans chant, featuring Abdullah on trumpet and vocals, continuo honks from Harding and Bang sounding as if he’s playing a Caribbean mandolin, is a rousing postlude. More pointedly the program begins with a respectful reading of Pensacola, Fla.-born Gigi Gyrce’s “Sans Souci”. Underappreciated in the 1950s, Ebonic Tone’s arrangement shows off the swinging sophistication of this bop-tinged original.

Other tunes confirm this link between the primeval and the progressive. Lowe’s “Nothing but Love”, for instance, is suspended between Second Line march and dance-like calypso with a back beat. Blake appears to be playing an electric bass, Strobert contributes binary bounces and Harding’s solo includes cunning, understated flutter-tonguing and snorts. “Blue Monk” gets an almost Dixieland arrangement with the fiddler double stopping and the horn men crating tremolo obbligatos.

Even a nearly 13-minute version of Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” is launched with Latinesque, matching band beats and call-and-response patterns between trumpet and violin. Given enough space, Harding growls and keens, thrusting out repeated altissimo runs if he was jazz-R&B bari man Leo Parker; while the trumpeter brassily breaks the melody into partials and squeezed counter tones and Bang plays either country hoedown vibrations portamento or double- and triple-stopping sweeps and swoops.

Abdullah’s “The Cave” takes all these influences one step further. Programmatic, throughout it’s almost 14½ minutes, the theme redeploys from languendo to agitato and back again, with some of the voicing reminiscent of the low-flame tone poems saxophonist Gyrce used to write for himself and trumpeter Art Farmer. Earthier than Gyrce, the baritonist creates a guttural , raspy tremolo solo – without neglecting the basso timbre of the beast – while the trumpeter’s double-tongued, chromatic flourishes take nothing from Farmer. Then there’s Bang’s slithering, triple-stopping movement. By the finale, it’s obvious this cave encompasses Sun Ra-like polyharmony, as well as spikier, serpentine solo lines.

Bang’s bravura and virtuosity is confirmed on the fewer, longer selections of the other CD. With El’Zabar exercising himself on congas, kalimba and ankle tambourine however, the roots on display take in African counter-rhythms as well as polyphonic complications. Several of the compositions gain their shape from El’Zabar’s thumb piano, with off-kilter torque from Bang and slurry tremolo lines from Brown.

Since both the introductory “Big M” and the final “Oof” are written for and dedicated to Favors, the trio’s new bass man, Israel may have felt a draft. But he maintains an unruffled composure throughout and unhurriedly exposes hidden parts of the bull fiddle below the bridge and elsewhere when he takes his solo on the last number.

Like Abdullah, El’Zabar sings enthusiastically if not always melodiously, though his raison d’etre is rhythm not the poetics of Ra which the trumpeter quotes. Sometimes, the percussionist’s vocalizing is a tinge unsettling as when his grunts and whines accompany the saxophonist’s Tranesque exploration of the theme on the percussionist-penned “Return of the Lost Tribe”.

Here and on his own “Where Do You Want To Go?” Brown’s half-Swing Era smoothness and half-South Side AACM atonality harmonizes and amplifies Bang’s brazen sawing. The second tune is notable not only for Brown’s integration of licks from “Afro Blue” into his solo, but also for a dynamic display of concussive polyrhythmic strength from the El’Zabar on congas.

More a foot-tapper than a dirge, “Oof” knits together many of the themes which characterized Favors’ life with the AACM and AEC. Besides Israel’s abrasive runs, there’s more kalimba layering, and times when the violinist shrills double- and triple-stops with the saxophonist playing sensitive accompaniment – then they reverse roles. On his own, Brown buzzes double tones like an old-time blues singer, only gradually making the sounds broader and deeper. He’s joined by El’Zabar incessantly repeating “big Favors” and other phrases with different inflections and volumes, as if he was a gospel preacher, feeling the spirit in the midst of a sermon.

Both captivating CDs offer views of advanced/traditional Black improvised music, with Tara’s Song having a bit of an edge because its arrangements allow a multiplicity of voices to be heard more clearly.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Tara: 1. Sans Souci 2. Lonely Woman 3. Tara's Song 4. Nothing but Love 5. Tapestry 6. Blue Monk 7. Fate in a Pleasant Mood 8. The Cave 9. Iko Iko

Personnel: Tara: Ahmed Abdullah (trumpet and vocals); Alex Harding (baritone saxophone); Billy Bang (violin); Alex Blake (bass); Andrei Strobert (drums)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Big M 2. Return of the Lost Tribe 3. Where Do You Want To Go? 4. Be Exciting (Kahil Testifies) 5. Oof

Personnel: Live: Ari Brown (tenor saxophone); Billy Bang (violin); Yosef Ben Israel (bass); Kahil El’Zabar (drums, percussion and kalimba)

January 16, 2006

The Velvet Lounge: On Late Chicago Jazz

by Gerald Majer
Columbia University Press

By Ken Waxman
October 10, 2005

A non-faction memoir of tales that may or not have happened, this volume is, to overstate the case a bit, sort of an American À la recherche du temps perdu. Gerald Majer, an English professor at Villa Julie College in Baltimore, utilizes his listening experiences involving major Chicago jazz musicians, as an entrée to his ruminations and meditations on growing up in that Midwestern city.

Don’t be fooled by the photograph of tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson on the cover or the two-page discography at the end of the volume however. Although Majer deals, in greater or lesser degrees, with the sounds of, among others, tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons, Anderson, bandleader Sun Ra, multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Art Ensemble of Chicago members Roscoe Mitchell and Malachi Favors, this is no music encyclopedia or a collection of album and CD reviews.

Instead, like Proust in recherche du temps perdu, who evolved his pioneering modern novel from the sensations and memories unleashed when he tasted a madeleine cake dipped in linden tea, similar to those he was given as a child, Majer’s tastes of modern and so-called avant-garde jazz prompt similar autobiographical and poetic musings.

Here’s his introduction to an apocryphal retelling of the circumstances surrounding Ammons’ 1962 heroin bust that can serve as an explanation of how many of the experiences outlined in the book should be taken:

“My account will only be a partial one – the version of story I heard and have remembered and imagined for many years, the story that called me to attempt to speak of another’s life...”

Link that statement to another he expresses later while detailing a 1973 Auditorium Theater performance by Sun Ra and his Arkestra:

“Behind the curtain of memory, I see that night though there were others over the years and inevitably the memories drift and fuse and overlap.”

In other words these non-faction incidents are his usually successful attempts to capture the feeling of jazz through his own emotional response to certain situations.

Thus, for example, a section involved with recalling the power of Elvin Jones’ drums he felt during a matinee show at the Jazz Showcase when he was a teenager, leads to a recollection of how he first noted Jones’ name while listening to John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things LP, the title of which he relates to the poet Arthur Rimbaud’s system of vowels. Simultaneously, Jones’ real-time exertions remind him of the dangers and excitement of playing games in a vacant lot near his childhood home, one of which was a test of kids’ endurance they called “the punching game”.

Or read how he spins his reminiscence of pianist Andrew Hill and tenor saxophonist’s John Gilmore’s work on “Le Serpent Qui Danse” on a late 1960s Hill LP into a meditation on South Side Chicago blues, Hill’s compositional links to Thelonious Monk, and – with Gilmore – to Sun Ra; as well as the composition’s link to the myth of Apollo and Python, elaborated by the metaphors of Charles Baudelaire’s poem of the same name. Finally, he uses these combined sentiments to arrive at the emotions he and his then-girlfriend experienced at a Sunday afternoon Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) big band gig in 1976.

Stylistically, many of Proust’s sentences in recherche du temps perdu extend several pages in length. Thankfully, Majer’s don’t. But his all-embracing metaphors and similes do, descriptively uncoiling a meditation, activity or idea through a few paragraphs, pages or entire chapters, only abandoning the concept when every last implication and inference has been drained from it – not unlike the way Coltrane, or come to think of it, Kirk or Sonny Stitt – both celebrated in the book – would play a solo.

Along the way, The Velvet Lounge: On Late Chicago Jazz does double duty as a celebration of the Windy city, and what Majer calls “the trite and secret motto of Chicago: to live is to work, to work is to live”. As an academic, Majer is an anomaly in his tales populated by working class muscle and fortitude, whether it’s expressed in the assembly line work of his North end Polish-American family and friends, or in the prodigious efforts of Black musicians from the South Side to band together into the AACM – and he proudly ticks off the collection of blue-collar jobs he had as well.

Majer doesn’t just poetically rhapsodize about the street and trees and buildings of Chicago, but celebrates its street markets, book stores and libraries plus its roads and highways, ground level transit and elevated and underground trains. These modes of transportation and services available to all were also inspirations to composers like Ra, who created compositions like “Magic City” and “El, the Sound of Joy” from those experiences.

Although Majer touches on similar live shows elsewhere, a performance at Anderson’s Velvet Lounge justly deserves its place of prominence. That’s because the author’s 18-page portrayal of an evening he and his wife spent listening to tenor saxophonist Ari Brown’s trio – and a sitter-in – at that down-at the-heels music shrine – interrupted, as expected, with numerous conceptual memory excursions – is probably the single most arresting recounting of the improvisational experience you’ll ever read in print.

Mixing in a tribute to a late rock musician friend who was buoyed by how the Lounge was a space “to keep the music alive, uncompromising and uncompromised”, Majer sketches the circumstances of how a routine Wednesday night gig at the Lounge in the middle of August – cover charge five dollars – changed in an instant to “music that doesn’t level off … but instead exposes its instant of creation”.

The dramatis personae, besides Brown on sax and electric keyboards are bassist Favors, drummer Avreeayl Ra, and a sitter-in on tenor saxophone named only Paul. A Lounge regular, who at one point worked for the Chicago Transit Authority, Paul’s command of saxophone improvisation is perhaps made more mythically transcendental by the author’s prose. Using this figurative language allows Majer to imaginatively capture the sensation of exhilaration and release that top-flight improvisation involves.

For instance, after he suddenly grasps that he’s been unconsciously mesmerized by the music for an extended period, Majer writes:

“I want everyone to be there, the living and the dead, I want to record this moment for posterity though its power must be precisely in its coming and its passing without any possibility of saving it … I let out a shout. I can’t help it …”

And later on, writing in the third person about audience reaction in general:

“A sound leaped out of you that was all yours and that wasn’t yours at all. You yelled for joy.”

It’s this sort of writing which is the volume’s strength, but which makes it so difficult to slot into any category. The author is a sophisticated enough writer so that even when he goes on metaphoric flights, his descriptions actually make you want to hear again – or listen to for the first time – the music described. Still, the elegiac first-person details of his upbringing and coming of age may not strike a resonating chord in every reader, unless he or she revels in quirky details about the United States’ Second City and its local characters.

In short, like improvised music itself, the audience for this book may be small, but fervent. As Majer writes about jazz, but perhaps describing his books as well: “following its track might mean not so much loving jazz but loving the interval that it opens…”

In reality no more challenging a read than “late Chicago jazz” is a listen, The Velvet Lounge: On Late Chicago Jazz deserves to achieve eventual reception and respect not too dissimilar from what the music itself has earned.

October 10, 2005

MALACHI THOMPSON & AFRICA BRASS

Blues Jazz
Delmark DG-548

Proof, if any more is needed, that despite the doctrinaire ravings of the Neo-Cons, accomplished players can create advanced, freedom-tinged jazz while staying true to the genre’s roots is provided by this CD.

BLUE JAZZ is made up of two suites composed by trumpeter Malachi Thompson and performed by his 12-piece Africa Brass plus guests on reeds and vocals. An added bonus are three stand-alone tracks, one written by certified mainstream hero Wayne Shorter, and another which is the sort of down and dirty Southside Chicago blues that would probably frighten the Young Lions right out of their bespoke-tailored suits.

Consisting of four-interrelated tracks, the Black Metropolis Suite offers a kaleidoscopic view of Chicago’s Southside or Bronzeville, filtered through the experience of native son Thompson. Over the years as a pro, he evolved from blues and R&B gigs to playing in Operation Breadbasket’s big band to a long-time membership in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).

With most of the rest of Africa Brass’s four other trumpets, four trombones, and the rhythm section AACM members as well, the ensemble is distinguished by its cohesiveness. As impeccable as they are subtle, Kirk Brown on keyboards, bassist Harrison Bankhead and drummer Leon Joyce Jr. do their job so well you hardly notice their presence in fact.

You certainly do notice Thompson, especially on a number like “The Panther”, where his solo consists of Cat Anderson-like, sky-high trumpeting, bitten off grace notes and a quote from “Joshua Fit De Battle of Jericho”, probably honoring the Black Panther party’s pugnacious stance. Joining him in the front line, in this tune reminiscent of Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder”, is trombonist Bill McFarland, who showcases some modified gutbucket phrasing with a pleasant burr, and guest Billy Harper weighing in with some smooth, lopping tenor sax work. Joyce’s drum breaks hold together the different sections, as Brown’s boppish comping and turnarounds do the same on the suite’s title tune.

Proving that atonality can as easily fit in a groove as clichéd swing sections, Thompson builds his solo on “Genesis/Rebirth” -- the CD’s longest track -- with bent and curved buzzing trills. Harper contributes off-centre honking slurs, while trombonist Steve Berry adds blowsy expansions in his chromatic-toned solo. Meanwhile the accompaniment, which has been propelled by understated shimmering cymbal whaps and bowed bass, explodes, adding pedal point vamps from the other brass plus higher-pitched and more diffuse timbres.

More historically based, “Blues for a Saint Called Louis Suite” honors Mr. Armstrong, who arrived in Chicago in 1924, thereby promulgating the newly minted jazz style. Helped not a little bit by the moaning, unselfconscious scat singing and lyric reading of Dee Alexander, a performance of this suite earned the Brass a standing ovation at the Chicago Blues (!) Festival, something Neo-Cons could never hope to achieve. Included in the three linked compositions are the Brass’s brass using its plungers to replicate the wah-wah whistle of the locomotive taking Armstrong from New Orleans to Chi-Town, while Joyce creates the rhythm of the clacking train from bass drum and ride cymbal.

Throughout, Thompson adopts a Bubber Miley-like plunger mute stance, on the title tune Brown quotes liberally from “St. Louis Blues” as he tinkles bluesy piano slurs, and his brother, Ritual Trio members Ari Brown, appears to add some Classic Jazz style clarinet tones on the same tune.

Although the CD’s title track is a celebratory blues with a little too much brass emphasis, more locomotive-like vamps and somewhat naïve celebratory lyrics, the Brass and even more guests take the session out on a high note.

Down home as anything Armstrong would have heard when he first came to Chicago and referencing Thompson’s Southside roots, “Mud Hole”, the final track, is sung by gravelly-voiced The Big Doowopper. The 11 horns create an approximation of a Stax-Volt section, Brown switches his preaching to funky organ and the raw tenor sax solo and backing arpeggios come from R&B specialist Gene “Daddy G” Barge, who first worked with the trumpeter 30 years ago.

BLUE JAZZ shows that finger popping and thinking aren’t mutually exclusive.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Black Metropolis Suite: 1. Black Metropolis 2. The Panther 3. Jaaz Revelations 4. Genesis/Rebirth ^ Blues for a Saint Called Louis Suite: 5. Po’ Little Louie* 6. Get On The Train 7. Blues for a Saint Called Louis*~ 8. Blue Jazz* 9. Footprints 10. Mud Hole+

Personnel: Malachi Thompson (trumpet and flugelhorn); David Spencer, Kenny Anderson, Micah Frazier, Elmer Brown (trumpets); Bill McFarland, Tracy Kirk, Steve Berry Omar Jefferson (trombones); Gary Bartz (soprano and alto saxophone); Billy Harper (tenor saxophone); Gene “Daddy G” Barge (tenor saxophone)+; & Ari Brown (tenor saxophone^, clarinet~); Kirk Brown (piano, organ+); Harrison Bankhead (bass); Leon Joyce Jr. (drums); Dee Alexander*, The Big Doowopper+ (vocals)

February 9, 2004

KAHIL EL'ZABAR

Africa N'da Blues
Delmark DE-519

Chicago percussionist Kahil El'Zabar is one younger musician who makes it a point to interact with the jazz pioneers of the 1960s and 1970s. A longtime member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, he has built the Ritual Trio around the talents of veteran AACMers Brown and Favors, who is also a member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. More to the point the percussionist has played and recorded with other sound pioneers from that time including saxophonists Fred Anderson, Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, Joseph Jarman, Archie Shepp and now Pharoah Sanders.

The results, especially on this CD, are particularly memorable because El'Zabar and his men are able to match the older musicians' populist as well as the exploratory vocabularies. Categorized as a unreconstructed firebreather following his stint with John Coltrane's most advanced groups Sanders is much more than that as he proceeds to demonstrate here. After all, almost the entire so-called acid jazz movement was built on his recordings with vocalist Leon Thomas such as "The Creator Has A Master Plan".

No one really sings on this disc, though Sandoval's spoken words in both English and Spanish on "Africanos/Latinos" pinpoints the many tributaries to the jazz river, and El'Zabar's chanting on "Pharoah's Song" could excite progressive DJs.

Instead, on tracks like the title tune, "Ka-Real" and, of course, "Pharoah's Song" Sanders breathes out flowing legato tones that appears to refer as much to Ben Webster-like boudoir sax playing as the New Thing. Unleashing a percussion offensive on that last tune seems to satisfy El'Zabar's most exotic impulses, since he sticks to the trap set the rest of the time. Meanwhile Favors does his work as unobtrusively possible.

If the session does have a drawback it's in the under-utilization of Brown's distinctive reed playing. Except for a soprano sax interlude on "Pharoah's Song" and a tenor chase with Sanders on "Miles' Mode", he merely turns out impeccable modal-style accompaniment throughout on the piano, his third instrument. Nonetheless, Brown's transformation of hoary "Autumn Leaves" into a pulsating rhythmic piano workout not only highlight his multi-talents, but could have guaranteed him a gig in a Southside Chicago bar anytime over the past half-century.

Meetings of musicians from different generations don't always work. But the sympathetic sounds from all concerned on AFRICA N'DA BLUES shows that harmony can sometimes be attained.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Ka-Real (Take 2) 2. Africanos/Latinos* 3. Miles' Mode 4. Autumn Leaves 5. Africa N'da Blues 6. Pharoah's Song 7. Ka-Real (Take 1)

Personnel: Pharoah Sanders (tenor saxophone); Ari Brown (soprano and tenor saxophones, piano); Malachi Favors (bass); Kahil El'Zabar (drums, percussion); Susana Sandoval (spoken word) *

September 20, 2000

MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS

Things To Come From Those Now Gone
Delmark DD-430

Co-founder and first president of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Muhal Richard Abrams spent his Chicago years (up to 1977) formulating and organizing new and unique ways to approach music. This 1972 reissue highlights many of them.

Although recorded over a two-day period, there's a different grouping on each track, with the sound ranging from romantic semi-classical to out-and-out freebop. At the same time, since THINGS TO COME is a peek into Abrams sonic lab, some experiments arrive stillborn.

Especially grating is Ella Jackson's piercing soprano on "How Are You", where her "classical" vocal stylings seem to torture every sign of life out of simple phrases. "Ballad For New Souls" is merely pleasant, resembling one of Erik Satie's dainty miniatures more than anything else. Meanwhile "1 and 4" works much better at the beginning, with Abrams at the piano, then later on when his synthesizer tinkering suggests a skating rink rather than a concert hall or club. Only Steve McCall's subtle percussion coloring preserves the mood.

It's future sound partisans like McCall -- glimpsed in their early years -- who are responsible for the excellence of the rest of the disk. (Parenthetically, Abrams' synthesizer work has also soared in the 28 years since then). Powerful drummer Wilbur Campbell helps turn the two tracks on which he's featured into bluesy, post bop showcases, while Wallace McMillan and Edwin Daugherty show that out-of-Chicago fame doesn't necessarily come to all fine saxophonists.

Tenorman Ari Brown -- now in his prime as part of the Ritual Trio -- proves on "In Retrospect" that his supply of ideas and go-for-broke tone were in perfect working order back in 1972. Moreover bassist Rufus Reid, who seems to have been the epitome of tasteful mainstreamer forever, reveals his avant-garde past and turns in an expectedly impeccable performance whenever he's featured.

In short, anyone interested in Abrams' concepts over the years will probably want this album. Even "How Are You" can be ignored by pre-programming the CD.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Ballad For New Souls 2. Things To Come From Those Now Gone 3. How Are You? 4. In Retrospect 5. Ballad For The Old Souls 6. 1 and 4 Plus 2 and 7. March Of The Transients Personnel: Wallace McMillan (flute or alto saxophone); Edwin Daugherty (alto saxophone); Ari Brown (tenor saxophone); Muhal Richard Abrams (piano and synthesizer); Emmanuel Cranshaw (vibes); Reggie Willis or Rufus Reid (bass); Steve McCall or Wilber Campbell (bass); Ella Jackson (voice)

September 11, 2000