Artist - Tune - Album
John Coltrane - Welcome - Kulu Sé Mama
Sonny Greenwich - Prelune - Evol-ution, Love’s Reverse
Jazzmeia Horn - Tight - A Social Call
John Mayall - Country Road - Jazz Blues Fusion
Abdullah Ibrahim - Tintiyana, Second Part - African Space Program
Christian Scott - An Unending Repentance - Yesterday You Said Tomorrow
Ornette Coleman - Law Years - Science Fiction
Gary Thomas - Traf - Code Violations
Jowee Omicil - Something Clear - Let’s Bash!
Herbie Hancock - You’ll Know When You Get There - Mwandishi
Anthony Braxton - BOR----N-K64... - Five Pieces 1975
John Coltrane - Vigil - Kulu Sé Mama
The opening theme for Jazz Gumbo is “Music Evolution” by Buckshot Lefonque.
Complete Playlists of all past Sets are available at jazzgumbo.blogspot.ca
On balance, this Set is a bit Freer than most. That is, a lot of the music strays beyond the conventions of the mainstream. And this freer music comes in lots of variations.
The earliest selections are the opening and closing numbers from Coltrane. The “Kulu Sé Mama” album was recorded in ’65 but not released until two years later. It is a bridge between ‘Trane’s earlier work, which stuck to mainstreams structures, to later work which is far more abstract than anything in this Set. They are perfect numbers for introducing the avant garde, “Welcome” especially so, based as it is on the birthday song we all know, but transformed into something far richer and emotive.
The Sonny Greenwich and Jazzmeia Horn numbers are quite accessible, also. The melody and chord structures are there, but relaxed a bit, leaving more room for stretching. One way to look at free jazz (and this is only one way), is to think of improvisation as not just happening within the structure of a melody; instead, the structure itself becomes improvised. Hancock’s tune takes this a little further.
The Christian Scott piece is free in a different way, doing so much with tone and atmosphere, and Gary Thomas does something similar. One of the pieces I really love is Braxton’s offering. I freely admit that a lot of Braxton’s music is beyond me – I can’t enjoy it. But there are others, like this one, that floor me! This piece is so dynamic, so driving and insistent, that it just barges beyond any analytics my mind wants to throw up and gets to my core. And I keep listening to Braxton for the occasional number that will get to me in a similar way.
In a real sense, I think that gets to the heart of it: music that carries me somewhere emotionally or viscerally, whether I “understand” it or not. So much of the music of Miles Davis (who isn’t represented here, but should be) has been like this for me. From the time I first listened to him, in the late sixties, I could never really catch up to him. “Spanish Key” was the number that pulled me into “Bitches Brew”. But by the time I ‘got’ it, and went out and bought his next thing – “Live/Evil” in this case – he was into a whole other sound, and I had 'deconstruct" what I expected of him before I could ‘get’ that. And it was like that right to the end in my experience of listening to Miles.
I hope there’s plenty in this Set for you to love, to be tantalized by, to open up to. Next Set, we’ll slip back into a lower Earth orbit.
Thrive!
Kirby Obsidian
