Three albums I like from 2003 all have a certain brooding quality that at the time felt very appropriate to world events, particularly the U.S. "War on Terror" and its general drift toward fascism (still alilve, unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned): Matthew Shipp's
Equilibrium, Cooper-Moore & Assif Tsahar's
America (which begins with a jazz-rap screed against America's violent history), and John Fahey's
Red Cross. The least known of these is
America, which alternates (more or less) between laidback Americana, with strong hints of the Cooper-Moore's Southern origins, and dissonant free jazz blowouts. I think of it as presenting different visions of America and its possibilities, with the dark side not at all glossed over. (It's all instrumental, aside from the first track.)
Equilibrium seems like it could be a soundtrack, perhaps a soundtrack for the bad news that continues to come out. I had listened to John Fahey a couple decades ago (I am aging myself here), but hadn't dug into him deeply at the time. I was happily surprised when he turned up in this decade talking about his enthusiasm for industrial music and putting out music bearing loud traces of that influence.
Red Cross was his last recording, but I don't consider it lacking in vitality, as some do. There is something indescribably great about the sheer sound he gets out of his guitar, the exact color of his guitar sound. I also think that the extremely slow tempo on many of these tunes in this case has the effect of fragmenting the songs into a million splinters of sound, sort of like what is accomplished when a jazz musician takes a song apart, but in this case done without actually doing any violence to the melody. When he plays the standard "Summertime," it sure doesn't
sound like the livin' is easy.
Esbjorn Svensson Trio's
Leucocyte, from last year, feels like a late entry in the same sub-category as the albums mentioned above, with a mood that is oddly suggestive of premonitions of Svensson's own premature death last year. It's an album of jazz, jazz-fusion, alongside experiments in something closer to minimalism and noise (as in the genre). I'm not very good at talking about it, but it was my favorite album of 2008.
I'm filing Cuban virtuoso conguero Miguel "Anga" Diaz's
Echu Mingua here because even though it has one foot in Afro-Latin dance music (the next big category coming up), I really find myself listening to it more the way I listen to, say, Sun Ra. Miguel takes his conga playing and pushes the limits by incorporating it into jazz covers or even chamber music with strings. There is a cover of "Round Midnight" with Anga playing five or six congas, accompanied by a small string section. My only big complaint about this album is that its alleged peak, with the song "Conga Carnival," is a big letdown for me since it's the only track I really don't like and it clashes with the other material. (Anga also died prematurely and tragically, shortly after this, his solo debut, was released. I'm a Scorpio, I guess I just gravitate toward death.)
Sunny Jain Collective's
Avaaz is another blending of jazz with music from other ethnic traditions (in this case one much more removed from jazz than Afro-Cuban music is). Avaaz is a little to soft-edged for some jazz fans, from what I've seen in reviews. The jazz part of it is more straight ahead and mainstream than most of the jazz I like, but sometimes I think it's not as strictly in that mainstream as it sounds. For example, there are subtle things about the quality of the sax tone here that reminds me saxophone I've heard in Egyptian popular music (esp. in Oum Kalthoum and Abdel Halim Hafez songs), which leaves me wondering if there isn't something more distinctive and eastern about it all than some people are hearing. I also really like the way rather than sticking to borrowing from Indian classical music, Sunny Jain takes elements from folkloric and pop Indian music. The first track, for instance, is a cover of a bhangra song, and there is also a version of a Bollywood oldie "Awara Hoon" (which I first heard in a 3 Mustaphas 3 cover and always assumed was Turkish!). Along with some fine instrumentalists, the album includes several tracks with a wonderful vocalist, Samita Sinha.
You can stream some or possibly all of
Avaaz here:
http://www.sunnyjain.com/store.html
Finally, Ayelet Rose Gottlieb's
Mayim Rabim and Ned Rothenberg's
Inner Diaspora are both releases in the Radical Jewish Culture series, on John Zorn's frequently great Tzadik label. Ayelet Rose Gottlieb is both an incredible singer, with a powerful voice, and a very talented composer. On this CD she presents very contemporary settings of parts of the Hebrew "Songs of Songs," working primarily in a jazz/modern classical mode, but informed by various Jewish musical traditions, with hints of pop even. It does not come out as a hodgepodge, but as a very organic whole. Maybe the albums greatest weakness is that it has a very theatrical feel, which for me makes me less inclined to listen to it repeatedly. It feels more like something meant to be staged. Still, it's a great CD. Rothenberg's
Inner Diaspora is yet another blending of jazz with classical chamber music, along with serious borrowings from Indian music (by way of tabla) and traditional Japanese music (Rothenberg has studied shakuhachi in addition to clarinet and saxophone).
http://www.lala.com/#album/792915009651162358
(Political aside: I am ambivalent about drawing attention to the work of Zorn and others, including Israeli-born Gottlieb, who continue to perform in Israel rather than honoring the cultural boycott against the Zionist state just as jazz musicians past honored the boycott against Apartheid South Africa. I want to emphasize this is about a state and an ideology, not about an ethnicity or religion.)