Skip to main content

Jazz vocals

 

Al compás del mundo - programa #167, 2-13-25, jazz vocals

 


01 World Saxophone Quartet with Fontella Bass - Suffering with the Blues

02 Charles Mingus - Weird Nightmare

03 Courtney Pine - I've Known Rivers

04 Don Was & the Pan-Detroit Ensemble - I Ain't Got Nothing

05 Roland Kirk - Baby Let Me Shake Your Tree

06 Gary Bartz NTU Troop - Uhuru Sassa

07 Gil Scott-Heron - The Prisoner

08 The Pharaohs - Freedom Road

09 Pierre Dorge & New Jungle Orchestra - Bobo Sanneh

 


For the summary of this week’s program on Al compás del mundo radio, I’m going to let the song lyrics and performers’ backgrounds tell their own story. First off, I have to admit I’m not a big fan of jazz with vocals. Maybe it’s all the cutesy and torch-y songs or the 50th recorded version of Blue Moon and umpteen other jazz standards from “the great American songbook.” As a rule, they don’t get under my skin. But that’s not to say there is nothing redeeming (to my ears) in lyrics both plaintive and sincere. This playlist begins with famed R&B singer, Fontella Bass, joining the World Saxophone Quartet and lamenting that “Somewhere, somehow, some time, some place, I must have been wrong, cuz now I’m suffering with the blues.” Mingus’s ‘Weird Nightmare’ follows and the singer bewails the “nightmare that haunts her every dream” (must be a broken heart) while the soundtrack paints an appropriate disturbing scene of tortured insomnia. We go back to 1921 for the next verses from illustrious African American poet Langston Hughes, actually paraphrased by composer Gary Bartz as ‘I’ve Known Rivers’ and performed here by Courtney Pine. Written during the great migration to the North by literally millions of his people, Hughes saw rivers as life-nurturing connections to places beyond. On a whole other level, vocalist Steffanie Christi’an leads the Don Was & Pan-Detroit Ensemble giving advice to a lovelorn friend “...just grab your dancing shoes and we’ll go lose them blues. Cuz I ain’t got nothing but time.” Maybe somewhere out on the town, they might run into Roland Kirk. Look out! He’s blind, you know. Of course, that doesn’t affect his affinity for the scent of a woman. And when he’s motivated, he’s been known to slyly “beg” for a chance to climb up into her branches: “I don’t give a damn how many squirrels got their nuts out of the tree...in the last few months. Baby, let me shake your tree.” Previously mentioned Gary Bartz next presents a call for Afro-American unity during the time of the Vietnam war and racial sruggles in ‘Uhuru Sassa’, from the Swahili ‘freedom now’: “Hell no, I won’t fight your filthy battles no more...I’ve got some battles of my own to fight for.” Once again shifting from a universal theme to an individual struggle, Gil Scott-Heron (with gorgeous piano backing by co-writer Brian Jackson) sees himself as “The Prisoner” of society, the justice system, an unhappy marriage, an identity crisis...”Here I am, after so many years, hounded by hatred and trapped by fear.” Admittedly, there’s been plentiful reasons for singing the blues in the playlist entries up till now, and most all of the tunes reflect that solemnity in their pace. So we’re going to finish up with two bouncy, uplifting cuts. First, The Pharaohs, straddling the line between R&B and jazz insist “I’m free at last.” and “I don’t have to worry no more.” (would that this were wholly true!) Nothing wrong with a dose of optimism, though. And while I am unable to translate the Ghanaian singer’s lyrics for Danish bandleader Pierre Dorge & New Jungle Orchestra, I’m confident they finish up this program speaking of positivity and joyfulness.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Al compas del mundo, programa #92 - Japan

The Japanese historically have been a most creative people, excelling in aesthetic conventions like architecture, painting, culinary arts, theatre, music, and more. A craftsman’s care and an artist’s flair have come to define everyday household objects such as articles of clothing and kitchen ware, designed with a sensibility that imbues them with import and elevated status. After WWII in the United States however, an item inscribed “made in Japan” usually indicated a tchotchke of mediocre quality. A perfect example is the large number of Northwest Coast Native American-style bone totem poles made for the tourist shops in the Northwest. There is a distinctive difference in these “artifacts” from the real, home-made variety that illustrates someone from another culture tackling aesthetics they don’t fully comprehend. And that leads us to some of this week’s musical choices. Imitating Western pop, rock and jazz, Japanese artists have recorded many forgettable efforts – not unlike those o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Al compás del mundo - programa #99 - Los Folkloristas

This week’s Al compás del mundo earns a pair of dedications. Primarily, to Las Folkloristas, a group of Mexican musicians who first came together in 1966 and who continue to the present day, delighting their public and educating them as to the breadth of folk music genres and instrumentation found in every corner of Latin America. The second dedication is to me and my sweetheart wife Claudia – we met at a concert of Los Folkloristas at the Sala Agora in Mexico City, in 1976. And yes, we too are still together. Get out your handkerchiefs and dry your eyes because there’s a story to be told as evidence that there’s a soulmate out there for everyone. You just have to make the effort to look, even if it takes you to a foreign land. And so it goes like this: I spent all of 1976 living in Mexico City, ostensibly to learn Spanish, but en realidad to loaf around, drink beer, practice my saxophone, and maybe, just maybe, look to meet a señorita. I lived in a pension (boardinghouse) owned by Jul...
1 comment
Read more

Al compás del mundo – programa #119 –Blues Harmonica

Any program that starts and ends with Little Walter has got something going on right. And in this version of Mexican radio’s Al compas del mundo (radioactivaTX.org – in Tequisquiapan, Queretaro) I can do no wrong. Though I kind of, sort of, do a chronology of the harmonica in American blues, I had to start off this playlist with Little Walter Jacobs for reasons obvious to me and, I’m certain, many others. Followed by an all-time favorite – Rollin’ and Tumblin’, with Walter again, Muddy Waters, Baby Face Leroy Foster and an unnamed participant or two. It is a given that the blues developed in the United States brought by an enslaved population that introduced African characteristics from many different roots and regions. This lyric-less version of Rollin’ and Tumblin’ is played, moaned and wailed to create a mood that – to these ears – evokes the sound of the motherland, how distant that might be. Followed by early recordings of a novelty harmonica solo, jug bands, and country sounds. F...
Post a Comment
Read more