He's at it again
Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 10/15/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Following up on the spectacular critical and commercial success of Malicool, a unique encounter between West African traditional kora-based string music and North American jazz, Roswell Rudd goes even farther out, melding Western improvisation with traditional Mongolian throat-singing and folk stylings.
And the results yield a unique amalgam, even more wonderfully strange than his previous effort.
For me, this intersection of various world folk musics with jazz sensibilities produces some of the most exciting music on the scene today. It started with Egberto Gismonti, continued with Andy Narell, and goes forward with Jan Garbarek, Omar Sosa, Safa, Peter Epstein, Miguel Zenon, Yusef Lateef, Lingua Franca, The Intercontinentals, Jenny Scheinman, Dhafer Youssef, Nguyen Le, Roberto Rodreguez, Jean-Pierre Mas, Rita Marcotulli, Vijay Iyer, Guillermo Klein, Pago Libre, Michael Wolff, Will Calhoun, Ben Allison, Fraser Fifield, and a host of others too numerous to name.
The key consists in retaining the authentic aspects of each music, even as both are decoded and put together in new and unforeseen ways.
Case in point: "Buryat Boogie," a fiftyish-sounding boogie-woogie seamlessly grafted onto the Mongolian steppes that comes out sounding both bizarre and completely familiar. The title cut clinches the deal. Here a traditional blues is placed in such an unlikely setting as to nearly deconstruct it, yet it all comes out as almost inevitable. Perhaps even more astounding and weirdly glorious is "American Round," an amalgam of "Swing Low Sweet Chariot," "Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer," and "Amazing Grace." Do you know of more evocative music? I don't. And I doubt I'll ever encounter it. And don't forget "Honey on the Moon," a Rudd composition that sounds so authentically eastern that one could hardly be blamed to think of it as a lost oriental folk classic.
Bottom line: Full monty mysterioso ur-folk magically melded with American jazz--something no person with minimal aesthetic sensibilities should miss. More advanced aesthetes will drop everything and purchase same post-haste."