Cosmic Jazz this time has music from a selection of tunes that all include either musicians from across national border and/or elements of musical styles that cross borders. Be prepared for a journey!

1.   Dee Dee Bridgewater – People Make The World Go Around from Afro Blue

We begin with a title that makes a statement about the ups and downs of the world written by the Philadelphia songwriting team of Thom Bell and Linda Creed. It was released originally by The Stylistics in 1972 and became a Billboard Top 30 hit. This version was released in 1974 by Dee Dee Bridgewater on her excellent Afro Blue album. Dee Dee Bridgewater provides vocals that are tender but assertive, Roland Hanna wheels away on piano throughout and there are some notable interventions from Cecil Bridgewater on trumpet. It is, though, people from around the world that make this tune and the whole album go round. Besides Dee Dee, Cecil and Ron Bridgewater and Roland Hanna from the USA there is Czech-born George Mraz on bass and Japanese drummer Motohiko Hino on drums, while the recording was made in Tokyo studios with a Japanese producer (T. Ishuka) and a Japanese director (H. Matsumoto).

2.   Abbey Lincoln – Caged Bird from Painted Lady

Abbey Lincoln was a Chicago-born vocalist, actress and civil rights activist who was featured on one of the most important political jazz albums – Max Roach’s We Insist, Freedom Now Suite. The musicians on the album were all from the USA but after a tour to the continent of Africa in the mid-1970s Abbey Lincoln asserted her heritage by adopting the name Aminata Maseka. The pianist on the album, Hilton Ruiz, was more commonly associated with Latin music and came from Puerto Rican heritage. Archie Shepp, another pioneer of political jazz music, was on saxes. This version of the tune and the album provides another example of Americans making recordings beyond their borders. It was recorded in Paris in 1980 with French producers.

3.   Anouar Brahem – Bahia from Blue Maqams

This tune incorporates music that stretches wider than the jazz tradition. It comes from from Tunisian-born Anouar Brahem, a master oud player. The oud is an age-old traditional Oriental stringed instrument with the musical heritage of the Arab and Islamic worlds. On this album we find him playing with jazz musicians while this tune title suggests interest on another continent. Anouhar Braheem was a classically trained oud player but as a teenager found jazz interesting and believed that although jazz was associated for him with music that had greater freedom and experimentation, it could be merged with the music he was playing. On this 2017 album all the other musicians are from a jazz background and from across two different countries and continents with Jack DeJohnette from the USA on drums and Django Bates on piano and Dave Holland on bass from the UK.

4.   Mary Halvorson Amaryllis Sextet feat. Laurie Anderson – Incarnadine from Cloudward

.Guitarist Mary Halverson brings her Amaryllis Sextet with some important contemporaryjazz that is demanding  and challenging.  This tune is wild, free and complex. The musicians are from different heritages and they bring those experiences to the music. Guest Laurie Anderson on violin is not normally associated with jazz; vibraphone player Patricia Brennan was born in Mexico where she began by playing salsa, moved on to top Mexican symphony orchestras and then moved to New York’s jazz community. The latest album with her sextet Breaking Stretch has unmistakable Latin influences. Trumpeter Adam O’Farrill is quite simply from one of the great Cuban and Cuban/American musical families.

5.   Thokozile Collective – Hound Cat from Thokozile Collective

The next selection provides a contrast to the last tune courtesy of Birnam Records in Scotland. In the 2000s band leader Dan Somogyi went on a British Council music education study trip to Cape Town and the Western Cape in South Africa, which built on previous personal trips to South and East Africa and his experiences playing with bands in London – for example, Soothsayers. The study trip led to a year-long education project culminating in a concert Footprints of South Africa for which Thokazile were formed as the house band. The album includes tunes written by Tony Allen, Mthutuzeli Dudu Pukwana, Robin J. Hopcraft and Idris Rahman of Soothsayers and others, but Hound Cat is an original composition from the Thokozile guitarist Rob Palmer “inspired by a Tony Allen drum groove”. It sounds good, with Palmer’s guitar enhanced by a sax solo from Terry Quinney. We just need to add, in the context of this show, the band has members from Senegal, Canada and the UK, the latter including a UK musician with Hungarian heritage.

6.   Tabu Ley Rochereau – Likambo ya Mikanda from The Voice of Lightness

By now we are,  not talking of jazz with influence and influencers from wider heritages but music which draws upon the structures of jazz. This is soukous/rumba from D R Congo. Vocalist, composer and later politician Tabu Ley Rochereau, was one of D R Congo’s greatest. He progressed through work with prominent musicians and then went on to lead his own bands. This tune, from 1977, was from the band Onaza (Orchestra National du Zaire) that he led and took to the second international Festival of African Culture in Lagos, Nigeria. His voice was distinctive ‘the Voice of Lightness’ but in that ‘lightness’ there is much emotion. The music was essentially Congolese soukous/rumba but there were influences from soul, funk and jazz as musicians have the freedom to demonstrate their improvisational skills. The tune Likambo ya Mokanda illustrates this freedom with, to quote the CD liner notes, Tabu Ley Rochereau giving the drummers an intense workout and letting the horn players run rampant, veering between his sure direction and Zaikodelic (ref. to DRC band Zaiko Langa Langa) beau desordre. It all comes across like a very big, big band. Even Tabu Ley Rochereau himself on vocals sounds as if he is freewheeling at times, with at some points echoes of an Indian raga and apparently lyrics that begin as an anthem of African pride but then turn unexpectedly into the tale of a letter delivered to the wrong address then ending with hallelujahs and amens.  Along the way we find words in the languages of Lingala, French and English. The whole double album is just wonderful.