Jazz has become a global language. In Jazz With an Accent ®, we explore the many ways musicians around the world have reimagined their traditions with the tools, strategies, and history of jazz, and vice versa.

Tonight, we’ll explore collaborations. Half of the program will feature music by Western jazz artists and African musicians, crossing the imaginary lines between musical traditions and their rules. In the second half, we’ll explore flamenco jazz and its evolution, featuring a historic, breakthrough recording and a couple of snapshots of recent encounters, including one of its descendants, so to speak.

We’ll open with German guitarist Leni Stern and “Ousmane,” a track from her album Africa. This was no hit-and-run cultural sightseeing by Stern. She began by living and working several months a year in Mali and Senegal, resulting in the EP Alu Maye (Have You Heard) recorded in Mali at Salif Keita’s Bamako Studios. The follow-up, Africa, was two years in the making and involved a large cast of African instrumentalists and singers as well as contributions by saxophonist Michael Brecker (in one of his final recordings) and guitarist Mike Stern, Leni’s husband. (Photo of Leni Stern by Sandrine Lee)

On her website, Stern mentions that she played in Salif’s band, also with Senegalese singer-guitarist Baaba Maal, and learned from kora master Toumani Diabaté and says that she was “paying homage to the African roots of jazz, studying with real masters, getting to know the rhythms of the music, the languages, and life there.”

The proof is in the music.

Continue reading →

Jazz has become a global language. In Jazz With an Accent ®, we explore the many ways musicians around the world have reimagined their traditions with the tools, strategies, and history of jazz, as well as vice versa.

Tonight, we spotlight piano music, and we’ll start with “Goldwrap” by Swedish pianist Esbjorn Svensson and his trio live in Hamburg. Then, we’ll take a sharp turn from European jazz to Latin American folklore reimagined.

Eduardo Lagos (1929-2009), was a pianist, composer, and practicing ophthalmologist. One of my musical heroes, Lagos revitalized the folkloric tradition in Argentina by incorporating the tools and strategies of jazz, stretching the forms, using improvisation, and expanding the harmonic vocabulary.

In the 1960s, he was part of a folkloric music boom in Argentina and the leading figure of what became known as proyección folklórica, folkloric projection, a timid label that has always sounded to me like an (unnecessary) apology for not sticking with the old ways.

“We know perfectly well that we are not ‘making folklore,’ because folklore has already been made,” Lagos once said. “At most, we can dig into its essence and roots to project it into today.” That, he did.

We’ll hear “La Oncena” (the Eleventh), Lagos’ take on the chacarera (one of the classic styles in Argentine folk music) and, arguably, his most famous composition. The title alludes to the extended structure of the key chord of the song (which included the 7^th, 9^th, and 11^th notes of the scale) a practice common in jazz but not in this genre.

This piece has many versions, including one by the great singer Mercedes Sosa. Tonight’s performance features Lagos playing with his trio, featuring two historic figures in Argentine jazz, bassist Jorge González, and drummer Pocho Lapouble.

We’ll complete the first half featuring two Spanish musicians who, each in his own way, opened the language of flamenco: pianist, guitarist, and singer Diego Amador and pianist Chano Dominguez.

Diego is the younger brother of Raimundo and Rafael Amador, founders of the influential flamenco blues group Pata Negra. Piano, to point out the obvious, is not a flamenco instrument. That didn’t stop Diego. “With the guitar, I dedicated myself to playing on the records of Paco [De Lucia], Sabicas, Niño Ricardo,” he once said. “For the piano, I wrecked the LPs by Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock until I got their solos. During those days, I never left the house; I only stopped to eat and sleep.”

We’ll hear Diego Amador’s rumba flamenca “Al Latin,” featuring guest guitarists Raimundo Amador and Luis Salinas.

And we’ll close the first half with Chano Dominguez’s reimagining of “Turn Out the Stars,” as “Tu Enciendes Las Estrellas.”

The second half of Jazz With an Accent opens with “Two Ways” by Turkish pianist Fahir Atakoglu from IF, his album featuring Horacio “El negro” Hernández on drums and Anthony Jackson on bass. And then we’ll hear British pianist, horn player, and composer Django Bates’ “We Are Not Lost We Are Simply Finding Our Way,” a title that I might steal as a subtitle for the radio show. Bates (a frequent presence in this program) is an exceptional player who wraps sneakily subversive musical ideas in a sharp sense of humor and a “Why not?” attitude. This track is from Bates’ album The Study of Touch.

And we’ll complete tonight’s program, which started with the idea of a piano walkabout, featuring the work of two drummers, Jordi Rossy and Manu Katché.

 You might have heard Rossy playing drums behind Brad Mehldau,      Danilo Perez, Guillermo Klein, or Paquito D’Rivera, but around 2000, he shifted his focus to the piano. We’ll hear “Sexy Time” from Rossy’s Wicca, his debut as a leader, leading a peculiar organ trio featuring fellow countryman, pianist Albert Sanz on Hammond B3 and RJ Miller on drums.

And we’ll close with “Song for Her” by French drummer Manu Katché, from his album Playground. Katché is perhaps best known for his work with Sting and Peter Gabriel. Mirroring Rossy’s story, he started in music as a pianist before focusing on percussion and drumming. For this album, he called on ECM’s labelmate Polish pianist and composer Marcin Wasilewski.

There’s a world of jazz to discover, but there is not enough time in the program to talk and play the music I’d like to share with you — and I prefer you hear the music. If you want more information about the music and the artists you heard or missed in the program, please check this blog, Jazz With an Accent.com or WDNA.org.

And if you’d like to reach me, please write to me at fernando@jazzwithanaccent.com

For now, join us Thursday at 7 p.m. EST at

https://wdna.org/

Thank you for listening.

Playlist                  

1. EST Esbjorn Svensson Trio                             Goldwrap (Live in Hamburg)
2. Eduardo Lagos Trio                                        La Oncena        
3. Diego Amador                                               Al Latin
4. Chano Dominguez                                        Tu Enciendes Las estrellas
5. Fahir Atakoglu                                               Two Ways 
6. Django Bates                                                 We Are Not Lost We Are Simply Finding Our Way             
7. Jordi Rossy Trio                                             Sexy Time 
8. Manu Katche                                                 Song for Her                                        

Jazz has become a global language. In Jazz With an Accent ®, we explore the many ways musicians around the world have reimagined their traditions with the tools, strategies, and history of jazz.

Tonight, we’ll sample global electric fusion with an accent on English fusion. We’ll start with “My Heart Declares A Holiday,” a track by drummer Bill Bruford’s Earthworks. Many of us knew Bruford for his work powering art-rock bans like Yes and King Crimson or artists such as fusion wizard Allan Holdsworth, but it turns out he was a jazz player at heart — and a pretty good scout of talent to boot.

This first edition of Earthworks features pianist and brass player Django Bates and saxophonist Iain Ballamy, both intrepid composers and bandleaders in their own right (more about them later).

We’ll follow this with “Atavachron,” a tip of the hat to the underrated Holdsworth, and “Jaytee,” a track by one of Bates’ early projects, the band Human Chain. The group had a rolling lineup, but for Cashin’In, their first album, Human Chain was a trio comprising Bates and drummer Steve Arguelles, the core of the project, and multi-instrumentalist Stuart Hall.

Bill Bruford, right, with Django Bates and Iain Ballamy. © Copyright Bill Bruford and Bill Bruford Productions Ltd. (No photographer credit provided)

And we’ll close the first half of tonight’s show with a blend of British, African, and Caribbean accents. We’ll hear “Bliss-Off,” by saxophonist Iain Ballamy from his album Acme; and then, call it a slight left turn, “No Way Out” from the brilliant Trinidadian steel pan master Othello Molineaux’s debut album It’s About Time. Molineaux began his career as a pianist but, according to his biography on seetobago.com, by age 15 he learned to tune pans, the national musical instrument of Trinidad and Tobago, and led his own steel band. He moved to Miami in 1971, where he met Jaco Pastorius. Their music partnership was documented on almost all of Pastorius’ recordings, as well as a featured role on Word of Mouth, Pastorius’ big band.

The second half features two exceptional Italian trumpeters, Enrico Rava, a historic figure in Italian jazz, and Paolo Fresu, a restless innovator.

Rava has an extraordinarily diverse career that includes film soundtracks, hardbop, and turns in the avant-garde (among many collaborations he was part of Carla Bley’s Jazz Composers’ Orchestra’s Escalator Over the Hill), collaborations with South African musicians, and tributes to Miles, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and the music of Michael Jackson. Tonight, you’ll hear a sampling of his beautiful tone and lyricisms in “Dr. Ra and Mr. Va,” from his album The Plot, featuring guitarist John Abercrombie, bassist Palle Danielsson, and drummer Jon Christensen.

We have heard, and no doubt, we’ll hear more of, Paolo Fresu in broadly varied settings. He has evoked the sound and approach of 1950s Miles Davis, has been part of contemporary classical and folk music explorations, and collaborated with artists as disparate as Omar Sosa and Nguyen Le. 

Tonight, we’ll hear his take on “Satisfaction” (yes, that one, the Stones’ early hit) from Desertico, with his electric quintet.

And we’ll complete the show circling back to Bruford’s Earthworks and British jazz. These are two beautiful ballads by saxophonist Iain Ballamy, “It Needn’t End In Tears,” a track from Earthwork’s self-titled debut album, and the title track from his album All Men Amen.    

 There’s a world of jazz to discover, but there is not enough time to talk and play the music I’d like to share with you — and I prefer you hear the music, not me. If you want more information about the music and the artists you heard or missed in the program, check this blog, Jazz With an Accent.com or WDNA.org.

And if you’d like to reach me, please write to me at fernando@jazzwithanaccent.com

For now, join us Thursday at 7 p.m. EST at

https://wdna.org/

Thank you for listening.

Playlist            

1. Bill Bruford’s Earthworks           My Heart Declares A Holiday
2. Alan Holdsworth                       Atavachron                             
3. The Human Chain                      Jaytee                                       
4. Iain Ballamy                               Bliss-Off 
5. Othello Molineaux                    No Way Out 
6. Paolo Fresu Devil Quartet         [I Can’t Get No] Satisfaction                                    
7. Enrico Rava                                Dr. Ra And Mr. Va
8. Bill Bruford’s Earthworks           It Needn’t End In Tears
9. Iain Ballamy                               All Men Amen