For many years, the term Latin Jazz meant Afro-Cuban jazz. But then artists such as Paquito D’Rivera and Gato Barbieri and young talents such as Puerto Rican saxophonist David Sanchez, Venezuelan pianist Edward Simon, and Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez exploded narrow definitions of Latin Jazz with a truly Pan-American approach.
These days, no one would raise an eyebrow if an artist gives their Latin jazz a flamenco accent, and constructs it using a cumbia swing or drumming from candombe. The Ibero-American music universe is vast.

The accent of tonight’s Jazz With an Accent ® program is jazz tango.
We will hear an early attempt at jazz tango by Astor Piazzolla and his Jazz Tango Quintet from his album Take Me Dancing: The Latin Rhythms of Astor Piazzolla, recorded in 1959. Piazzolla, who grew up in New York, had returned to the city feeling ignored in Buenos Aires and hoping to re-launch his career. But he was struggling mightily. He was trying to support his family as a player and arranger (he wrote for Machito and Noro Morales, among others), and then, at one point, he imagined jazz tango as a way to break into the American market.
He recorded two albums for Tico Records, Take Me Dancing and Evening in Buenos Aires, a Mantovani-like tango recording with an orchestra that became Piazzolla’s “ghost record.” Never released in the States, it was a mystery to his followers for decades. (It was finally released on a Japanese label in 1994).
Piazzolla was enthusiastic about the results at first (“The recordings are marvelous,” he exulted in one letter), but he later disavowed the whole project, calling them “a monstrosity.”

I remember asking Piazzolla about them in one of our conversations. I told him I had seen the titles in discographies but couldn’t find them anywhere. “Good,” he said emphatically. “They should stay lost.”

And that was that.

While not his best work by any measure, Take Me Dancing was a worthy failure, suggesting ways to re-imagine jazz and tango. Five decades later, Brooklyn-based Argentine bassist, bandleader, and producer Pablo Aslan, a pioneer in jazz tango in the United States, found a copy of the album and was intrigued. He ended up transcribing and re-recording the arrangements, only now with musically bilingual players who knew jazz and tango, including Piazzolla’s grandson, drummer Daniel “Pipi” Piazzolla. As I wrote in the liner notes, Aslan´s Piazzolla in Brooklyn is neither a remake nor nostalgia. It’s not even approached as a tribute. Instead, it’s part of a continuing conversation between musicians from different eras who took their leaps on a continuing, open-ended search.

The program tonight also includes a Venezuelan classic by D’Rivera, Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava embracing tango in Buenos Aires, a track by long-time Piazzolla’s pianist Pablo Ziegler from his album Jazz Tango, which won a Grammy in the Latin jazz category in 2017, and a reading of Piazzolla’s “Prepárense” (Get Ready), by saxophonist Gato Barbieri from his final studio album New York Meeting, released in 2010.

Stop by tonight at 7 p.m. EST at

https://wdna.org/

If you’d like to reach me, please email me at fernando@jazzwithanaccent.com

There is a world of jazz to discover.

Tonight´s playlist

1. Danilo Perez   Bright Mississippi                        
2. Edward Simon  El Manicero Part I                        
3. Paquito D’Rivera  Alma Llanera                
4. Pedro Giraudo    Mate Amargo               
5. Astor Piazzolla   Lullaby of Birdland       
6. Pablo Aslan        Laura                    
7. Pablo Ziegler w Claudio Ragazzi & Hector del Curto  Michelangelo 70
8. Enrico Rava   Espejismo Ratonera
9. Gato Barbieri     Preparense