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, instruments, and strategies of jazz — and vice versa. Tonight, we’ll explore standards, jazz standards with an accent but also standards of other musical traditions given a jazz treatment.

Standards offer a ready-made common language between artists and audiences and, with that, perhaps a better understanding (and a greater enjoyment) by the listeners of what a performer is trying to do.

We’ll open the program with Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez and a rumba version of John Coltrane´s “Impressions,” from his album Central Avenue.

And we’ll follow it with singer Dee Dee Bridgewater’s take on “Compared to What,” from her album Red Earth recorded in Mali. “With age comes wisdom, spiritual awakenings,” wrote Bridgewater in her notes for the album. “This project is my ode to Mali and to Africa.”

For this album, she enlisted Malian musician and producer Cheik Tidiane Seck (we heard him in previous weeks in his collaboration with Hank Jones), a group of superb Malian musicians and vocalists, and Bridgewater’s pianist Edsel Gomez.

“Compared to What” was written by Gene McDaniels and recorded by Les McCann in 1966. But the song actually exploded when McCann and saxophonist Eddie Harris performed it at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 1969. In preparing the set, and reading the lyrics, I was reminded that this was originally a protest song addressing the social and political climate of the time, including the Vietnam War, racial inequality, and the struggle for justice. The more things change …

Then we’ll take a slight turn here and add a Spanish accent to the conversation.

We’ll hear pianist Chano Dominguez and bassist Javier Colina interpret the standard “You Must Believe In Spring,” and then we’ll have Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés playing an expansive reimagining of Moisés Simon’s classic “El Manisero,” in a solo version from his album Solo in New York. 

We’ll close the first half of tonight´s show with Italian trumpeter Paolo Fresu, someone we have heard in Jazz With an Accent playing his brand of avant-jazz, but here we´ll hear him with his acoustic quintet revisiting “Blame it on My Youth.”

The second half opens with another piano-and-bass duo, Norwegian bassist Terje Gewelt and French pianist Christian Jacob reimagining a different kind of standard. The hymn-like “The Water Is Wide” has a long, winding, tangled history. Some sources identify it as a Scottish song dating to the 1700s, others have said it is based on a Scottish ballad called “Waly, Waly,” or pieced together from various sources. Along the way, British composer Benjamin Britten published a famous version in 1947, and then Pete Seeger popularized it when he included it on his album American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 2. in 1958. The song has also been interpreted by artists as disparate as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Barbra Streisand, PJ Harvey, and James Taylor.

Gewelt and Jacob recorded this version live on a concert tour of the duo in Norway, and it appears on Gewelt’s album Hope. Their performance has a lyrical quality that draws from jazz and classical music and yet preserves a certain unpretentious, open folk spirit.

And speaking of folk music, we’ll follow that with Norwegian pianist Bobo Stenson and his trio playing “Alfonsina,” his version of “Alfonsina y el Mar,” a tribute to poet Alfonsina Storni originally written as a zamba, an Argentine folk music style, by composer Ariel Ramirez, with lyrics by writer Félix Luna. The song was part of an album titled Mujeres Argentinas (Argentine Women) and became an instant classic sung by the great Mercedes Sosa.

The final stretch of tonight’s program is an unplanned celebration of large ensembles.

In his album Coral, Puerto Rican saxophonist David Sánchez reimagines a Caribbean “Matita Pere ” by Antonio Carlos Jobim, and then we’ll have a tribute to the legacy of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.

We’ll close with two of Strayhorn’s classics: “Take the “A” Train,” a signature piece of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, reimagined by the Vienna Art Orchestra on its album Swing & Affairs, and then “Lotus Blossom,” in a lush version by Danish trumpet player, composer, and arranger Palle Mikkelborg. He is probably best known to American audiences for Miles Davis’ 1989 album Aura, which Mikkelborg wrote, arranged, and produced. It was Miles Davis’s final album.

If you would like more information about what you heard (or what you missed), check this blog or just write to me at fernando@jazzwithanaccent.com

For now, and as always, thank you for listening.

 PLAYLIST

1. Danilo Perez                                         “Impressions” Central Avenue  
2. Dee Dee Bridgewater                         “Compared to What”      Red Earth A Malian Journey
3. Chano Dominguez & Javier Colina       “You Must Believe In Spring” Chano & Colina       
4. Chucho Valdés                                         “El Manisero”          Solo in New York                       
5. Paolo Fresu Devil Quartet                      “Blame It On My Youth”      Desertico           
6. Terje Gewelt bass – Christian Jacob piano              “The Water is Wide” Hope 
7. Bobo Stenson Trio                                                        “Alfonsina” Goodbye
8. David Sánchez “Matita Peré” Coral
9. Vienna Art Orchestra “Take the A Train” Swing & Affairs
10. Palle Mikkelborg                                  “Lotus Blossom” To Whom It May Concern

                                                                    

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.

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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