Page 71 - Jazz

language that I had no way of understanding but which communicated subliminally with my inner being, as if
it were an almost betrayed secret. I listened to pieces sung in Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish and English, springing
from the interwoven sounds of equally exotic instruments that came to blend their cultures in a fascinating
melting-pot.
The exoticism of ethno-jazz, this fusion between vocal resonances that are foreign, unaccustomed,
unusual and bizarre and the sound of instruments (guembri, oud, djembe, balaphone, marimba, batá, cimbalom,
kongoman, m’bira, “speaking drum”) that are equally far from our everyday imagination, from our recognition
system (accustomed to immediate identification and categorisation), alternating with doses of ‘pure’ jazz, piano
solos, wind reprises and limpid themes and lots and lots of percussion pigmented with virtuoso vocalisations.
I listened to Sentir, a complex and heterogeneous album by Omar Sosa, and as I write this I realise that
I am justified in saying that fusion jazz is somehow heterogeneous in itself and Sosa’s Afro-Cuban jazz is the
conglomerate of a multicoloured stylistic variety that contains fragments of a multicultural religiosity skilfully
blended into an expression of contemporary jazz. Those superb tracks Oda al Negro and Tre notas en amarillo and
Manto Blanco, a piece with an interesting structure since it is vocally stratified between an African dialect and an
English rap-type speech, with a theatrical dialogue between the female soloist and the pianist, voices which seem
to be practising humour blended in the harmonies of modern jazz.
And then as I listened to Afreecanos and the more uniform Mulatos (what a beautiful track El

GăRâNA 2009 Consenso is...) I remembered Buena vista social club, a legendary
band, with that same verve and mixture of pigments but also
with a poetic charge found only in Russian party songs sung
by gypsy nomads (the film Şatra), with their volcanic, passionate,
dramatic, tumultuous romanticism (Veinte años), or in the Romanian
romances of the inter-war years, but with a red-hot energy that only
the stage can convey and a concert atmosphere. Where the subtle
spirit is at work radiating from the audience, a harmonious fusion
of inner energies, when all the inside windows are open and the pure
air that carries the music comes in and goes out again enriched, when
the mind has abandoned itself to the joy of listening and of leaving the
outside world...outside. When the audience becomes a single entity, an
impetuous resounding instrument and sings with all its multiple and
yet now indivisible being. Chan Chan, a true hymn the group play, which
receives thunderous applause every time the chorus From Alto Cedro I go to
Marcane/ And then from Cueto, I take the road towards Mayari is heard...

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