Fela Ransome-Kuti And The Africa '70 With Ginger Baker ‎– 'Live!' (Signpost)

Afrobeat meets British jazz here, or at least Ginger Baker sits in on a second drum kit to make this collaboration. This is the only Fela Kuti record I own but I've heard a lot of those classics from the 70s, and this sounds more or less in line. Tony Allen is a formidable enough drummer that Baker is probably only adding accents and thickening; it's panned a bit so you can get some separation, and this has a pretty excellent sound for a live recording from the time, though there's no credits as to when or where this recording was made. Baker is explicitly introduced by Kuti, who speaks between each of the cuts, and when Baker starts to tap about on the drums, Kuti quickly says 'That's enough, that's enough' and moves into the next song ('Ye Ye De Smell'), which is supposedly written for Baker because he does NOT in fact smell. It's some good natured ribbing I'm sure but Kuti makes it extremely clear who's in charge, as if there would be any doubt. 'Smell' is a banger though, but they are all, of course. This album came out in '71 so it's actually one of Kuti's first releases, and they're already playing a well developed form of their music here. Four songs, opening with the nicely named 'Let's Start' and and propelled by Kuti's shouts and sax, Igo Chiko's fiery solos and of course the drumming, from not just Allen and Baker but the small army of congas and other percussion instruments. There's a long electric piano solo on 'Black Man's Cry' that is also uncredited - no keyboards officially appear on the album, unless it's some sort of insane guitar technique. It's just before he climax of the record building up with the clattery guitars until it just stops and leaves some space for Kuti to begin soliloquising again. When the theme comes back in towards the end (it's a twelve minute piece), with trumpets and sax ringing in harmony, it feels at once like a beautiful orchestrated pop song and the rallying, radical cry its title implies. The final cut is the most somber, being midtempo and transferring all of the polyrhythmic shuffling to be between the beats, though somber for Fela Kuti is maddeningly energetic for most others. Titled 'Egbe Mi O (Carry Me I Want to Die)', it builds to a 'Hey Jude'-like wordless chant, which while sung by the entire band and presumably live audience, attains a wistfulness which is only echoed by the exuberant trumpets. The bands builds it up under this, until it's a somewhat distorted wall of sound, coming back to a lovely theme as is the formula.

Ornette Coleman - 'Dancing in Your Head' (Horizon/A&M)

Fast-forwarding about a decade from Stockholm, we find Ornette deep in the orgasmic revery of jazz-rock fusion. Dancing in Your Head is 85% a long jam with a jazz-rock band and 15% a jam with the Master Musicians of Joujouka. And a "jam" indeed is 'Theme from a Symphony variation one', as the thunderous blasts of discordant guitars, bass spurts, and Shannon Jackson (I assume the Ronald has not yet been added to his name) pounding away in a Beefheartian, yet swinging style. There's a chorus, a simple melody that the band falls back into at times, but the holes only appear in this dense fog because everyone is playing the same thing. And when the verses are in effect, we get every type of post-Django guitar rivulets, often piled on top of the other guitar's dirty palm-muting. Both guitarists are credited as 'lead' guitars - Bern Nix and Charlie Ellerbee - and there's a genius to it, a self-consuming inward looking thrash that has a primitive monotony that outlasts most other efforts of its time. The second variation, on side two, begins with a tease of jazz guitar glory before getting back into the tune that by this point has bored into my brain. Throughout the eleven minutes of the second variation we're occasionally teased with fuzz pedals, bursts of rock riffage, and Coleman's alto skronk, but it's always returns to the central theme. It's maximal minimalism, and I can't help but think that the parts where the guitars and saxes are fighting to out-ascend each other to the next note is total Zoot Horn Rollo. 'Midnight Sunrise' is recorded in Morocco and finds Ornette's alto accentuated by clarinet, Moroccan reeds and percussion. I don't think it's a great title, or only half-great, because this is dark music of the night with nothing on the horizon. Despite the exploratory gusts of air, the percussion swarms around everything and encloses it, and I'm left wishing there was more than a 4-and-a-half minute document of Ornette's trip to Africa. Promo copy.

Art Ensemble of Chicago - 'Bap-Tizum' (Atlantic)

This is a pretty much complete performance of the Art Ensemble of Chicago from the 1972 Ann Arbor Blues Festival, a festival that I think my own father actually attended though I'm not exactly sure which year he went, and neither is he. My rock'n'roll-hatin, Cuban heel-wearing Daddy (probably actually classified as a Daddy-O at the time) may have loathed Keith Richards with all of his gusto but I think he was OK with free jazz. At least, I found Ornette Live at the Golden Circle, Stockholm vol. 2 in his collection and he told me he used to have a Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra (but alas, we couldn't locate it nor could he remember which volume it was). I guess it was crazy shit for him to dig on in those days, thankfully free from the raping-of-blues that he equated with all rock music -- and I mean all, as Dad honestly doesn't even know who Bono is in 2009, which is a feat of cultural isolation that is pretty admirable if you ask me. He woulda gone to Michigan to see the actual "blues" content of that festival, but this Great Black Music (as the cover reminds us) isn't too far of a stretch from Leadbelly or Blind Willie anybody. John Sinclair introduces the band before they start, so you can hear the correct way to pronounce "Bowie". Then they launch into the first recorded Don Moye composition we've come across, 'Nfamoudou - Boudougou'. And surprise - it's an explosive drum circle freakout that rattles the skeletal system deep down to the marrow. As the band shifts through a pretty solid, representative set we hear some deep droning bass bowing with a little bit of static from the surface noise of the record that makes some passages feel like an industrial film soundtrack or something.... Side two has 'Ohnedaruth', the Jarman composition I thought might be mislabeled on Phase One but it turns out the labels were right - this is a hard-rocking jam that has some awesome sounding marimba. The closing piece is 'Odawlla', by Roscoe Mitchell, which is a fairly traditional, melodic sounding composition with lovely bluesy chords - perhaps a request of the festival? It's really touching and Lester Bowie is hella expressive here and when it comes to a conclusion the 10,000 concertgoers can barely contain themselves. You can just feel the wave of triumph that these guys musta been riding after this performance. I think I used to have this one on CD, maybe even purchased new on a mid-price Atlantic reish before I upgraded to this format. But you know, I can't actually remember.