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Charles Neville & Rumba Profunda: A Calm in the Fire of Dances |
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Features
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Friday, 13 January 2006 19:30 |
Deep Rumba
Rumba Profunda
A Calm in the Fire of Dances
American Clave / Justin Time Records JTAC 1030
Musical Director: Kip Hanrahan
By John Sinclair
For almost 20 years producer Kip Hanrahan has gained acclaim throughout the Americas and around the world as a brilliant conceptualist and musical innovator whose pioneering series of albums on the American Clave label has brought together master musicians from several disparate cultures to create new and unique works of great artistic power.
Saxophonist Charles Neville of New Orleans Neville Brothers Band has been a regular participant in Hanrahan's multi-cultural musical experiments since 1984, recording and touring with the producer's hand-picked working combinations and returning time and time again to add his soulful sound and relentless musical intelligence to whatever new concept Hanrahan has come up with.
It's all been really, really good, Charles enthuses. There's always something really exciting happening in Kip's projects, and it's always different. I m always ready to go with them.
Neville's tenor saxophone is featured prominently in the new American Clave release, Rumba Profunda: A Calm in the Fire of Dances, an exciting musical fusion of American jazz and Cuban rhythms and folk forms which utilizes an all-star Cuban ensemble fronted by vocalists Xiomara Lougart, Haila Montie, Puntilla Orlando Rios and Abraham Rodriguez and powered by a pair of trap drummers and nine Afro-Cuban percussionists.
There's always two drummers in this band, Charles laughs, and the percussion section got a lot of different kinds of rumba happening. Charles and fellow Americans Andy Gonzales (bass) and Robby Amin (drums) join Hanrahan's carefully-assembled company of Cuban musicians: violinist Alfredo Triff, drummer El Negro (Horatio Hernandez), Amadito Valdez on timbales, Richie Flores, Paoli Mejias and Giovanni Hildalgo on congas, and percussionists Roman Diaz, Charlie Flores, Pedro Martinez, Puntilla Orlando Rios and Abraham Rodriguez.
When I first started playing with Kip, there were always four horns, Charles muses. Now I m the only one. He's worked with a stellar array of American musicians on the producer's projects, including guitarist Leo Nocentelli, pianists Allen Toussaint and Don Pullen, bassists Jack Bruce and Steve Swallow, saxophonists John Stubblefield and Lew Soloff, vocalist Little Jimmy Scott and a host of others.
Neville was a key participant in several of Hanrahan's earlier American Clave albums Tenderness (1990), Exotica (1993), American Clave (1994), All Roads Are Made of the Flesh (1995), 1000 Nights and a Night (1997) and has toured the U.S., Europe and Japan with Kip's various ensembles. This new album has quite a bit of material that was recorded live in New York City and on our last Japanese tour, Charles points out. We did six sold-out nights at the Blue Note in Tokyo, and there's a videotape from our gig at the Spaghetti Factory in New York that's pretty amazing.
Charles tenor saxophone is the first voice heard on Deep Rumba, playing unaccompanied on the introductory piece titled Cubana. I took that melody from a Dave Bartholomew record called Oh Cubanas, Charles laughs, just something I was fooling around with, and Kip plucked it out of a tape to use as a sort of prelude to the music on this album.
The big percussion sound kicks in on the second track with a drum conversation between El Negro and Bobby Amin that's joined by congas and other drums before the male voices emerge on bom bom bom bom. The hand drums take over for the Prelude to the Golpecito Na'Ma, followed by the full complement of singers engaged in a beautifully intricate call-and-response pattern. Another hand-drum interlude on Kip Quest leads the ensemble into Quimbara 2000, a fiery duet between vocalists Xiomara Lougart and Haila Montie punctuated by the ensemble on the refrain.
Charles Neville returns to duet with bassist Andy Fernandez in a thoughtful discussion of the Science of Voodoo and the Voodoo of Science, accompanied only by the simplest of clave beats played by El Negro scraping a key on the microphone stand. Besame Mucho is given a tender a capella reading by a single female voice, and both the women singers are featured on the passionate Tradicion, counterpointed by the soulful violin of Alfredo Triff.
The musical and emotional center of the album is Sugar and Cotton (Black Hands in White Labor), with swirling percussion and pulsating electric bass backing the forceful male lead vocal in a musical examination of the frightful history of colonial exploitation in the Caribbean. Then Cantar Maravilioso brings both male voices to the forefront over the percussion choir on a song with strong traditional overtones, and Giovannito showcases the conga artistry of Giovanni Hildalgo, set against a background of timbales and other hand drums.
Charles is back in the spotlight on Arabian Nights, a piece recorded for Hanrahan's 1000 Nights and a Night project but perfectly in context here as Neville's tenor saxophone soars over the full rhythm complement. Charles waxes both lyrical and inventive over the sympathetic backing, clearly demonstrating his complete mastery of the idiom and his continuing importance to the success of Hanrahan's musical concepts.
The male voices are in the lead on El Solo Nino, richly supported by the imaginative rhythms of the percussion section, and the women enter after a bowed-bass solo by Andy Gonzales to close the program with Yambu de las Cocas, Alfredo Triff's violin sweetly answering their vocal lead.
Work and Play (Real Life Dramas), a recorded telephone conversation between two of the musicians set against a minimal but hard-hitting percussion track, brings A Calm in the Fire of Dances to an enigmatic conclusion. Now we can only hope to be among those fortunate listeners who are presented with the opportunity to see and hear this fantastic musical collective in action on its next tour.
New Orleans/Detroit/Ann Arbor
April 2001
(c) 2001, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
Deep Rumba
Rumba Profunda
A Calm in the Fire of Dances
[1] Cubana (2:33)
[2] Medley: Robby and Negro Opening Time (4:20)
[3] bom bom bom bom (3:10)
[4] Prelude to Un Golpecito Na Ma (2:59)
[5] Kip Quest (2:00)
[6] Quimbara 2000 (7:54)
[7] Charles and Andy discuss the Science of Voodoo and the Voodoo of Science (4:29)
[8] Besame Mucho (1:42)
[9] Tradicion (3:58)
[10] Sugar and Cotton (Black Hands in White Labor) (4:39)
[11] Cantar Maravilioso (5:00)
[12] Giovannito (2:07)
[13] Arabian Nights (5:31)
[14] El Solo Nino (4:29)
[15] Yambu de las Cocas (2:02)
[16] Work and Play (Real Life Dramas) (5:54)
Personnel:
Charles Neville, tenor saxophone; Alfredo Triff, violin; Xiomara Lougart, lead vocals; Haila Montie, lead vocals;Puntilla Orlando Rios, lead vocals & percussions; Abraham Rodriguez, lead vocals & percussions; Andy Gonzales, bass; El Negro (Horatio Hernandez), drums; Robby Amin, drums; Amadito Valdez, timbales; Richie Flores, congas; Giovanni Hildalgo, congas; Paoli Mejias, congas & percussions; Roman Diaz, percussions; Charlie Flores, percussions; Pedro Martinez, percussions.
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