Concert review
October 27, 2004
Text and photos by Banning Eyre

Jazz at Lincoln Center's inaugural season includes a concert series called "3 Shades of Blues." On October 25, 2004, the blues trilogy concert entitled "Roots," unfolded at the fabulous, new Frederick P. Rose Hall, the largest of three venues in the newly opened facility at Columbus Circle. With jazz legend Randy Weston as host, the night included performances by Weston's own trio, with Abdou M'Boup sitting in on kora and talking drum, as well as Taj Mahal with Mamadou Diabate, and Corey Harris with Daryl Rose. It was an ambitious evening, a summit of jazz, blues and West African music that underscored an ongoing trend among American roots musicians who are looking to West Africa in order to better understand their own music.

Randy Weston is a jazz elder and a man with vast African experience, including extended stays in Morocco where he has collaborated with Gnawa musicians. Taj Mahal has been fascinated by African connections with American music since well before the time he toured the continent during the 1970s, and he made his passion for the subject vividly public with his 2000 album Kulanjan, a collaboration with musicians from Mali. Corey Harris lived in Africa before he emerged as a central figure in the roots blues revival movement of the mid-90s, and he's been back, especially to Mali and recently Guinea and Sierra Leone, a number of times since. So from the American side, these were the right musicians to be reaching out in this way.

Corey Harris began the evening playing acoustic guitar with Daryl Rose, the percussionist who accompanied him to Guinea and Sierra Leone, playing congas. The set included two songs from the Mande griot repertoire, "Kaira," and "Sunjata," a Skip James composition, "Special Rider Blues," and two Harris originals. At first, the congas threatened to overpower Harris's delicate guitar work, but things soon evened out. The high point of the set was a spirited read of Harris's lilting "Money Eye," a clever, palm-wine tinged skiffle.

Next, Weston's group took over, filling out the first half of the program with three of his own expansive compositions. "Music is spiritual mathematics," said Weston, as he argued that any deep inquiry into the origins of American roots music inevitably leads back to "Africa's classical civilization." The first piece, "The Healers," opened with fluttering chromaticism from Weston's piano. Alex Blake's muscular bass playing--full of thrumming and fierce, percussive slaps--was spectacular throughout the set. As percussionist Neil Clarke played a pair of shakers, an airy dust cloud emanated from the instruments surrounding him like an earth-toned ghost. Abdou M'Boup's kora was noticeably out of tune at first, diminishing the overall effect of the opening number. M'Boup then left the stage and the trio lit into a driving 6/8 workout, "African Cookbook," featuring a ferocious bass solo from Blake. M'Boup rejoined the group for the final piece, his kora now well tuned. The high-pitched kora was not the perfect instrument to evoke the Gnawa music referenced in the piece, but it added a certain richness as the musicians worked a trancey 12/8 Gnawa groove.

The second half began with the sweetest part of the night, a set of tunes by Taj Mahal accompanied by a true genius of the kora, Mamadou Diabate of Mali, whom Taj had met only a day earlier. Taj's Kulanjan experience served him well, and Diabate--an experienced cross-cultural collaborator after eight years living in the United States--easily followed Taj's whimsical wanderings. The set began with more Mande griot music--"Tiramakan" and "Kulanjan"--before moving onto blues ("Take This Hammer") and a free-form, old-time jam with Taj on banjo. Noting that instrument's African origins, Taj got a big laugh from the well-heeled crowd when he observed, "This instrument used to drive the bourgeoisie away."

All the musicians returned to the stage for a spirited finale, an old Taj favorite, "Mailbox Blues." The performance was sonically rich, although not as well organized, in terms of clearly designated solos, as it might have been. The crowd didn't care. They thundered and howled for more, filling the hall's vast circular space with sound until the musicians had no choice but to return. The encore, another Taj standbye, "Queen Bee," gave this highly unusual ensemble a chance to gel a little more deeply. I left feeling that the conversation between today's roots music in Africa and America is still in its early stages. What we saw was exploration, a search for shared language. When blues players include songs from the Mande epic in their sets, something new is happening, but there's a long way to go before these genres become mutually fluent. I also left feeling encouraged by the public response to this ideosyncratic program. This uptown audience seemed to sense that they were seeing something new and provocative, and they loved it. In its inaugural year, Jazz at Lincoln Center is embracing the often-overlooked African connection. That is a good sign, and one that underscores what a valuable addition these new venues are to New York's cultural life.

POSTSCRIPT: The following night, in the more modest setting of Joe's Pub, the Tuareg guitar band from Mali, Tinariwen, delivered an auspicious American debut in two sold-out sets. The group's desert grooves were profound, and their bluesy, punchy, guitar-driven romps with ecstatic, chant vocals proved irresistible to the crowd, who rewarded the group with standing ovations for both sets. Here, with Africans playing electric guitars and making unmistakable references to blues idioms, the dynamic of the Lincoln Center concert was reversed. Where blues and jazz musicians had reached toward Africa, now African musicians displayed a remarkable and utterly unforced facility with aspects of that most American of idioms, the blues. But the underlying message was the same. The contempory conversation between American and African roots may be young, but its origins and logic are ancient and profound, and its vitality promises still greater results in the future.

Contributed by: Banning Eyre