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Album
Guewel
Harris Eisenstadt →400 listeners2,014 plays
africanfreepurp1egammareccontemporary free jazzkhalnaz
about this album
Inspired by his trips to West Africa, specifically Dakar, Senegal, drummer Harris Eisenstadt has merged the disciplines of African band music with the creative improvised discipline to create a new hybrid that is, in essence, the best of both worlds. Using brass instruments and a baritone saxophone, the quintet he has assembled and arranged this music for rambles through village, ritual and dance styles with an edginess that spans continents and bridges cultures in a extraordinarily unique way. The music of the African groups is not so much assimilated, but expanded upon in imaginative ways that emphasize the percussive and harmonic aspects of tribal syncopations and colors. Eisenstadt has chosen an excellent horn section with Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet and flugelhorn, trumpeter Nate Wooley, Mark Taylor on French horn, and baritone saxophonist John Sinton. Together they create a wonderful wind turbine of power, layering many sounds and counterpoint lines to act as a full-blown orchestra, playing music that sports a 50/50 balance between written and spontaneous composition. The source material is very intriguing, as Eisenstadt adapts Orchestra Baobab's "Kaolak/N'Wolof" into chorale-like horn shouts, galloping rhythms, free jazz, tick-tock and reggae-ish beats, singing lines, and an actual solo from Wooley. While Star Number One's "Rice & Fish/Liiti Liiti" evokes images of a chase scene, it is also cartoonish and hilarious, then serious in the vein of the Art Ensemble of Chicago
