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Wadada
Leo Smith
Kabell Years 1971-1979
Tzadik 7610
John Zorn’s
Tzadik label continues to honor the genius of Wadada Leo Smith,
this time with a crucial collection of material he recorded
and released himself on his Kabell label in the seventies. This
four-CD box set gathers Creative Music 1, Reflectativity,
Song of Humanity, and Ahkreanvention, plus over
two hours of unreleased material.
Creative
Music 1 features Smith solo. Like his brother AACM members
in the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Smith fills the performance
frame with remarkably imaginative improvisations on trumpet
and moves easily to other sources of sound: various percussion
instruments, bicycle horns, pans, flutes, and toys. Both "Nine
(9) Stories on a Mountain" and "Improvisations No.4"
have extended percussion jaunts joining unique trumpet song.
The title track moves back and forth between the two. "aFmie-Poem
DancE 3" displays his artistry on flugelhorn, while on
"Ogotommeli: Dogon Sage" he creates an Indonesian
feel playing gamelan. "Seeds" and "Zekr"
are gems of virtuosity, while the longer "Until the Fire"
maps the breadth of Smith’s vision.
Reflectativity
pays an early visit to the Smith/Anthony Davis association that
continues to grow. With Wes Brown on bass, "Reflectativity"
represents a groundbreaking extended improvisation/composition
piece. Re-recorded 25 years later for Tzadik with Malachi Favors
replacing Brown, the original bristles with activity, from Davis’
restless piano against the brisk bass to Smith’s clattering
percussion and incisive trumpet. The slyer "T Wmuki-D"
shows Smith and company’s ability to use silence as a fourth
band member, a factor in much of Smith’s work. As the piece
develops, Brown flies over the fretboard to Smith’s grounded
flugelhorn. Davis leads the "North American Stomp,"
which settles into a trio improvisation with Smith flexing his
embouchure. Composed or improvised, "Visions" displays
the beauty of three working as one, deep listening all the way.
Song
of Humanity introduces a larger ensemble, including Pheeroan
Ak Laff on drums and Oliver Lake on alto sax and flute. After
Smith and Brown introduce the title track, Lake takes it apart.
Smith returns, still muted, with Brown, then both lay out for
a Davis interlude. "Lexicon" features Lake on soprano
and more involved group playing. The band dazzles with complex
interplay and imagination. Davis branches out to electric piano
with "Peacocks, Gazelles, Dogwood Trees and Six Silver
Coins," but doubles with Brown on acoustic. Lake and Smith
play a short arranged segment before breaking loose, and then
Davis moves to atmospheric organ. Lake puts in hard time on
alto for "Of Blues and Dreams," and Davis devises
some dense counterpoint. Davis gives the unreleased "Play
Ebony Play Ivory" an elegant sendoff. The circular half
hour’s performance ends with three flutes in a conference
of the birds.
Finally,
Ahkreanvention returns full circle to present Smith solo
again, moving from horn to percussive effects. The previously
unreleased "Ankrasmation" features twenty minutes
of Smith blowing a ribbon of melody that crackles, roams, and
reflects. A brief workout on cymbals defines "Atoke,"
while "The Zebra Goes Wild" has Smith firing up the
flugelhorn, with brief digressions on harmonica and gongs.
This generous
set includes a 28 page booklet with session photos and tributes
from Zorn, Davis, Henry Kaiser, and George Lewis, among others.
A fitting tribute to a living master, and a fascinating look
at beautitul work created over 30 years ago in near obscurity,
much of it available for the first time.
- Rex Butters
Wadada Leo
Smith is best known as a trumpeter with a huge reach, a
singular sound thinker whose interrogating approach to the instrument
- blowing into the bell, playing with just the mouthpiece, building
in the sound of the valves - has pushed the instrument into
whole new areas.
Although
a key member of Chicago's Association for the Advancement
of Creative Musicians (AACM), Smith has plotted a solitary
path for most of his career, choosing to isolate himself from
the music community at large in order to liberate his art
from ephemeral, extra-musical concerns.
During
the 1970s, Smith founded the Kabell label, a private press
repository for experiments that would otherwise have found
no commercial outlet. Kabell Years 1971-79 bundles all four
of Smith's albums from the period in a beautiful four compact-disc
set that also includes lots of unreleased material as well
as a 28-page booklet complete with reproductions of graphic
scores, photographs and commentaries from key musical collaborators.
Disc one
featues Smith's 1971 recording Creative Music - 1, along with
previously unavailable sessions from 1976. Both dates feature
Smith on his own, moving from trumpet and flugelhorn through
percussion, flute, harmonica, autoharp, steel-o-phone and
bells. Each improvisation is structured episodically, with
Smith echoing spectral rhythmic and melodic shapes that simply
hang in the air, heavy with time.
Discs
two and three feature his group, New Dalta Ahkri, in trio,
quartet and quintet formations, an ensemble that bridged highly-nuanced
group improvisation, blues, folk and world music without any
of the grotesque, Frankenstein logic or crippling self-consciousness
that usually grounds this kind of endeavour. It's a liberating
combination of musicians, with Oliver Lake on saxophone, Wes
Brown on bass and Pheeroan Ak Laff on drums, but the key player
is pianist Anthony Davis. His inventions are phenomenal, marinating
blues and ragtime rhythms with European theatricality.
The final
disc, 1979's Ahkreanvention, with bonus tracks, sees Smith
alone once more, though this time he is focused on the brass,
his huge, singing tone serving to illuminate the entire disc.
Reissue
of the year, hands down.
- David
Kennan
jazzbreak.com
- 10 août 2004
World citizen Smith
Wadada
Leo Smith - Kabell Years 1971-1979 (Tzadik)
Voix
singulière de la free music, le trompettiste Wadada
Leo Smith a toujours refusé le tonitruant. Avec Bill
Dixon, il est l'un des rares musiciens de jazz à avoir
bâti un langage dans lequel le silence tient une place
essentielle ("le silence restaure temporairement l'idée
que nous avons de nous-mêmes" aime-t-il à
répéter). La musique de Wadada Leo Smith se
construit secrètement, elle refuse le rythme au profit
d'un mouvement mystérieux, sensible. Musicien discret
(on perdra sa trace à de nombreuses reprises), aimant
à construire avec la toile blanche, rajoutant ici et
là quelques touches tantôt stellaires, tantôt
tranchantes, Leo Smith n'oublie pas qu'il est aussi un musicien
dont le parcours passa par le blues (Of Blues and Dreams)
et les musiques ethniques (Ogotommêli : Dogon Sage).
Le présent coffret nous permet de découvrir
les enregistrements que le trompettiste grava pour Kabell,
son propre label, entre 1971 et 1979. Deux disques solos (Creative
Music & Ahkreanvention), deux disques avec le groupe New
Dalta Ahkri (Reflectativity & Song of Humanity), de
nombreuses plages inédites, un somptueux livret comprenant
partitions et témoignages ; voici le menu gourmand
d'un coffret forcement indispensable pour qui désire
percer les mystères d'un musicien à lÍessentielle
sagesse.
-
Luc Bouquet
© 1997-2011 Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith
