The forthcoming album of David Murray and the Gwo Ka Masters called "The Devil Tried to Kill Me" will be out on November 2009!Check out Ishmael Reed's text written especially for the Next Gwo Ka Masters album in the blog.
you can listen to two exclusive tracks here, some others will follow soon...
“Calling into question the notion of sameness is not a mere pastime for different communities.” This declaration from Caribbean writer and philosopher Edouard Glissant is particularly resonant for us. How can we fail to respond to its encouragement to travel and explore, an encouragement that becomes an imperative in Glissant’s majestic work Traité du Tout-Monde: “Open the field of your identity to the world.” This message in favor of forging relations with others, with oneself, with the world – relations that Glissant defines as poetic – has quite naturally struck a chord with numerous Afro-American musicians, whether they are from Brazil, Cuba, Guadeloupe or the United States. They all share the painful experience of exile; they have all had their memories of where they come from trampled under. Yet they all also share a cultural life that has grown up betwixt and between at least two worlds. Neither black nor white, the international Creole movement is extending its reach out across the world today, like a soundtrack accompanying what Glissant has called Creolisation. This historical process is giving form to a new and necessarily complex identity, an identity that Glissant defines as rhizomatic, which is gradually emerging from what Paul Gilroy has called The Black Atlantic. This identity escapes the categories and structures of traditional historiography. It is in permanent flux, a flux that the Brazilian Tom Zé has summed up well in his neologism: unimultiplicity.
One man in particular has been a vital companion on this journey. The percussionist Klod Kiavué from Guadeloupe has been both a guide and a teacher, introducing Murray to some of the “hidden” sounds of his island. For him “the drum is the very affirmation of our identity,” that is, the identity of the runaway slaves or marrons, from whom he draws inspiration, while himself resisting any slavishness. He is the very symbol of an independent spirit, which has been held back for too long. Now he has come right back into the public eye, buoyed up by a movement that reaches further than Guadeloupe alone. He was responsible for the beat that inscribed itself between the lines on the previous CD, which featured Guy Konket. He’s back on this album, appearing on all the pieces, playing the tambourine along with François Ladrezeau (both of them also make good use of their vocal chords). Also present is the guitar virtuoso Christian Laviso, who should (finally) achieve the recognition he deserves with this album. The force of the ka drums, with their commanding resonance, is channeled here towards the contributions of other musicians, who bring new dialects and accents to the mixture. The rhythm section is made up of Jaribu Shahid and Hamid Drake, who together form a hard core that is as solid as it is supple. Nothing is beyond these two musicians. The young guitarist from Dakar, Hervé Sambe, also joins the line-up, as well as contributing a composition. His finger-work should soon be well known to a wide audience. The crisp brass section is brought to us courtesy of Havana, revealing the brilliant syncretism of Caribbean culture. Senegal and Cuba represent two major moments in Murray’s journey, two countries he has visited lengthily in recent years, two places where he has embarked on equivalent musical adventures. They are still very much part of the sound on this album, but the sound is driven by a new synthesis, with sophisticated arrangements and more-polished production. Funk is definitely in the air, and jazz has got totally carried away.
Next Gwo Ka Masters’ album caled “The devil tried to kill me has been recorded in 2008 with Taj Mahal and will be released in November 2009. David Murray’s music sounds like never before; it’s alive with a dangerous sensuality, with something like a telluric response to the “prophetic” writings of Ishmael Reed, another free thinker from the Americas, who dubbed the fever of gumbo groove the Djeuze Grou – “that latent fever that is becoming a veritable epidemic,” contaminating new work today, provoking new questions and resulting in forms close to the alchemic formula that Carl Jung cherished: “I am the black of white, the white of black, the red of white and the yellow of red.” This declaration calls into question the very nature of the world. We take it as an invitation to dwell further on this remark taken from that Creole manifesto the Eloge de la Créolité: “To live a question is already to gain insights that the answer does not offer.” We feel sure this relates to the very meaning and essence of jazz.
STUDIO ALBUM OF "THE SISYPHUS REVUE" TO COME IN 2010...
As part of the history of the United States, there is a sort of recurring and laborious movement of time endured by Blacks. Every time they win a battle, they lose it again a few years later. Like an eternal starting over…
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois calls that the Sisyphus Syndrome. Dubois, a major African-American activist known for fighting all forms of racism and discrimination and a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP – the largest and oldest civil-rights organization in the United States), said that the struggle for the liberation of Afro-Americans could be defined in the same way as the Greek myth of Sisyphus. In that tale, the son of the Wind God, Sisyphus of Corinth was condemned to death, but when deal came to find him, he resisted, claiming he saw no reason why he should have to meet that end when he was still young and strong. The Gods then punished the impetuous Sisyphus. The famous king, too avid and greedy, was condemned for eternity to push a heavy rock towards the top of a mountain that he could never reach, because the rock would always fall back down before it reached its goal.
“Dubois was saying that every time Black Americans succeeded in rolling the rock of what is represented by civil-rights equality to the top of the mountain, the cruel gods always pushed that rock down the mountain, so that Sisyphus’s people had to start the struggle over and over again.” As if “the gods” added to the weight of this rock segregation, discrimination, the Jim Crow laws (which strengthened the old slave culture of the Southern States) and the Ku Klux Klan.
I therefore tried to isolate the historic tendencies of the struggle movements acting positively and those marked by tragic defeats for black people. So the end of the anti-slavery struggle is logically a part of an ascending tendency, while the founding of the Ku Klux Klan or the Jim Crow laws are part of a backward movement. I envisioned this work through the history of African Americans in the United States, using key movements, events and characters in this history.”
Amiri Baraka and David Murray explore the contemporary aspects of the Greek allegory of Sisyphus, symbolizing American society’s constant struggle to maintain and develop the democratic space, and more generally representing the fight of the “many” against the “few”…
Working on a selection of ten poems by Baraka, Murray has composed music that complements and gives life to this work.
The project was first presented at the East Side Center in Oakland, California, in May 2008, with the composer and the poet in attendance.
A musical review was inspired by this initial stage, adding a chorus out of the great singing tradition of the very Baptist Church of God of Christ, which for the occasion will trade in its holy repertory for these inspired by the poems of Amiri Baraka. The famous meeting of the sacred and the profane.
LINE UP :
Amiri Baraka – poems and readings
David Murray – composition / direction, tenor sax, bass clarinet
Boots Riley – MC
Aamil Islam - Skeleton
Ranzel Merrit – drums
Jamaaladeen Tacuma – bass
Longineu Parsons – trumpet
Mingus Murray – guitar
Thorston Hudson Jr. – organ
The Deep River Gospel Choir – choir
Influences
Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Jerry Garcia, World Saxophone Quartet, Coleman Hawkins, Jaco Pastorious, Association for the Advance of Creative Musicians (AACM), Sun Ra, Sonny Rollins, Bobby Bradford, Arthur Blythe, Stanley Crouch, Margaret Kohn , Cecil Taylor, Dewey Redman, Roland Kirk, Sunny Murray, Tony Braxton, Oliver Lake, Don Cherry, Ted Daniel Energy Band, Lester Bowie, Frank Lowe, Oliver Lake, Hamiet Bluiett and Julius Hemphill, Max Roach, Randy Weston, Elvin Jones, Jack DeJohnette, McCoy Tyner, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Albert Ayler, Cuban Son, Cuban Rumba, GwoKa music from Guadaloupe, Gospel, Soul, Funk.
Sounds Like
The Sisyphus Revue OFFICIAL EXTRACT "Reflection on insurrection", A Bop opera by Amiri Baraka, Music by David Murray
With Amiri Baraka, David Murray,
Boots Riley, Aamil Islam, Renzel Merrit, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Longineu Parsons,
Mingus Murray, The Deep River Gospel Choir…
For many aficionados, David Murray is already something of a jazz dinosaur, if we consider the number of albums recorded, crowded theatres and awards that have crowned his career (Grammy Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Bird Award, Danish Jazz Par Prize, Guiness Jazz Festival, musician of the decade (1980) by the Village Voice….). And yet, with barely a quarter-century behind him, we still find verve and youthful inspiration expressed through his career that is so prolific in terms of both productions and musical orientations (from the World Saxophone Quartet of which he is a founder to his octet and including his big band and the Caribbean jazz of the GWO Ka Masters), all with the greatest musicians. David Murray is the worthy successor of the greatest names in jazz, and he is now contributing to the rise of young talents like Lafayette Gilchrist, a young pianist already hailed by critics.
“Just Bop and shut up!” That was impossible for the young David, a contemporary of free jazz, the last adventure of the fin-de-siècle jazzman. Impossible for this son of Methodists, who found in Coltrane and Ayler the figure of the spiritual Negro, not to be politicized to his very core. Today David Murray is in his fifties, with a 130 albums to his name and participation in another hundred recordings as invited guest.
At the end of the 1990’s people spoke in regard to David Murray of fusion, world music, even Pan-Africanism, after he undertook a backward journey through the Caribbean, the “little” Americas, via South Africa and Senegal.” Before starting that journey, David Murray lived the history of jazz: born in Oakland, he grew up in Berkeley and studied with Catherine Murray (David’s mother, an organist), Bobby Bradford, Arthur Blythe, Stanley Crouch, Margaret Kohn and many others until he left for Ponoma College (Los Angeles), and then New York where he settled in 1975.
In New York he was encouraged by Cecil Taylor, with whom he played, and Dewey Redman. There were more meetings, men and music: Sunny Murray, Tony Braxton, Oliver Lake, Don Cherry. As part of Ted Daniels’ Energy band, he worked with Hamiett Bluiett, Lester Bowie and Frank Lowe.
In 1976, after his first European tour, David Murray founded one of his legendary groups, the World Saxophone Quartet (with which he came out in 2006 with a much-noted “Political Blues”) with Oliver Lake, Hamiett Bluiett and Julius Hemphill. He got into a period of intense creativity with one recording after another, in a variety of groups.
From Jerry Garcia to Max Roach by way of Randy Weston and Elvin Jones, David Murray had one encounter after another until 1978, when he developed his quartet and later octet and devoted himself to his own groups. Nonetheless he didn’t hesitate to get into other areas, working for different projects on strings (concert at the Public Theatre in New York in 1982), Ka drums of Guadeloupe (Creole, 1998, Gwotet in 2004 and a new album, ”The Devil Tried to Kill Me,” in preparation for 2009), or musicians and dancers from South Africa (M’Bizo, 1998).
Recently he threw himself into his Black Saint Quartet, with “Sacred Ground,” an album released in June 2007 (Justin Time) featuring the magical voice of Cassandra Wilson, an album whose sumptuous compositions pay homage to one of his richest periods under the legendary Italian label Black Saint, and digital reissue of this entire catalogue on the major digital downloading sites. This work was also followed by the rediscovery of 26 rare pieces on the DIW label, now available for downloading exclusively on Emusic, as a good way for fans to measure the expanse of an already dizzying career.
Always open to new territories, Murray is now working on writing a new musical opera with Amiri Baraka, after the homage to Pushkin he composed in 2005 with his friend Blaise Ndjehoya. An opera that won’t be out until 2009 or 2010. What is it? “There’s poetry, music and themes. Look, I wrote this composition this morning. It’s going to be entitled “You Vote, You Die.”
David Murray is not ready to put the brakes on his appetite for new musical flavours, or to concede.
David Murray playing "Banished" with the Black Saint Quartet @ Jazz Standard on last January 2007, Ray Drummond (bass), Andrew Cyrille (drums) and Lafayette Gilchrist (piano):
David Murray performing live at Village Vanguard in New York in 1986 with Ed Blackwell (drums), John Hicks (piano), Fred Hopkins (bass).
David Murray and Cassandra Wilson in studio, preparing the recording of the "Prophet of Doom"'song (David Murray, Black Atlantic. A film by Jacques Goldstein. A la Huit / 3D Family / Arte France coproduction. www.lahuit.com.
“David Murray Black Saint Quartet – live in Berlin” (article number JW035) out now: www.records-cd.com (shipping to all European countries) for EUR 12,50 + shipping costs.
More information on our label and the concert series can be found via www.jazzwerkstatt-berlin-brandenburg.de.
Hi David, I was very glad to see you again! .. wish you much strength and energy for the upcoming concerts .. I hope to see you again soon! ..pass Michael Minor
DAVID..Thanks for the add, always enjoy your work....specially your collaborations with Kahil...send my regards to Kahil....both of your music its been very inspirational to me and Eddie..thanks: Rolando
Exciting new music, amazing. Thank you very much for the add and virtual friendship. Check out my side and myspace.com/deepschrott Best Wishes from Germany Andreas Kaling
Ciao,David Thank you for the add and the friendship. you are very good, I like your stupendous music a lot,Band, and stupendous voice. compliments ..really. you are one of my prefeitis, I feel great admiration for you, be really one whom is worth rather a lot! I hope to listen soon to you, in italy .. talk to you soon, and all of my best wishes to always listen to your good music all the best.. from italy.. and good life.. every day neal
Our song 'Yellow Suit' is on the first FRIEND VOTE Indie Top 100 Chart on this week. Maybe our friends can help us get no 1 for Monday. Vote for AMYCANBE at http://www.myspace.com/indietop100 Until again, all the best, Amycanbe
Yes!!! We are in PEACE, compilation for Amnesty International out next January, along with other great names. See our blog section for infos. Cheers!!
....FRIZZ RECORDS is proud to announce our third LP release...
"Anutha Kinda Brotha" is the debut LP from underground legend ART TERRY. Since moving to the UK from his native Los Angeles in the early 90s, Mr Terry has established himself as one of London's characters.
Describing Art's sound to the uninitiated usually involves debunking some of the stereotypes of what the 'typical' black Californian might play. Despite his jazz training, and coming of age to the sounds of classic soul and funk, these styles are only a part of his musical vision. His fascination with folk styles, classical music, punk rock, pure pop, easy listening, musical theatre and the European avant garde have taken him on different paths from most...
The result is an orchestral pop record full of sonic inventiveness, whether it's the blend of Shuggie Otis's 60s California and Sun Ra's ancient Egypt on 'Bible', Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons leading a mariachi band on 'Escort', or the Walt Disney music box orchestra of 'Miss Dominatrix', but whilst this is very much a sonic feast, we shouldn't overlook Art's extraordinary lyrical adeptness, and the distinctive character this brings to the proceedings, with a knack for unique and colourful imagery, and how like a great short story writer he is able to paint an engaging picture whilst keeping back from casting judgement on his characters, always leaving open ends for the listener to tie; giving us the feeling that however far astray someone might have gone, there is always sympathy and human feeling for them in Art's mind...
Michelberger Hotel Presents. October, 17,09 22:00pm Saturday Night Showcase Hosted by Akanni. live on stage: 2 of berlins most talented female accustic soloist Dana Shanti + Elahi 3€
Location: Michelberger Hotel Warschauerstrasse 39/40, 10243 Berlin
Saturday Night Showcase: is an evening where artist from all over can perform there own personal songs and finish the night with an open jam session talor made for musicisns and vocalist show there spontainious skills and Every Saturday.
Check out our other pages,if you find time, if you would want to know more about us. The first ones on this page. Sinds you like this,you could request the other pages too and please read well before jumping to conclusion......
In the meanwhile, keep doing what you do best and stay yourself! You know allready.
Regards,
Bugz B,J.Blaze and Kane D Goreson, from Winners n sinners.
We are all winners and sinners, the balance is now, The key is gratitude. No fear,no keeps.