One week till Thanksgiving – the anniversary of cooperation between Caucasian Europeans and Native Americans – and jazz fans in Chicago have a choice of music celebrating Indian tradition.
Make that both Indian traditions.
Thursday at 7:30 in the Harris Theatre (205 E. Randolph), the Chicago Jazz Ensemble presents New Orleans Now. As the name suggests, it's a tribute to the contemporary sounds of the Crescent City. But New Orleans has nothing if not tradition: even the city’s contemporary music still floats on the bayous of the city’s musical history (which commingle music from Europe, Africa, South America, and this continent’s first peoples).
Accordingly, each of the evening’s three high-powered guest soloists blends ancient American roots – from blues to parade music to r-and-b – into his own style. Not surprisingly, all of them were born and raised in the city celebrated by this concert.
Henry Butler, the blind-from-birth pianist and organist, carries forth an especially deeply-set New Orleans tradition. He’s a “piano man,” updating a role established in the early days of the last century by such masters as the jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton and the blues avatar Professor Longhair. But Butler’s first splash came in the 1980s as a jazz modernist who proved as conversant with the thunderous chord clusters of McCoy Tyner as he was with the rolling rhythms of ancient jazz, blues, and boogie-woogie.
Butler enjoys a towering technique that allows him to navigate between these poles with ease; he also has a knack for combining elements of both into a New Orleans piano lexicon more relevant than most. In a way, that also describes Donald Harrison, who plays music both more contemporary and more ancient.
Harrison's flutelike upper-register playing owes something to Charles Lloyd, and he occasionally lets loose a blast reminiscent of Eric Dolphy's naked cry. On the other hand, over the last two decades he has steadily infused beats and melodies that date back before jazz, to the music of the 19th-century New Orleans social groups who today march in the city’s annual Mardi Gras Parade, bedecked in elaborate handmade costumes of feathers and beads. (Harrison himself is the president, or “Big Chief” of one such tribe, the Congo Nation.)
Stanton Moore, the drummer best known for leading the jam band Galactic, also incorporates N’Awlins roots in his work. But he specializes in modern American funk – the godchild of those rhythms mentioned above – layered over with a healthy dollop of rock-and-roll. With Galactic, on his own discs, and as a featured sideman with others, Moore transmogrifies the local sounds he absorbed as a teenager, polishing them to a greasy shine for a new generation.
Moore, Harrison, and Butler will each appear as soloists within the larger big-band context, in “just about every configuration you can imagine,” explained Dana Hall, the CJE’s drummer and musical director. So figure on hearing each of them with the band, and two or all three on some numbers, with at least one tune featuring the three guests as a stand-alone trio – a guaranteed unique addition to an already impressive program (which sports a healthy dose of Duke Ellington, including selections from his 1970 New Orleans Suite).
MEANWHILE, for those who like their musical roots considerably older than New Orleans – say, a couple of millennia older – the Ragabop Trio led by drummer Steve Smith makes its Chicago debut up at Martyrs (3855 N. Lincoln), starting at 8. That’s the same Steve Smith who powered the rock supergroup Journey in the late 70s and 80s, before leaving that band to return to his first love, jazz (which he had studied at Berklee College of Music).
Since then, he’s led the always solid (and sometimes inspired) fusion band Vital Information; sought to keep alive the flame of jazz drumming legend Buddy Rich with a quintet called Buddy’s Buddies; and, most recently, delved deeply into the polyrhythmic playground of Indian music, both with Vital Information and the trio that appears here Thursday, comprising saxist George Brooks and Indian-born guitarist Prasanna.
I can tell you up front – I’m a sucker for music that combines jazz with the distinctly separate classical traditions of North and South India. From John McLaughlin’s band Shakti and the startling collaboration between alto man John Handy and sitar master Ali Akbar Khan (1975), to today’s dense and verdant creations by pianist Vijay Iyer and saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, I’ve always found the fusion of these two improvisatory traditions to be especially fertile territory.
Ragabop Trio, released this past summer, is the first disc by these three, but each of them has previously experimented with music of the subcontinent; Brooks in particular has a well-earned reputation as a scholar of Indian music, and has been combining east and west on disc for well over a decade. (His last two albums star Chicago-area guitar guru Fareed Haque.)
I can’t count Ragabop Trio among my favorites in this genre. From my perspective, and despite sterling musicianship throughout, it places too much emphasis on the western side of the equation, to the disadvantage of those seeking a true bridge between continents. But that’s just one album and one man’s bias. Smith, Brooks, and Prasanna clearly have the knowledge and ability – not to mention the chops – to take this fusion in several different directions.
I’ll strongly recommend their live performance, especially for the risk-takers in the audience. It might even encourage you to try that Tandoori Turkey recipe you’ve been eyeing (when next week rolls into view.
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