Anthony Hamilton Back to Soul (but did not arrive)

 

 

Retro defined. The past refined. That is Anthony Hamilton. He demands nothing more than the classic. As stylish and vocally able as Donny Hathaway and as religious as Curtis Mayfield this man represents the post-black era of things soul. The soul singer persists on his elegant vocal swagger; with his almost nasal vocals, his adlibbing in every line and crafty in his harmonizing as his own BVs (background vocals).   

His news Back to Soul is evocative to its title. But this happens in a strange way.       This is only on the first five songs of the album.

As the listener you are travelling on grounds only travelled by the likes of Marvin Gaye, Teddy Pendergrass and Luther Vandross. In the space of these five songs, Hamilton is reverting to his masterfully charming albums Comin’ from Where I’m From Soulful Life and Ain’t Nobody Worryin.

The church boy choir singer is sticking to what he knows best; singing soul-r&b, his grandeur raspy voice unleashing songs of prayer, hymns asking for redemption and poems of modern romance.

Then suddenly things obstructively change.  

The album takes on a different texture, the r&b takes on a lighter approach, it becomes a bit tacky, starting off with Never Let Go (Keri Hilson), introduced by a sudden eletro rain drop, and a doof-de-beep; which distracts the mood of the first few songs. Mad is another confusing pop-bluesy tune; it’s so out of place, it confuses you about its motive. Another bad moment in the album is Sucka for You, this gymnastic power-pop tune is a bad excuse of adding diversity to your album.

The album goes all wrong from here. It is not fixed. It has no theme no idea.  Life has a way is a bit jazzy, fender Rhodes, and straight bass vibe, and strings. It’s a pretty song, but doesn’t feel like it fits in well in this album.

So I revert back. Rewind. I listen. Track one to five. And then I tend to stop. The album is powerful, passionate and is warm; only until here.

I can’t press fast forward.

 

Umthwakazi is the Future

I love this duet. I love the spirit unleashed by Umthwakazi…..

The Voice

We may not talk about it much. And it may be a too idealistic thought for you to investigate. But whatever is your theory on the matter. Women have always been a source of strength for humanity, especially in musical terms. I don’t care what your debate is there is no argument to that. It is apparent that women are a voice of strength, resilience and persistent revolt.

This is apparent, when you think of the moment of Miriam Makeba making a noise in 1963, testifying against apartheid before the United Nation. There is no one who hollered harder against injustice, inequality and hate than Nina Simone when she was involved in the civil rights movement in the same time period. Maybe, Abbey Lincoln’s call for freedom was a little more earsplitting, with her We Insist – Freedom Now Suite, sounding a demand for change for all to hear.

Fortunately, this voice of the Woman cannot be silenced. An exciting project which continues to project powerful she-voices is the Mosaic Project by Terri Lyne Carrington.

The project places in one space women who have catapulted themselves above the mediocrity of today’s “women-is-skanky” pop-image (and for your reference “skanky” is not a necessarily a bad connotation as it describes a musical notion as well). So Dee Dee Bridgewater, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves and youngster Esperanza Spalding, amongst others are only the few of the 21 artists the drummer Terri Lyne has integrated into her stunning and sophisticated soul-jazz release. The album resonates the Dianne Reeves That Day album which was produced by Carrington herself. Yet, it is much more layered in a lush texture, sensitive in its tonality, intentional in its funk-jazz-it-up mantra and multifaceted in its sound to be locked up to the “jazz-thing” identity.

Little Dragon Ritual Union

I like Little Dragon but I love their Ritual Union album.

There is little not to like about the Swedish band: it’s explorative, it’s pioneering, and it’s fun-filled and characterized by variety in its ultramodern dance sound. Yet, that’s it, as a band they are likeable.  Forging the experimental in what may sound like ”for the sake of it” and  discharging an excessive the ghostly, the Swedish band has maintained a decent reputation in light of electronics.

Yet, they last two albums have been like a premature relationship: like a COMMITMENT unfulfilled, like a vow that is clouded by reluctance.

So I have always been inclined not resign myself to their blinking beats and bloated synthesizing.

Yet, on Ritual Union there is a command by the band. Refined and definite, there is musical direction. Not only just an attractive experimental waffle… but the start of a commitment.

Still ethereal, the band forwards its musical approach with vibrant dance anthems, mingled with a pop-sensibility, yet with an advanced artsy-landscape in composition. Yet there is humor, in the midst, of every track in this excursion-of-an-album.  

The title track, Ritual Union, is an attractive dance-mode. The song is commanded by Yukimi Nagano’s sensitive, light and friendly voice. The song lives in a space between dub and trip-to-the-hopping . It’s perfect, because it is so fun.

Ritual Union’s dance theme is bright and fun yet still leaves me unconvinced.

Hence, I like Little Dragon but I love their Ritual Union album.

  

Kindred The Family Soul – Magic Happen (New Single)

Admission: Beyonce I’ve always liked you, now I like you more.

Hear me right, I like Beyonce. I’ve always thought she has an amazing voice. I’ve always thought that she wore the cape of a diva superhero when she gets on stage and unleashes an energy that only Michael Jackson could harness. I can relate to Beyonce, she looks like a friend of mine I had a crush on for a little while; always had make-up on, always in extensions and wearing them high heels like she was reaching for the heavens.

However, there’s one thing I never really liked about Beyonce and even her entourage, Destiny’s Child. It was her songs.  On the real, all of the songs felt a bit cheesy, contrived, and too ambitious to a point of naivety.

So I would refrain from even listening. In fact it would be more than that. I would literally run, when I heard a group of girls in high school singing any tacky pop melody like “Say My Name Say My Name” or “I am a survivor,” and all that nonsense. I couldn’t take it. Even in 2009 when “Single Ladies” was on everyone’s phone ringtone, was on almost every commercial and became the anthem for pop-culture in that year I would literally cringe at the sound of hearing it.

But still, that didn’t mean that I hated Beyonce.

I still loved Beyonce.

Whenever I would watch a live performance the songs would become a backdrop to the spectacular and extravagance which was embedded in her every dance move, and that voice that was a cross-over of an R&B diva who sang loves songs and “in bad taste” sing-along as if she was unleashing the heavens with the sophistication, which was tagged in every note she sang.
So I had a problem with Beyonce.

My view of her was almost schizophrenic. Here was this young diva, with a super voice and yet it seemed like the songs were not living up to it and the standard of her performance.  

Now the diva of pop has released the cryptically titled album, 4. With her first release Run the World I was loathing to hear what she had in her sleeves.

So there I was watching this newly released video of a dance battle with Beyonce hooking up a pantsula dance with a fiery flair and meticulous precision. And I loved it. Yet again her lyric was still about “girls ruling the world”.

I couldn’t pretend. I didn’t relate. So I assumed very quickly that Beyonce was mastering her recipe of success;  sing what every girl wants to sing along to.

But to be honest, until I heard the new material on this album I was swayed. There was almost a personality change or either a different musical approach that the songstress had adapted to. Beyonce hasn’t sounded more probing into emotion and easier to believe. The warmth of the synths and the heavy hip-hop and pop influenced beats embrace the love, hate and full of mixed emotions lyric and the drama of her voice.

First and foremost is 1 + 1, which is not layered. Just electric and bass guitar reminiscent of 70s and 80s and more accurately a Prince epoch, and nothing more is happening here. All the feistiness and tragedy is sustained by the singer. No camouflage seems apparent; Beyonce is singing the story as it should be told. Finally she is reaching out to a man.

But boys don’t be too excited, she still not feeling us all the way. On Best thing I ever Had, the ladies are represented. If you let your girl down, she might just sing this one to you. Under a 90s pop-piano, her voice has angst, sorrow and victory and she ain’t slipping. The voice is strong and her Beyonce is playing a role where she  is defiantly moving on.   

Each song marks a performance which lives out to the class of perfomer. And finally, the voice, lyrics and mood of pop are slowly aligning with one another.

I am won over.

Hope it lasts…

Ninety Miles – Stefon Harris, David Sanchez and Christian Scott

A from Brazil to Africa tribute has been highlighted in the form of new-jazz by three of some of the most crucial young musicians to come to the surface in the last 15 years or so. Not so much as a trio, but a collaborative effort, with the inclusion of other musicians, by Stefon Harris, David Sanchez and Christian Scott has seen the three sound comfortable in each other’s skin.

Listening to their individual recordings I have always felt a battle for these young musicians to fight for a realm in the space of the Jazz arena, which demands much respect from peers and more importantly, your listeners. To unfairly single out trumpeter Christian Scott, his blowing has been too fiery, too unstructured and at times this could be mistaken as indiscipline.

In Ninety Miles, there is a sense of “cool”, calm and swagger from the trumpeter, saxophonist and vibraphonist, and a lot of ease in their winding in and out of each other. Finally, they are playing as if there is no point to prove.

The album kicks off with Nenguerelu, where the three are playing synonymously under a heavy polyrhythmic Sipho-Gumede type of bass, with flair, with flight and without pretension, and a kind-of Moses Molelekwa -via- Don Pullen kind of easy piano following things pentatonic. There is definite structure, preparation and precision demanded here. Not only that but the hop and skip are demanded here. Congo is a protest march. Percussive in its approach, the musicians tackle the wars, the rapes, blood diamonds, child slavery, death of innocent women, in an almost not so revolutionary way, but demanding a right which needs no desperation to seek it.

The album is always moving in and out, in this discipline, addressing the issue and the music of the Africa, Brazil, Cuba and black America, not only in structure but in an improvising full of clarity, intelligence and allure to it.   Ninety Miles is under the surface a political statement; but you decide. That’s what’s lovely; it embraces a notion that travelling is required before we reach the destination.

Tenere

There’s a landscape that we’ve never travelled upon. There are places where you and I may have never been.  Yet these places we have imagined, dreamed of and captured in our reveries.  

Tinariwen, the afro-rock band made of Tuareg geniuses, is about to release its album Tassili, setting a musical platform to highlight the mountain range in the Sahara desert.

In their first single, titled Tenere  Taqqim Tossam, they have  featured their US counterparts from TV on the Radio, Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone, on a travel on the landscape of “blues” mellow  guitar driven anthem.

The ancient, the untold story and the concealed is brought to the open. Musically, as the listener you travel on  landscapes never travelled, you walk on the terrain of infinite stretches of sand and capture the reverie of a life we may never come to live but long dearly for.

Jill Scott – Still our Sista

There’s no other songstress I am more attracted to than Jill Scott. She resembles an out-in-the-open persona in her musicality. She is the afro-haired girl you always wanted to walk  in the park with. She is the girl who writes poetry that you always wanted hang out with and listen to Mozart with. She is fly – in every sense. She resembles a persona of a thinker, party girl, great lover, the girl in the choir who is centre attention, loving sister, and a good cook. But let’s not forget, that’s my fictitious view of Jilly from Philly.

Let’s move on from my illusionary ways.

Jill Scott is about to release her The Light of the Sun in a few days. From her outset album, Who is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol 1. which was a breakthrough for all dem peeps who saw a distorted image of “our black sisters” in media, this album is a much more less-of-drama, maybe just chilled, keeping the momentum of her status of a queen of a genre of the neo-soul-and-the-poetry. It had been a while, since Aretha Franklin and mama Miriam Makeba, since we had seen a she-sister in pop-media reflecting a flair in style and word of your sister from hood (ikasi). So here she was, in a video, a regular and full figured girl walking in the hood and singing out that she wants to take a walk with me (well, maybe not me. But it felt like she was speaking to me, since I could relate). Now that was a relief. Not a hoochie-mama, not a dance queen, no heavy make-up… just an everyday sista from next door.

The new album doesn’t outdo, her debut, but it involves you into her journey of romance, and intimacy. Less drama but more affirmed in her state of being, in the lyrics and prose it seems there is a more of an oozing of confidence and re-affirmation of her artistry. There is also a depth of vulnerability and weakness. The transparency is so apparent that in Some Other Time, we get a glimpse of her failed marriage.

The quality of her sound is maintained. Twinkling sounds dripping everywhere, the hip-hop beat ever-present and romance the subliminal reasoning behind each mood of each track, (even the upbeat stuff).

 Highlight, is the piano-ballad, Hear my Call, which draws you closer to the breaths between her phrasing. In this one, Jill is in a church building, beseeching a grace that’s sure, revealing her failings and asking for an answer from a God. Jill is once again our sista, keeping it real. Not fronting, not hiding but saying it’s okay to be disappointed in love’s journey, happy to move on, yet still in a reflective tone.

Vieux Farka Toure – The Secret

There is no one who currently displays that Rock ‘n Roll and the blues has found its roots in Africa better than Tinariwen, and Vieux Farka Toure.  But today we’ll just meditate on the works of the latter. The Malian protégé Vieux is a genius in his own right. What he does is rightful inheritance from his father, Ali Farka Toure, who through his music forged landscapes that beseeched peace and humility upon the planet.

As much as Ali achieved that his son,Vieux, has engineered a sound which does not only perceive a rich past but invites the future into today’s broken state of our frail lives. In basic terms; Vieux is reminding a generation that it doesn’t have to be lost, and wander but can look back and affirm its identity and head off to pursue a reality which is for the better. Nothing is more rock ‘n roll than that.

So let’s agree to say Vieux Farka’s music is a safe space.

Vieux Farka Toure’s latest The Secret is one of my favorite “world music” albums that I have heard in a long time. The thing about the genre it can sound almost monotonous. The pentatonic can become a mask if it doesn’t contain a meditation or the ritual but Vieux seems to have re-energized himself in some-sort of fire dance.

Let’s start with Gido, featuring jazz guitarist John Scofield, a trance-dance pacing itself in a rhythm which is reliving itself in hollow beats containing a depth your drum kit will never hold, bass line which patterns a triumphant dance and in the midst two guitars are celebrating the party in the mode of improvising.  

There’s another blues rock breakthrough here through another collaboration, with Derek Trucks in Aigna. Aaaah, in this meditative ritual ballad in the midst of the same mode of repetition, usually a pride of Mali’s music, and in between the choral singing of male singers, guitars are the mode of speech. Both guitarist in the mode of praise, and alerting us of a danger that is about to peer from the midst of the turmoil of our today.

For Vieux to collaborate with the West is no weakness. It is actually an admission,  from those who have taken the music and have polluted it, of the origins of this pure music.

In the title track, The Secret, Vieux is collaborating with his late father. In this peaceful love song, you feel as a listener as if you missing out on something. As father-and-son relate in musicology there is an untold story, which is only known by the two communicators.  To be honest, it is a realm that could only be expressed by those who are keeping The Secret to themselves. With no vocals, just slight percussion, and two guitars diving in and out of each other in a composition which seems like a song which only the untold can describe.

Whenever I get vague about an album, its only because my love for it is as surreal and invisible as every note assembled to make the space of the music possible.