Guewel

No, the pan-African days aren't gone. Something remained of the Sun Ra Arkestra and the Art Ensemble of Chicago fascinations for the Mother Continent and its rhythms. We can find it in this new project by Harris Eisenstadt, a Canadian ex-pat New York-based jazz drummer who had the opportunity to study in Gambia and Senegal with griot musicians. In Senegal he learned Sabar traditional drumming, used in parties and life-cycle events, and the sense of community Eisenstadt experienced in Dakar was transposed to the collective playing of this quintet with four horns, going deeply into the roots of jazz without being close-minded. Attracted to this music in his teenage years because of the “kind of transcendence going on” in John Coltrane and Miles Davis records with, respectively, Elvin Jones and Tony Williams holding the sticks, his references start in rock – Led Zeppelin, for instance – and include contemporary music composers like Charles Ives, Toru Takemitsu and Gyorgy Ligeti. Now he's involved in creative music, and one of his life achievements was playing in a trio with a historic figure of this tendency, Sam Rivers. An enthusiast of the Do It Yourself aesthetics, Harris Eisenstadt has in Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet, flugelhorn), Nate Wooley (trumpet), Mark Taylor (french horn) and Josh Sinton (baritone saxophone) equal believers in the principle “do what you do and believe in it no matter what”, as he said in an interview. His two first partners are frontline figures now, Ho Bynum a Braxton disciple with many new ideas to give, and Wooley an explorer of extended techniques. Imagine what they can do together with Africa as a source of inspiration and after that listen to “Guewel”. Yes, they go even further...