{"id":4047,"date":"2014-06-25T14:57:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T14:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=4047"},"modified":"2014-06-25T14:57:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T14:57:00","slug":"not-their-fathers-afro-latin-jazz-yosvany-terry-arturo-ofarrill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2014\/06\/25\/not-their-fathers-afro-latin-jazz-yosvany-terry-arturo-ofarrill\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Their Fathers' Afro Latin Jazz: Yosvany Terry & Arturo O'Farrill"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Arturo<\/a>
Arturo O'Farrill (left, Courtesy Afro Jazz Alliance) & Yosvany Terry (Victor Strannik via Wikicommons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The most exciting storyline right now\u00a0in New York City jazz and the most invigorating music \u00a0most often comes from players with Afro Latin roots. That fact, and the specifics of these musical projects, says much about a broadened landscape for what used to be called (but thankfully no longer can)\u00a0“Latin jazz,” \u00a0its elemental value to whatever we call “jazz,” and to the cultural melting pot that is New York. In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, my review piece<\/a> discusses new CDs from alto saxophonist and composer Yosvany Terry<\/strong> (who also plays a mean cheker\u00e9) and pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill<\/strong>, whose Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra<\/strong> is my favorite large ensemble in this city. In my 900 or so words, I couldn\u2019t possibly do justice to the fine details of each recording\u2014the breadth of the compositions, created by composers with roots throughout this hemisphere, on O’Farrill’s “The Offense of the Drum,”<\/strong> for instance, or the all-star pedigrees of the players in Terry’s Ye-D\u00e9-Gbe group on his “New Throned King”<\/strong> that lend wonderful cohesion to his blend of arar\u00e1 <\/em>ritual (from the former West African kingdom of Dahomey) and modern jazz improvisation.<\/p>\n

Terry has digested the full range of alto-sax jazz language; his horn sounds with an elegant force and forms an unusual complement to the sung chants from Pedrito Martinez<\/strong>, who is both a master of Afro Cuban folkloric vocal tradition and, to me, one of the world’s great voices in any idiom. He’s also a master percussionist who here functions as part of trio of masters (with Rom\u00e1n D\u00edaz<\/strong>, whose brilliance I know well, and Sandy P\u00e9rez<\/strong>, who I hadn’t heard before. Listening to Terry’s new CD was a revelation for me, for both the further ascent it represents in terms of his talent and for its reflection of his deepened investigation into arar\u00e1, a tradition that is not so well known in the U.S. Catching the CD-release performance at Manhattan’s Jazz Standard was an even more stirring experience, with dancer Francisco Barroso, in traditional costumes, bringing home the fact that this music is meant for dance, and has a functional value. In Terry’s hands, modern jazz is a ritual music, and traditions like arar\u00e1 invite sophisticated innovation.<\/p>\n

O’Farrill’s CD is an outgrowth of his orchestra’s concert season, which is the best if not the only place to hear newly commissioned works from Afro Latin composers for big band. Good as O’Farrill’s title composition for this CD is, there’s an even better one O’Farrill presented recently during an Apollo Theater concert called “The Afro Latin Jazz Suite”: Through trumpet fanfares and other details, O’Farrill made reference to “The Afro Cuban Jazz Suite,” a landmark work by his father, the late Chico O’Farrill, within a piece that exploded a previous generation’s aesthetic in something beyond genres borders.
\nYou can find my review of these two new CDs here<\/a>, or simply continue reading:
\nJune 24, 2014
\nCubans with a New York Twist<\/strong>
\nThis isn’t your father’s Cuban jazz<\/em>
\nBy LARRY BLUMENFELD
\nTo close a May concert at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, Arturo O’Farrill led his orchestra through \u201cThe Afro Cuban Jazz Suite,\u201d a landmark work by his father, the late composer and bandleader Chico O’Farrill. That suite, first recorded in 1950, imagined anew innate connections between American and Cuban idioms and among folkloric, jazz and classical forms.
\nIf the rest of the Apollo Theater concert built on that legacy, it did so with a wide-ranging ambition Chico O’Farrill could scarcely have imagined. At some points a turntablist, DJ Logic, stood beside the percussionists, lending textures and rhythms by manipulating LPs. Throughout, the music was grounded as much in styles native to Peru and Colombia, and in the adventurous attitudes of musicians such as pianist and composer Carla Bley, one of Mr. O’Farrill’s earliest mentors, as in his direct inheritance. This was distinctly not his father’s Afro Latin jazz.
\nElsewhere in Harlem and later in May, alto saxophonist Yosvany Terry performed at Minton’s alongside his brother, bassist Yunior Terry, in a sextet led by their father, Eladio \u201cDon Pancho\u201d Terry. The Terry brothers, too, were born into heady Cuban tradition. Don Pancho is the violinist and founding director of the Orquesta Maravillas de Florida, a Cuban charanga <\/em>band, and master of the cheker\u00e9<\/em>, a beaded gourd used for percussion. At Minton’s, the sextet performed a mixture of traditional charanga <\/em>repertoire and more forward-leaning music Yosvany composed for his working quintet.
\nMusicians with roots in Cuba who now live in New York\u2014having absorbed influences and made associations that span borders and genres\u2014bring new sonic possibilities and fresh perspectives to their heritages. In turn, they invigorate New York’s scene. Two recent CDs\u2014\u201dThe Offense of the Drum\u201d (Mot\u00e9ma), from Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, and Yosvany Terry’s \u201cNew Throned King\u201d (5Passion)\u2014embody such promise through distinctly different approaches.
\nMr. O’Farrill, 54, was born in Mexico and grew up in Manhattan. As part of his nonprofit Afro Latin Jazz Alliance since 2007, the orchestra has developed an expansive aesthetic that plays out through commissioned pieces for concert seasons. \u201cThe world of Latin jazz has exploded,\u201d he said recently at his Brooklyn home. \u201cMy father did what he did in his era because that was the world he knew. In my world, there’s Peru and Colombia and Ecuador and Venezuela and more\u2014plus, of course, Cuba. For the past seven or eight years, I’ve explored these connections for all their beauty, power and range.\u201d
\nMr. O’Farrill’s CD opens with \u201cCuarto de Colores,\u201d a celebration of Colombian harp composed by Edmar Casta\u00f1eda, who plays that instrument with remarkable command. Among its most stirring pieces are Pablo Mayor’s \u201cMercado en Domingo,\u201d based in the Colombian marching-band tradition; \u201cGnossienne 3 (Tientos),\u201d for which Spanish arranger Miguel Blanco invested French composer Erik Satie’s music with the pained vocals and curled melismas of flamenco; and \u201cThe Offense of the Drum,\u201d an ambitious O’Farrill composition incorporating Japanese taiko<\/em> drums. That such range forms a coherent musical whole lends credence to his mission.
\nMr. Terry, 43, is an especially dynamic presence in New York. In addition to his quintet, he recently formed Bohemian Trio, with a cellist and pianist, and composed the score for \u201cMakandal,\u201d an opera conceived and written by Carl Hancock Rux, scheduled for its Harlem Stage premiere in November. In performance, Mr. Terry often picks up the cheker\u00e9 his father taught him to play. His new CD explores a tradition more closely related to his mother’s lineage: arar\u00e1<\/em> culture, drawn from the former West African kingdom of Dahomey. The group he assembles here, Ye-D\u00e9-Gb\u00e9, includes Cuban musicians well versed in arar\u00e1, such as percussionists Rom\u00e1n D\u00edaz, Pedrito Martinez and Sandy P\u00e9rez, and players with no prior exposure, such as drummer Justin Brown. Though layered with jazz improvisation and, in some spots, electronics, the music’s core is formed by arar\u00e1 chants and drumming, undisturbed. \u201cI could have composed something simply based on that legacy,\u201d Mr. Terry said. \u201cBut I left this material the way it was, to interact with everything else.\u201d This music remains functional: a recent Manhattan album-release performance included a costumed dancer, Francisco Barroso.
\nThese two new recordings pursue very different ends yet share some qualities. Each meaningfully incorporates DJ culture\u2014on Mr. O’Farrill’s CD, through DJ Logic’s turntables; on Mr. Terry’s album, via Haitian DJ Val Jeanty, whose constructed soundscapes include recorded samples of ceremonies. Each features spoken-word poetry: During \u201cThey Came,\u201d on Mr. O’Farrill’s CD, Christopher \u201cChilo\u201d Cajigas explores Puerto Rican identity in the U.S.; on Mr. Terry’s CD, Ishmael Reed celebrates women warriors from Dahomey. On each recording, eras and borders collapse within a track or even a passage\u2014as when Mr. O’Farrill’s piano playing moves from ragtime to Cuban montuno<\/em> to something akin to free-jazz, and when Mr. Terry’s playing evokes Ornette Coleman’s extrapolated blues atop ritual-based handclaps and chants.
\nThe cross-cultural truth behind Afro Latin jazz is not news. What sounds fresh in Mr. O’Farrill’s version is the breadth of geography it may now embrace. Arar\u00e1 tradition is ancient, yet Mr. Terry expresses it in novel and urgent ways. Both recordings can change anyone’s landscape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The most exciting storyline right now\u00a0in New York City jazz and the most invigorating music \u00a0most often comes from players with Afro Latin roots. That fact, and the specifics of these musical projects, says much about a broadened landscape for what used to be called (but … <\/p>\n

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