{"id":6851,"date":"2019-11-09T18:42:03","date_gmt":"2019-11-09T18:42:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/?p=6851"},"modified":"2019-11-11T21:12:27","modified_gmt":"2019-11-11T21:12:27","slug":"michelle-rosewoman-re-imagines-new-yoruba-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2019\/11\/09\/michelle-rosewoman-re-imagines-new-yoruba-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Michele Rosewoman Re-Imagines New-Yoruba (Again)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nStanding on the tiny stage area of Manhattan’s Zinc Bar, Michele Rosewoman’s New-Yoruba<\/strong> ensemble was packed in tight. This is expansive music and yet it’s also intimate.\u00a0The musicians \u00a0were celebrating a new release, “Hallowed”<\/strong> (Advance Dance Disques)” but really they were extending a personal history that spans more than 30 years. \u00a0With\u00a0“Oru de Oro,”\u00a0an extended work on the new release (sections of which were \u00a0played at the club), Rosewoman has scripted an exciting new chapter of this story.<\/span><\/p>\n

New Yor-Uba sprung from Rosewoman’s imagination, her immersion in Afro-Cuban tradition and her impressive technique as a pianist. These days, its beating heart is the trio of percussionists\u2014Rom\u00e1n D\u00edaz,\u00a0Mauricio Herrera, and\u00a0Rafael Monteagudo \u2014who mostly play\u00a0bat\u00e1 (D\u00edaz, in particular, is a singular fore and source). At Zinc\u00a0Bar, its\u00a0soul was\u00a0Abraham Rodriguez, whose chants often\u00a0changed the shape and direction of a given song.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

If there is a more satisfying group around\u2014one with as compelling a blend of ancient and new, of earthiness and urbanity, of ritual music and jazz-based improvisation\u2014please tell me about them.<\/p>\n

I remember interviewing Rosewoman at her apartment for a Wall Street Journal feature, before she reconvened this group in 2013, and re-entered the studio .<\/p>\n

“How do stories start?” she asked herself. And then she told me.<\/p>\n

Below that is my Journal review of the resulting album, paired with a review of one by Pedrito Martinez.<\/p>\n

(The links here may not work for you, but the full texts are here.)<\/p>\n

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL<\/p>\n

April 5, 2013<\/p>\n

New York via West Africa via Cuba<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Michele Rosewoman and New Yor-Uba Celebrate 30 Years<\/p>\n

By LARRY BLUMENFELD<\/p>\n

Thirty years have passed since Michele Rosewoman mounted \u201cNew Yor-Uba: A Musical Celebration of Cuba in America\u201d at the Public Theater. Though that concert was half her lifetime ago\u2014she turned 60 last month\u2014she recalls it as if it were yesterday. Onstage at the piano, she was surrounded by 14 musicians who represented a rare union of free-thinkers drawn from New York jazz’s top rank, such as saxophonist Oliver Lake, and masters of Afro-Cuban folklore including percussionist and singer Orlando \u201cPuntilla\u201d R\u00edos.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could see the horn players listening to the drummers with their mouths hanging open and the drummers staring at the horn players with wide eyes,\u201d Ms. Rosewoman said at the Lower East Side apartment she’s called home since settling in the city in 1978. \u201cThe musicians had never heard anything like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She glanced at the Steinway grand piano dominating her living room. Beside it stood three conga drums. These instruments, which she has mastered, denote her music’s roots.<\/p>\n

Even in a Manhattan then buzzing with fresh iterations of jazz and renewed Afro-Cuban influence, New Yor-Uba was startling for its balance of unfettered improvisation and undiluted Cuban folklore within a complex and often grand structure. It carried both stylistic swagger and spiritual heft. Especially noteworthy was Ms. Rosewoman’s use of bat\u00e1, the two-headed drums associated with religious ceremonies, of which Mr. R\u00edos was an acknowledged master. Her pianism was equally distinct. In \u201cLatin Jazz: The First of the Fusions,\u201d author John Storm Roberts recalled it as \u201cthe first purely jazz playing I’ve heard that meshed with Latin rhythms instead of riding above them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Rosewoman’s 1996 album, \u201cSpirit,\u201d presented a standard piano-trio setup; her quintet, through which several noteworthy players have passed, evolved in brilliant and unconventional fashion across five albums. Yet the large ensemble remains her centerpiece\u2014though, curiously, unrecorded. That situation will be remedied. Three days after New Yor-Uba celebrates its 30th anniversary at Brooklyn’s Roulette on Friday, it will head into the studio to make a debut recording.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do stories start?\u201d Ms. Rosewoman asked while considering her overlapping influences. Hers begins in Oakland, Calif., surrounded by music\u2014not least because her parents owned a record shop. She began playing piano at age 6. After high school, pianist and organist Ed Kelly taught her jazz \u201cthe old-school way,\u201d she said. Soon after, she began studying Afro-Cuban percussion. She felt drawn to these ritual traditions as powerfully as to jazz; they both felt natural. \u201cBut they were still parallel worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Bay Area, Ms. Rosewoman’s conception of jazz expanded through association with trumpeter Baikida Carroll, who would play in the original New Yor-Uba. Once in New York, she straddled two worlds. Her first live performance here was in a jazz ensemble led by Mr. Carroll; her earliest recording session, with the Cuban songo group Los Kimy. Yet separate worlds converged in her mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cI literally dreamed about these folkloric, spiritually powerful songs in a contemporary jazz setting. I thought, ‘What? How?’ I needed to work it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the Manhattan club Soundscape, she met Mr. R\u00edos, who’d arrived in New York from Cuba in 1980 and would be her most profound mentor. It’s hard to overstate Mr. Rios’s impact here in building a community around the West African traditions, transmitted via Cuba, of the Yoruba people and then-less-known rituals such as arar\u00e1 (from the former kingdom of Dahomey).<\/p>\n

\u201cHe understood that I needed certain information to do what I wanted to do,\u201d she said, \u201cand I found myself welcomed into another world.\u201d New Yor-Uba was, in one sense, a celebration of Mr. R\u00edos’s eminence.<\/p>\n

Mr. R\u00edos’s death in 2008 was a turning point for New Yor-Uba. The current group includes two original members, Mr. Lake and tuba player\/baritone saxophonist Howard Johnson. Younger members, such as percussionist Pedrito Martinez and drummer Adam Cruz, reflect, Ms. Rosewoman said, \u201cwhat’s different today: fluency in both jazz and Afro-Cuban languages, which opens new possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is now a mentor herself. Mr. Martinez played his first U.S. tour with her after moving from Cuba. \u201cI’d never heard anyone combine Yoruba and jazz that way,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought, ‘This is why I came here.’\u201c<\/p>\n

Drummer Tyshawn Sorey, who has both studied and worked with her, said that \u201cshe taught me how to express musicality from the drums.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her continued growth as a jazz musician and immersion in Afro-Cuban spiritual practice has revealed a key to the unity of her dreams: mystery. \u201cJazz is a world of extending and expanding tradition,\u201d she said. \u201cThe rhythmic traditions of Cuba are about maintaining tradition. But the idea of obscuring things seems fundamental to both. The idea is to know something so well that you don’t have to state it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Blumenfeld writes about jazz for the Journal. He also blogs at <\/em>blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/news\/articles\/SB10001424052702304561004579135951373071512<\/p>\n

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL<\/p>\n

Oct. 17, 2013<\/p>\n

Two Afro-Cuban Offshoots<\/strong><\/p>\n

New CDs from Michele Rosewoman and Pedrito Martinez<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>By LARRY BLUMENFELD<\/p>\n

Soon after pianist Michele Rosewoman moved from Oakland, Calif., to New York in 1978, she felt her parallel musical paths\u2014jazz and Afro-Cuban folklore\u2014merge into a compelling whole. Once percussionist Pedrito Martinez arrived in Union City, N.J., in 1998, he found widespread demand for the rhythms and chants he’d mastered in Havana’s Cayo Hueso neighborhood; he began crafting his own musical style, grounded in the Afro-Cuban religious and rumba traditions of his childhood, and influenced by the best players he met in New York.<\/p>\n

Two striking new CDs from these musicians showcase possibilities for music built upon Afro-Cuban tradition, informed by jazz, and realized through personal discovery. “Michele Rosewoman’s New Yor-Uba: A Musical Celebration of Cuba in America”<\/strong>(Advance Dance Disques) is the debut recording of a project the pianist created 30 years ago. “The Pedrito Martinez Group”<\/strong>(Mot\u00e9ma Music) is the first studio CD from Mr. Martinez, who is a key member of Ms. Rosewoman’s group, and whose wildly original quartet demands its own spotlight.<\/p>\n

Ms. Rosewoman, 60, first presented her 14-piece New Yor-Uba at Manhattan’s Public Theater in 1983. Then as now, it was startling for its balance of unfettered improvisation and undiluted Cuban folklore, and especially its use of bat\u00e1<\/em>, the two-headed drums associated with Yoruba religious ceremonies. Ms. Rosewoman’s compositions, based on chants and rhythms, grew from her studies with Orlando “Puntilla” R\u00edos, a Cuban percussionist whose arrival in New York in 1980 had profound impact, and who died in 2008. Yet the music also reflects an open-minded jazz tradition Ms. Rosewoman absorbed from musicians such as alto saxophonist Oliver Lake and tuba player Howard Johnson, both New Yor-Uba members since its start.<\/p>\n

Time has benefited Ms. Rosewoman’s ideas. Her 1983 group bridged two distinct communities. The current edition includes musicians, such as bassist Yunior Terry and drummer Adam Cruz, drawn from a generation fluent in both jazz and Afro-Cuban dialects. The new recording highlights stirring details\u2014especially the interplay of the group’s three percussionists. The music sounds like something very old, which it contains, and something still evolving, which it is. Sometimes it achieves moments of pure and novel pleasure, as on “Where Water Meets Sky (Yemaya),” when horn improvisations float above chants, only to dissolve into the accelerating fury of bat\u00e1 drumming.<\/p>\n

Even within New Yor-Uba’s collective statement, Mr. Martinez stands out for both his agility as a percussionist and his voice, which sounds simultaneously searing and comforting. Since moving to the U.S., Mr. Martinez, now 40, has recorded and performed with fellow Cuban musicians, jazz players and pop stars, including Paul Simon and Sting. On the recent CD “Rumba de la Isla” (Calle 54), featuring an all-star cast, he transformed the legacy of the Spanish flamenco singer Camar\u00f3n de la Isla into something distinctly original, and Cuban.<\/p>\n

Yet Mr. Martinez’s true identity and full collaborative powers are best revealed by the quartet he’s honed since 2008 through his three-nights-a-week residency at the midtown Manhattan Cuban restaurant Guantanamera. The band’s members all sing, often in four-part harmony. Bassist Alvaro Benavides and Jhair Sala, who plays cowbell and bongos, share a startlingly intuitive rapport with Mr. Martinez. Ariacne Trujillo’s piano playing blends Cuban conservatory training and modern-jazz literacy, and she sings a persuasive blues; in another group, she might be the standout. Playing conga drums, caj\u00f3n<\/em>(a wooden box drum) and sometimes bat\u00e1, Mr. Martinez is the group’s rhythmic engine and most daring soloist. For him, mastery begets reinvention. He personalizes the guaguanc\u00f3<\/em>rhythm of the heroic rumba group Los Mu\u00f1equitos de Matanzas on “Lengua de Obbara,” updates the songo<\/em>rhythm of the pioneering Cuban dance band Los Van Van with his composition “Conciencia,” and finds Afro-Cuban soul within Robert Johnson’s “Traveling Riverside Blues.” Yet his references and rhythms are mostly woven within musical blends too complex to define.<\/p>\n

The Guantanamera gig is a magnet for local musicians and visiting stars, including those featured on the CD (among others, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and drummer Steve Gadd ). They’re drawn by word of Mr. Martinez’s preternatural skills. They keep returning for this group’s dizzying rhythmic webs, its songs within songs, and the thrill of real Cuban rumba transformed into something as hip and irresistible as great pop. Physical talents notwithstanding, Mr. Martinez’s most potent gifts may be his ideas.<\/p>\n

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Standing on the tiny stage area of Manhattan’s Zinc Bar, Michele Rosewoman’s New-Yoruba ensemble was packed in tight. This is expansive music and yet it’s also intimate.\u00a0The musicians \u00a0were celebrating a new release, “Hallowed” (Advance Dance Disques)” but really they were extending a personal history that spans more than 30 years. \u00a0With\u00a0“Oru de Oro,”\u00a0an extended … <\/p>\n

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