THE AFRICAN NUBIAN SUITE
Do not file this recording under "jazz." What you are about to hear is planetary music, stretching across millennia, nations, histories, landscapes and soundscapes.
Randy Weston is renowned for his boundless imagination, his resistance to categories, and his abiding respect for all musical ancestors.
But "The African Nubian Suite" may be his most ambitious work yet. Taking as its subject matter the very origins of humanity, the suite was inspired by the discovery
of the fossilized skeletal remains of what is believed to be the oldest example
of a human-like hominid. Nicknamed "Ardi" (short for Ardipithecus ramidus),
she resided some 4.4 million years ago in the land that would become ancient Nubia (and modern-day Ethiopia).
"The African Nubian Suite" is epic storytelling told in many voices, many registers, many dimensions. In one single work, Weston manages to pay tribute to the ancient tombs of Sidi Bilal in Aswan, the sufi tradition, the holy city of Touba in Senegal, China's great Shang Dynasty, African folk music, the timeless history of the blues,
and the unity of humankind.
Grounded in the spiritual, the scholarly, and the poetic,
it is fitting that the discoveries of Dr. Wayne Chandler and the poetry of the late Jayne Cortez find voice in this work. And in order to tell this story, Weston assembled
a group of master musicians who embody the global reach of African music.
In many ways, Weston has been carrying this music within him ever since he was
a child growing up in Brooklyn under the stern and loving care of his Virginia-born mother and Panamanian father who told him he was African. And after seven decades as a master musician, composer, ambassador, activist, teacher, and griot, no one has done more to restore and sustain the musical and cultural linkages between Africa and the Diaspora than Randy Weston.
But it was during a visit to Nubia - a spiritual, magical trip that resulted in his marriage to the lovely and brilliant Fatoumata Mbengue - that further deepened his connection to the ancients. To draw out these connections, Dr. Wayne Chandler speaks eloquently of the grandeur of Ancient Nubia, of Ardi's place in history, and of the symbolic power of the African woman.
The entire suite conveys the powerful truth that Africa is the birthplace of humanity
and the source of civilization predating the Greeks and the Egyptians. There are
no superior or inferior races, no hierarchies of culture, no barbarians at the gate.
Instead, Africa-its music, land, people, spirituality-tie us all together as a planet.
The suite's structure breaks with the orthodoxy of the concert performance, turning
the stage into an African cypher or a circle in which artist and audience are one.
For each movement in the suite, different musicians enter the circle, as Weston explained, in order to "tell stories."
"The Call," for example, serves as a vehicle for trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater
and master drummer Cándido Camero to gather the circle together,
to express in sound Dr. Chandler's provocation to "Hear. Listen.
Transform. . . .
Sit, yes meditate, and heed the call."
Likewise, "The African Family," performed near the end of the suite, features the dynamic drumming of Neil Clarke, Ayanda Clarke, and Lewis Nash, and saxophonists T.K. Blue and Billy Harper. Weston has always been partial to the drum precisely because it keeps the pulse and it talks, the ultimate storyteller.
But most of the other performances take the form of duets or solos.
"Ardi" celebrates our mysterious ancestor in the lower frequencies of Weston's rolling left hand and Howard Johnson's sublimely talking tuba.
Weston and hag'houge master Lhoussine Bouhamidy team up on "Sidi Bilal," a spirited tribute to the Gnawa people of Morocco.
On "Spirit of Touba," kora player/singer Salieu Suso and T.K. Blue bearing his flute, enter the circle and perform a duet of breathtaking beauty. Listen carefully and you just may hear the African origins of Elizabethan-era royal court music.
"Shang Dynasty" features Weston and long-tine collaborator Min Xiao-Fen on pipa,
a traditional Chinese stringed instrument dating back some 2,000 years.
Min's performance proves the universality of the blues, both in the tonalities she draws from the instrument and in her gorgeous voice.
Weston returns to the circle accompanied by balafon player Martin Kwaku Obeng for
a joyous rendition of the traditional children's song, "Domou Linguerre Diarra Modiene."
Much of the suite is really a deep journey into the blues, from its origins in the Niger Delta to its transmutation in the Mississippi Delta.
Weston's blues trilogy begins with a tribute to former Ellington trombonist, "Tricky" Sam Nanton, who could bring a room to its feet with just a horn and a plunger.
Robert Trower enters the circle and delivers a soulful paean to not only Tricky Sam but to the late Benny Powell who joined the ancestors in 2010.
On "Cleanhead Blues," saxophonist Billy Harper and Weston pay tribute to another ancestor, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson. Weston's walking left hand and Harper's economic phrases beautifully capture the spirit of the old juke joints and black-owned bars.
By contrast, "Hanapa Panama Blues" featuring Alex Blake's astounding percussive bass style over Weston's jubilant, dancing phrases brings to mind the old African Room in New York City.
Speaking of the blues, when poet Jayne Cortez joined Weston in the circle, the room began to sweat, history exploded, orishas descended on stage to dance.
Her extraordinary homage to Ardi laid bare the political importance of this entire endeavor. In the course of ten minutes, she praised Africa's resiliency and beauty, lifted the proverbial rug covering the mess created by our global systems of domination, and opened our imaginations to new, transformative, magical possibilities.
She vowed to "Be unruly as unruly can be/ Because a woman is deep water, deep earth, deep time."
She reminded us of the powers arrayed against us as well as the powers we possess: "If you know your spirit," she intoned, "like the moon knows its belly/ you can sway between two sandstorms/ and dance on the cliff top/ like all the pelvises represented by the great Ardi-pithecus in a rocky pluck-a-luck."
It was a clarion call to all of us to act, to forge our misery into the marvelous.
Jayne Cortez was on fire that April evening. It turned out to be her last public performance: eight months later she joined the ancestors.
It is fitting that the entire suite closes with the oldest instrument on the planet,
the voice, and it is a paean to an ancestor whose exploits are timeless.
Tampani Demda Cissoko delivers a vivid, powerful acapella performance from the ancient griot praise song "Soundiata" about the great Mali leader Sundiata Keita.
If anything, "The African Nubian Suite" is just that, a praisesong for our ancestors,
an injunction that we study our past, know where we come from and what we created in the journey to now.
As Jayne Cortez intoned before she dropped the mic and left the circle,"when you walk out tonight, think about the meaning of Ardi and the life of Trayvon Martin,
and push straight ahead.
Adupe!"
-- Robin D. G. Kelley |
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