Don Pullen - Sacred Common Ground (1996)

Artista: Don Pullen

Álbum: Sacred Common Ground
Año: 1996
Género: Jazz fusion / World music
Duración: 44:46
Nacionalidad: EEUU

Lista de Temas:
1. The Eagle Staff Is First
2. Common Ground
3. River Song
4. Reservation Blues
5. Message In Smoke
6. Resting On The Road
7. Reprise: Still Here

Alineación:
- Don Pullen / piano
The African Brazilian Connection:
Carlos Ward / alto saxophone
J. T. Lewis / drums
Mor Thiam / African percussion
Joseph Bowie / trombone
Santi Debriano / bass
Chief Cliff Singers / Mike Kenmille (lead)

Por todos es sabido, y lo he comentado varias veces, que no soy demasiado ordenado, y que se me está armando tremendo lío y despelote con esta oleada de discos compartidos por muchos miembros de la familia cabezona, cosa que me encanta y una de las razones principales por la que seguí manteniendo este blog a lo largo de los años. Así que no se sorprendan si este disco, junto con su comentario, apareció un día en mi rígido y no recuerdo (ni tengo ganas de ponerme a buscar) quién lo compartió para agradecerle.
Es así que esto que les traigo ahora no sé de donde viene... tómenlo como caído del cielo.

His was pianist Don Pullen's final recording. A collaboration between the seven-voice Native American Chief Cliff Singers and Pullen's African Brazilian Connection (a sextet with altoist Carlos Ward and trombonist Joseph Bowie), these performances are definitely not for jazz purists. Most of the music features the vocalists singing in their traditional manner. Pullen and his group have a few interludes where they get to stretch out, and there are occasional instances where the two groups actually play off of each other. But because the singers really do not improvise, this well-intentioned project is a mixed success.

Me voy a limitar a copiar lo que está en el documento que van a encontrar en el texto que me pasaron.


Don Pullen (Roanoke, Virginia, 25 de diciembre de 1944 - 22 de abril de 1995, Los Ángeles, California) fue un pianista, organista y compositor estadounidense de jazz.
Tras realizar varias giras en grupos de segundo nivel, se traslada a Nueva York, donde estudia con Muhal Richard Abrams, con quien también toca. a partir de 1964 comienza a grabar y tocar regularmente de forma profesional, liderando sus propios grupos y colaborando con muchos músicos de free jazz, tocando el piano, a la vez que simultanea sus experiencias de vanguardia con actuaciones más tradicionales, tocando elórgano, con músicos como Charles Williams, Nina Simone, Art Blakey o Charles Mingus (1973-1975). Tras una estancia en Europa a finales de la década de los 70, colaborará con Hammiet Bluiett, Joseph Jarman,Sam Rivers, George Adams (con quien colaboraría muy frecuentemente) y otros. A finales de los años 1990, integraría el grupo "African Brazilian Connection", con Carlos Ward, uno de cuyos álbumes, Ode To Life(1993), lograría situarse en el puesto #5 de las listas de jazz de Billboard. Grabaría su último disco, Sacred Common Ground, junto a los "Chief Cliff Singers", indios de la tribu Kootenai de Montana, sólo unas semanas antes de su muerte, por linfoma
Fue un pianista muy original, al superponer la tradición del piano de jazz con los conceptos free-jazz, alternando pasajes muy libres con momentos líricos y románticos, sobre armonías convencionales. Mostraba claras influencias del blues y de la música de las Antillas. Su técnica ha sido filmada y estudiada por un gran número de pianistas.

En este disco Pullen unifica o hace convivir al jazz con el canto y la percusión pow wow. A saber, powwow, pow wow o pow-wow es una reunión de pueblos indígenas de Norteamérica. El término deriva de powwaw que significa "líder espiritual". Un powwow moderno es un tipo de evento específico donde los nativos americanos se reúnen para cantar, bailar, socializar y honrar a su cultura. Generalmente hay una competición de danza, con significativos premios económicos. Los powwows tienen una duración variable, de entre 6 horas a 3 días. Los powwows en ocasiones especiales pueden durar hasta una semana.

El término también ha sido empleado para describir cualquier reunión de tribus nativas americanas y puede ser escuchado con frecuencia en las películas westerns. También se hizo uso de este para hablar de consejos militares de oficiales, pero su uso es por algunos visto como una falta de respeto con la cultura nativa.)

Native American songs meet African-Brazilian jazz
It is fitting that in Don Pullen's final complete recording he leaves us with a unique combination of multicultural sounds representing the culmination of his life in music. With "Sacred Common Ground", Pullen combines the African-Brazilian Connection, with whom he recorded and toured for much of the 1990s, with the Chief Cliff Singers, Kootenai Indians from Elmo, Montana. Jazz always seemed far too restrictive a term for what Don Pullen gave to the world, and in this parting contribution he demonstrates the universality of music, culture, and spiritual roots.
I first became familiar with Pullen's distinct percussive, hand-rolling style of piano playing on Charles Mingus' "Changes" albums in the 1970s. I then saw him perform with Mingus in a small club in Urbana, Illinois and was captivated by his mastery of the instrument. Like many others on this particular night, I was pleased when, due to a number of college students' raucous conversations during a particularly soft piano solo, Mingus grabbed a microphone and shouted "Shut up out there. This cat's playin' his ass off." Charles Mingus knew genius when he heard it.
This particular collaboration between Pullen and the Chief Cliff Singers began in 1993 when they met to compose a jazz/Indian score for "Earth Eagle First Circle", a new dance work by Garth Fagan. Pullen's paternal grandmother was half-Indian, but he hadn't heard live Native American music until 1992. The power and emotion of the music fascinated him. The more he listened to the Indian rhythms and sequences, the more they became familiar to him. Pullen found much in common with gospel, shuffle rhythms, the blues and cutting-edge jazz. The Chief Cliff Singers gradually accustomed themselves to the polyrhythmic beats the African-Brazilian Connection wove in and out of the steady Indian drum beat. Since the Chief Cliff Singers' songs were part of an oral tradition handed down by their ancestors and not written down, Pullen had to work hard to master the complexity of these songs in order create the unique compositions. Lead singer and co-composer Mike Kenmille's use of new hand signals helped direct his singers so they were able to collaborate with the other musicians.
The result is a rich collection of Native American chanting built upon the soft, dynamic and soothing sound of Pullen's Afro-Brazilian style of jazz. Joseph Bowie's trombone brings out a strong bluesy feel to "Reservation Blues", which starts off with the singers chanting and then abruptly switches to a more traditional twelve-bar blues. Bowie and alto saxophonist Carlos Ward weave back and fourth, then give way to Pullen's rolling, percussive playing. Throughout the CD, the combination of J.T. Lewis' Latin-tinged jazz drumming and Senegalese Mor Thiam's African percussion, combined with the indigenous Americans' steady pounding, make for a rich and soulful sound.
"Message in Smoke" begins with a soft Pullen solo and gathers momentum as the singers begin chanting, then the percussion picks up, and finally the horns start to squawk back and forth. It's wild, free, challenging, and most certainly worth the effort. "Resting On The Road" is a gentle ballad and the most reminiscent of Pullen's earlier work with the African-Brazilian Connection.
Pullen was diagnosed with lymphoma about one-third of the way through this project and was well into chemotherapy at the time of the recording, yet the compositions and his performance show all the vitality and energy of his earlier work. The final cut, "Reprise: Still Here", has Kenmille singing alone sad and raw. Perhaps Howard Mandel put it best in the liner notes when he concludes: "Wherever people with spirit such as Don Pullen evinced come together to join with rather than divide one another-wherever music with the power and presence of Pullen's falls on ears that turn toward the sound-in even one instant of perception and reflection - there are Pullen and company, there are the Chief Cliff Singers, there is 'Sacred Common Ground'."

Mark Craemer

Recorded only a month before Pullen died of cancer, this album is a curiously unsatisfying last testament that pushes the limits of eclecticism past the breaking point. An outgrowth of a foundation-funded dance project choreographed by Garth Fagan, it brings together Pullen's regular band, the African Brazilian Connection (plus bassist Santi Debriano and trombonist Joseph Bowie), and a Kootenai Indian group from Montana, the Chief Cliff Singers. But because jazz and Native American music share neither roots nor an extensive history of contact, the common ground alluded to in the title is hard to find. Instead, the two idioms are awkwardly juxtaposed, side-by-side or one on top of the other.
The tunes, jointly credited to Pullen and Koutenai singers Mike Kenmille or Francis Auld, are in fact impressionistic jazz takes on the accompanying traditional chants. The closest thing to a true fusion is the opening "The Eagle Staff Is First," where the band plays hardbop riffs and Pullen sprinkles dissonant keyboard clusters over a Kootenai song. Elsewhere the two ensembles generally alternate; when they do play together, on "River Song" or "Message In Smoke," the mismatched syncopations create a jarring clash. Pullen interprets different Indian melodies as gospel, blues or free-jazz, but while the pianist has his moments, as on the balladic "Resting On The Road" and the elegiac title cut, his band never works up a head of steam.
The late Jim Pepper, a Native American jazz saxophonist, managed to make Indian music swing, but for Pullen, who claimed partial Cherokee ancestry himself, the twain never really meet."

Larry Birnbaum

El blog cabezón será un quilombo y un desorden, pero no pueden decir que no es asobroso! Salen disco desde todos lados!!!