Yusef Lateef, Adam Rudolph and Go: Organic Orchestra, In the Garden (Meta/YAL Records, 2003)
Wot th' @#$% is that!?!
Is it pygmy noises? Is this wot Cousin Joe Strummer wuz talkin' 'bout? #$%^ ME!
All I did wuz push the #$%^in' play button on Dave's CD player, an' this racket came forth. Marimbula by Munyungo Jackson, hichiriki by Ralph Jones, bansuri by David Philipson, Mr. Lateef on bamboo flute an' vocal, and Adam Rudolph on talkin' drum an' vocal. I don't know wot half o' those things are but they make a noise.
Okay. . . research done. A marimbula is like a kalimba or thumb piano of the bass variety. I hear it quite clearly on the first track, "Little Tree." A hichiriki is a Japanese flutey thingy, made of bamboo. Bansuri is an Indian flute, made also of bamboo, good for only two octaves. Wot makes the "bamboo flute" different from these more exotically named flutes of bamboo I 'ave no #$%^in' idea. Wotever, they all make sounds which add up to a sort of exotic soundtrack music, of the new agey-est kind.
Yusef Lateef, Dave's Jazz Encyclopedia tells me, was a jazz saxophonist. He does play some of that on this double CD. The sort of jazzy, snakey, no real melody stuff that winds in and around groovy people as they sit in outdoor cafes sipping their mocha lattes and tryin' to bite through those hard, rock-like cookies they seem to like so much. They soften up quick if you dunk 'em in your espresso! Wait, wait, it's track two, "Nanna," Yusef is lookin' for a note. . . dissatisfied as he is wif all the uvver #$%^in' notes on the scale that he has already gone past. There it is. . . finally. "Waaaaaaaaa! Thub, thub."
This is quite wind-filled music. Almost everyone is blowin' sumfink. And, of course, a bunch of drummers. Except Karen Bakunin who plays viola on "Morphic Resonance." It's a spooky thing wif no real melody, an' again reminds me of the soundtrack of a mystery movie where someone is looking through alleyways for the kidnapper of his wife. Wot might 'appen next? Who knows?
Yusef Lateef describes the music in the insert. He says it's "threadbare lubricated alacrity, celestial effervescent edge. . . leap into the eternal ellipsoidal mix eternally, never to spiccato again." I must say, that's exactly wot I wuz thinkin' as I listened to this #$%^. Adam Rudolph calls it all "new musical concepts." I fink that I will stick wif the good ole musical concepts that I grew up wif. Thank you very #$%^in' much!
Yusef Lateef has a Web site here. Meta/YAL Records has a Web site here.
