‘Pasif.ist’ Natalia Mann – an Oriental Dreamscape

February 1, 2012July 12, 2017 / JazzLocal32.com / Leave a comment

The music I cover here may not be Jazz in the purest sense but it is music that transcends the limitations of musical boundaries. It has its own pulses and rhythms and it is improvised around themes. This is a delicious orientalist dreamscape of the sort painted by Lord Leighton, Alma Tadema, Edward Lear and Eugene Delacroix. It is redolent of sultry afternoons in an Ottoman palace or of the winding streets of Istanbul. In the unfolding subtleties, one can hear the merest snatches of older themes; Constantinople and even Byzantium are hinted at but never confined. This is not traditional Turkish music but an exotic vision of a landscape just beyond our reach. This achieves what all great music does – connects us with a world that we would want to explore further.

In early December I received an email from Rattle Records inviting me to the ‘Pacif.ist’ CD launch and at that point I had scant information on the event. I had every intention of requesting more details but the workaday world drowned me in trivia and I soon forgot. One week later I was sitting in a meeting when the reminder flashed up on my iPhone; the launch was starting in an hour.

The venue was the spectacular Iron Bank building. An imposing piece of modernist architecture towering far above the rainy Auckland streets. The launch was held in an intimate minimalist space and the invited guests were mainly musicians associated with Rattle. To one side of the dimly lit room was a beautiful red lacquered harp and beside it the barest bones of a drum kit (snare and cymbals). Soon, harpist, Natalia Mann sat down to conduct a brief sound check and when she had finished I spoke to her about the lovely voicings that she was creating as she plucked and stroked the strings. They were pianistic Jazz chords, but with all of the extensions added. In the conversation that followed, we spoke of BeBop harpist Dorothy Ashby and of the later avant-garde stylist Alice Coltrane. At this point, I was intrigued to hear the music, as this was a gap in my musical knowledge that I was very happy to fill.

I have long been a fan of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern Jazz and its Jazz/World Music offshoots, but I can’t recall ever hearing Turkish Musicians. The launch used only a duo but they captured the mood perfectly – Natalia Mann (harp) and the well-known local, multi-instrumentalist Kody Neilson on drums. The album could perhaps be described as improvised World-Music but with Jazz inflexions – the sort that ECM presents so convincingly. With top rated musicians like Tigran Hamasyan and Dhafer Youssef bridging the World/Jazz continuum we will see a lot more of this music on offer. If you open your ears Jazzers and listen carefully, this gentle melodic music with its rich percussion will get to you.

After Natalia had returned to her busy life in Istanbul I conducted an email interview with her and this will be posted as an addendum to this post in a few days.

The Album Pacif.ist is available in download or hard copy from Rattle Records. I would strongly urge buying the CD, as the artwork and liner notes are so good that it would be a crime against art to circumvent them. http://www.rattle.co.nz

The musicians on the album are; Natalia Mann (harp, compositions), Izzet Kizil (percussion & drums), Sercan Halili (classic Kemence & Alto Kemence), Abdullah Shakar (fretless bass & electric bass), Dine Doneff (double bass), Richard Nunns (taonga puoro [6]), Lucien Johnson (soprano & tenor sax [3]), Riki Gooch (percussion [1,2,3]), Naomi Jean O’Sullivan (gongs [9], co- writer), Serdar Pazarcioglu (violon [5]), Deniz Gungor (aqua [5]). The album was mainly recorded in Turkey but with some instruments recorded in New Zealand. That rich-voiced exotic string instrument you hear is the ancient Kemence (see interview).

After I had written this, I saw an article in the latest Downbeat about the growing Jazz scene in Turkey titled ‘Emerging Turks’. The New York times has also highlighted this in a recent article. Natalia is New Zealand born and of Samoan/European descent. She is at present doing a master’s degree in Jazz at Skopje and is in demand with various European orchestras. She loves Jazz and has projects on the way which will lean more in that direction.

Istanbul – Pacif.ist cover art

Beautiful Tunisian Oud Jazz

April 10, 2011February 5, 2013 / JazzLocal32.com / 4 Comments

These You Tube live recordings will please some while others will dislike them. That is of no real matter because Jazz has never tried to be all things to all people. Jazz is a restless music and throughout its history it has taken on the voicings and ethos of other musical traditions (often making them its own). Dizzy, Miles, Coltrane , Latef and others never stopped listening for new and exotic sounds and a lot of excellent music resulted from their interest in non-American music traditions.

I saw Dhafer Yussef at an International Jazz festival and I will never forget the experience. His band performed breathtaking improvised music, jazz as we know it, but often around very ancient themes. It felt to me like a wonderful addition to the Jazz lexicon. Dhafer is a Sufi and the Sufi traditions are an ancient expression of Islamic culture. Sufi’s follow a mystical peaceable tradition which is gradually becoming better known in the west. Great poets, like Rumi, Hafez, Bulleh Shah and Khwaja Ghulam Farid are of this tradition. Qawwali is the best known form of Sufi music, however music is also central to the whirling dervishes and the ceremony of Sema uses a slow, sedate form of music featuring the Turkish flute and the ney. The West African Gnawa is another form (Randy Westen and Dizzy referenced this).

Dhafer Youssef (Arabic: ظافر يوسف‎) (born 1967 in Teboulba, Tunisia) is a composer, singer,and oud player. He developed an interest in jazz at an early age and clandestinely listened to it during his education at Qur’anic school.[1] He later left Tunisia to start a jazz career and has lived in Europe since 1990, usually in Paris or Vienna. He has played at many of the premier mainstream Jazz Festivals in the world and is mentioned on the USA based ‘All About Jazz’ website. I have been interested to note the number of Arab and Israeli Jazz musicians routinely mentioned in Down Beat and Jazz Times lately. The second clip features a stunning young Arab pianist Tigran Hamasyan and his Moorish Jazz style is quite beguiling. In this second piece the music builds in intensity and I suspect that this is part of the tradition (note the movement of the hands to enhance the vocalese).

Night in Tunisia

March 1, 2011February 5, 2013 / JazzLocal32.com / 4 Comments

Image via Wikipedia

In the mid nineties I was lucky enough to visit Switzerland for two weeks. Walking happily and aimlessly around the beautiful shores of Lac Lemon, Geneva, one summer evening, I came across five North African musicians playing entrancing modal melodies on the traditional instruments of their region. As I recall there was an Oud, hand drums, a reed instrument and several other stringed instruments. I stopped to listen and during a break in the music asked them the obligatory, “what country are you from?” “Tunisia” they called out with huge grins indicating their traditional costumes. “Dizzy Gillespie”, I said turning to my friend Michael as I threw a few Swiss francs into the cap that lay in front of them. We had hardly walked on a dozen steps when a cheerful cry of “hey English” accosted us. As we turned round the musicians began channeling Dizzy and to my ears that version of ‘Night in Tunisia” sounded just wonderful. I marvelled that they should know that 1940’s American Be-Bop warhorse because they were barely more than teens. Jazz can truly be a world-music.

Some years ago I listened to a not-so-successful attempt to use an Oud in Jazz. The band was about in the late 1950’s and the ‘fusion’ was far from convincing; a novelty at best. As the ECM label broadened the scope of its Jazz offerings I began to hear marvelous improvised music on the Oud. In the late 90’s I purchased several CD’s by Tunisian Oud player Anouar Brahem (a Keith Jarrett influenced musician). The Oud creates a wonderful soundscape and the deep improvisations the instrument is capable of adds much to the musical lexicon.

In 2009 at the Wellington Jazz festival I decided on a whim to go to an additional concert. The group was lead by Sufi Tunisian Oud player Dhafer Youssef. This concert was up-there as an experience and I enjoyed every note. His band consisted of Marcin Wasilewski (piano), Michal Miskiewiscz (drums) and a great Canadian arco-stick-bass player whose name now eludes me. Dhafer sung his other worldly songs and played the Oud and the crowd was entranced. Having the heart of the utterly brilliant Tomasz Stanko band as his rhythm section did not hurt either.

The Oud is just fine by me.