Path of Seven Colors (Pyroclastic Records)
Ches Smith and We All Break
Released June 11, 2021
JazzTimes Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2021
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2021
The Guardian 10 Best Jazz Albums of 2021
Arts Fuse 2021 Jazz Critics Poll Top 10 New Album
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_ka8Foc936lwLdt-dsG6GlfMH_E0PdHfKM
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/7uZZvpUIYttcgh4WlORhCG?si=5_uOn797SOGu0_7rnU2eNQ
About:
With its remarkable merging of traditional Haitian Vodou with contemporary jazz and beyond, the groundbreaking album offers eight evolutionary/revolutionary tracks performed by a collaborative octet of world-class musicians. They are drummer/composer Ches Smith, pianist Matt Mitchell, saxophonist Miguel Zenón, bassist Nick Dunston, vocalist Sirene Dantor Rene, and master drummers Daniel Brevil, Markus Schwartz and Fanfan Jean-Guy Rene.
Like most great art forms, jazz developed by combining previously distinct, disparate elements into something new. The musicians of We All Break follow in this tradition on their new release, Path of Seven Colors. The album, with its remarkable merging of traditional Haitian Vodou music and au courant composition and improvisation, offers eight evolutionary/revolutionary tracks performed by a collaborative octet of world-class musicians.
While the band’s first album featured a quartet of three drummers with piano (and occasional vocals), the new recording uses an octet to orchestrate the material and greatly expands the vocal dimension, pushing the band into new terrain. “There is no existing model marrying traditional Haitian songs with original instrumental compositions and contemporary improvisation in this way,” says Smith. “We just had to keep trying things, in the spirit of experimentation, until the balance was right and we’d created our own mold.”
Smith’s dedication to Haitian Vodou began more than twenty years ago. “My attraction was instant and strong,” he says. “In 2000 I got called to accompany a Haitian dance class. I was captivated, likely because things central in the various musics I play – polyrhythm, polytonality, improvisation, extended timbral awareness, tension and release, channeled aggression and power, and most vitally surprise – I found again, and anew, in this traditional form.”
His compositional vision aimed to incorporate and transform elements of this tradition. “I wanted these elements – lead/chorus song structure, polytonal relations among singers and drums, conversations between the drums, and kase (‘breaks’) – at the center of each piece,” he says. “A traditional rhythm would be the foundation of each composition, while that rhythm’s spiritual, political, and visual associations could function as deep wells of information and feeling, levering the work into a new dimension.”
Pianist Mitchell’s melodic and harmonic sense, improvisational talents, and keen sense of rhythm made him a natural for the band. Smith also enlisted his master-teachers, Brevil and Schwartz. “I knew they would tell me straight whether this project was flying or not,” says Smith. He also brought in Jean-Guy Fanfan Rene, co-leader with Sirene Dantor Rene of Vodou-activism group Fanmi Asòtò. Smith also had an idea to pile-drive the bottom end, bringing in Nick Dunston: “I pictured a broad, taut, multi-colored tapestry dense with rhythmic detail in the low range of the music. This sound would include the contrabass for its harmonic and time-keeping roles, but also to function, slyly, as a fifth drummer.” Serendipitously, Ches played a gig with alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón, who expressed an interest in Haitian drumming. Smith says, “His playing on his own records, and his stunning compositions, told me he would be another force to push the music forward.” The final addition to the octet arose from Brevil’s suggestion to add a female voice. Enter Sirene Dantor Rene. “She sings with supreme conviction,” says Smith, “using traditional inflections in a voice wholly hers.”
Brevil began finding traditional Vodou songs, melodies and lyrics to nestle within Smith’s instrumental compositions. “Daniel composed many of the songs himself,” says Smith, “and fervently searched for others in the tradition, coming back with a multi-authored body of work. His curation brought up questions about the distinction between ‘traditional’ and ‘original.’ I once read that new songs may be created in a particular Vodou house and enter the tradition in that fashion. Perhaps this was happening before my eyes with Daniel’s original songs.” The result is a triumphant, pioneering ascent, tracked and mixed beautifully by the legendary Ron Saint Germain. The band rehearsed and recorded for a week in February 2020 amidst mutual respect, focus, excitement, and a commitment to going all in on their trailblazing collaboration. Says Smith, “An almost uncanny feeling accompanied us the whole time. If I may be allowed a bit of speculation: if in Vodou the invisible becomes visible, here, perhaps, the inaudible becomes audible.”
Track Listing:
1. Woule Pou Mwen (Daniel Brevil / Ches Smith / Traditional) 02:41
2. Here’s the Light (Daniel Brevil / Ches Smith / Traditional) 09:05
3. Leaves Arrive (Daniel Brevil / Ches Smith / Traditional) 09:39
4. Women of Iron (Daniel Brevil / Ches Smith / Traditional) 06:07
5. Lord of Healing (Daniel Brevil / Ches Smith / Traditional) 13:35
6. Raw Urbane (Daniel Brevil / Ches Smith / Traditional) 07:05
7. Path of Seven Colors (Daniel Brevil / Ches Smith / Traditional) 08:56
8. The Vulgar Cycle (Daniel Brevil / Ches Smith / Traditional) 11:29
Personnel:
Sirene Dantor Rene: vocals
Miguel Zenón: alto saxophone
Matt Mitchell: piano
Nick Dunston: bass
Daniel Brevil: tanbou and vocals
Fanfan Jean-Guy Rene: tanbou and vocals
Markus Schwartz: tanbou and vocals
Ches Smith: drums, percussion and vocals
We All Break dedicates this album to the memory of pi bon zanmi nou Eddy Jean (1970—2020).
Recorded February 2020, at Power Station New England by Ron Saint Germain
Assisted by Patrick Smith and Evan Bakke
Mixed by Ron Saint Germain at Saint’s Place
Mastered by Scott Hull
Album Design & Layout by Spottswood Erving & July Creek
Cover photo by Mimi Chakarova
Produced by David Breskin
Review:
Beloved for his many cool collaborations with Tim Berne, John Zorn, and Marc Ribot, drummer/improviser/composer Ches Smith is best served hot, under his own name—on his Congs for Brums series of recordings or his 2016 ECM trio album with Craig Taborn and Mat Maneri, The Bell. His latest group, We All Break, is his most soulful yet. Originally a quartet comprising pianist Matt Mitchell, Smith and two of his percussion teachers, Daniel Brevil and Markus Schwartz, on the tanbou (a Haitian barrel drum), the band has since grown into an octet, as documented on its recent two-CD set Path of Seven Colors. But its M.O. remains the same: studying the ritual and abandon of traditional Haitian Vodou music and adorning it with modern improvisation.
“Who could follow these masters [Brevil and Schwartz] and instinctively invent was important to the music I was writing,” Smith says. “That was true from the first show the quartet played in Amsterdam, with Daniel leading the way. Haitian and Creole music is his domain.” Although you can sense those traditions and their twists on Path of Seven Colors’ second disc, recorded in 2015 by the original four-piece, it’s on disc one—which adds saxophonist Miguel Zenón, bassist Nick Dunston, vocalist Sirene Dantor Rene, and another tanbou player, Fanfan Jean-Guy Rene, to the lineup—where the culture clash really gathers force.
What Smith knows about Haitian tanbou comes mostly from Brevil, a Port-au-Prince native born into a family of drummers, temple leaders, and community activists. “This music is my life,” Brevil says, pointing out that playing for Haitian religious ceremonies is as much a part of his work as gigging at jazz festivals. “What I get from Ches is more authentic than people I have worked with for decades. He’s ambitious when it comes to learning that which came naturally to me. I was a drummer before I was born. Ches has that spirit. He seeks to learn, come back for more … He pushes me to hear, and do, beyond my tradition.”
Smith says that as he was studying Vodou, he wanted jazz-scene colleagues like Mitchell and Zenón to get involved in the music the way he was. “So I structured the pieces that way, for them to respond to Daniel’s calls, to get in deep and support the song with a sense of independence,” he states. “Miguel in particular has been digging into the polyrhythms, finding out how Caribbean music influences that of Puerto Rico, where he’s from.”
As for the decision to add more percussion and vocals to the group, Smith says, “100% that was the right move. In a jazz sense, so was adding saxophone and bass. Every member contributed to every song based on what I had written, [which was] then added to by Daniel taking the demos and doing his thing. I didn’t know what Daniel was going to send, but I was happy to get it all.”
“We’re not going to be just jazzy or relaxing,” Brevil says. “We do want everyone to accept it. Not just local. International, too … As an activist, I wanted to bring something to this project so that people could hear the suffering of my people. Of any and all people killing each other, where no words matter. Now, I want the words and voices—mine and the drums—to matter.”
And they do, creating a magical hybrid. “Daniel told me I would know what it is when I heard it, and that it would just be its own thing,” Smith says. “I had to just accept all that, let go of any big structural models or macro forms, and forge straight ahead.”
A.D. Amorosi (JazzTimes)
