
Inana (Pi Recordings)
Amir ElSaffar
Released October 25, 2011
Allmusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2011
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=F5VRGEfevlw&list=PLLMHkGAznhz6MzffNwmoND1rI49v4k9Tw
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=gNjKz5aYaaU&list=PLLMHkGAznhz6MzffNwmoND1rI49v4k9Tw
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/3rPSGpViIO3YjS4vNmXfKW?si=wZVZWXZITCyhUdUP0P9jSw
About:
Inana is the follow-up to trumpeter Amir ElSaffar’s critically acclaimed Two Rivers Ensemble release, Two Rivers (2007), which Allmusic.com called “as impressive a debut as we’ve had in America in the 21st century.” While Two Rivers combined elements found in the modal music of the Iraqi maqam with the rhythms and aesthetics of modern jazz, Inana builds on those concepts to include a microtonal harmonic and melodic language, influenced by the pitch-flexibility of Middle Eastern music. The result is a new work that further expands the sonic possibilities of jazz. The first eight tracks of the album make up the “Inana Suite”, named after and inspired by the ancient Mesopotamian goddess of carnal love and warfare. The CD cover features her name in Sumerian cuneiform script, and the eight-pointed star on the back cover represents her association with the planet Venus. Inana is a powerful and unpredictable deity, often creating chaos around her and disrupting the otherwise orderly pantheon of Sumerian gods. The suite attempts to capture the complexity of Inana’s spirit, and many of the compositions are inspired by specific myths or aspects of her being. The suite progresses from “Dumuzi’s Dream,” which directly combines jazz with maqam, to pieces not based on the maqam tradition such as “Infinite Variety,” which expresses Inana’s diverse character through six independent melodies layered in counterpoint. The work culminates with “Journey to the Underworld,” a composition in seven sections, each depicting a part of Inana’s epic tale that inspired similar myths in subsequent ancient cultures and remains a topic of discussion in modern psychology.
Track Listing:
1. Dumuzi’s Dream (Amir ElSaffar) 09:41
2. Venus, The Evening Star (Amir ElSaffar) 10:32
3. Inana’s Dance, Pts. 1, 2, & 3 (Amir ElSaffar) 07:07
4. Inana’s Dance, Pt. 4 (Amir ElSaffar) 04:47
5. Lady of Heaven (Amir ElSaffar) 02:28
6. Infinite Variety (Amir ElSaffar) 05:22
7. Journey to the Underworld (Amir ElSaffar) 15:12
8. Venus, The Morning Star (Amir ElSaffar) 04:16
9. Al-Badia (Amir ElSaffar) 05:52
Personnel:
Amir ElSaffar: trumpet, vocal, santoor
Ole Mathisen: tenor and soprano saxophone
Zafer Tawil: oud, percussion
Tareq Abboushi: buzuq
Carlo DeRosa: bass
Nasheet Waits: drums
Recorded May 30 & June 6, 2011, at Brooklyn Recording
Producer: Amir ElSaffar
Engineer: Andy Taub
Mastered and Mixed by Liberty Ellman
Photography by Evi Lemberger
Design: Hardy Stewart
Executive-Producer: Seth Rosner, Yulan Wang
Review:
On 2007’s Two Rivers, trumpeter and composer Amir ElSaffar introduced jazz audiences to his innovative meld of modern jazz, classical, and maqam musics (the latter an Iraqi music he formally studied, which has both spiritual and secular applications). In 2010, he teamed with Iranian-American saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh for Radif Suite, which combined Iraqi maqam and traditional Persian dastagah and avant-garde jazz via Ornette Coleman’s harmolodic theorem. On Inana, his third offering for Pi Recordings, ElSaffar brings back his Two Rivers Ensemble with one personnel change: Ole Mathiesen replaces Rudresh Mahanthappa in the saxophone chair.
All but one of the nine tracks here make up the “Inana Suite,” named for the Sumerian goddess of love and warfare. Inana was known in other Eastern cultures as Ishtar and Astarte, and in later Roman civilizations as Aphrodite and Venus. What ElSaffar has accomplished here is to marry the tight, microtonal, melodic, and slippery rhythmic pulses of Iraqi music to the complex harmonic, modal, and improvisational elements in 21st century jazz. Given the goddesses’ contradictory nature, ElSaffar has composed a suite which reflects those shifting perceptions and incarnations — which he explains in detail in his liner notes — without making them face one another down through the ages. They meet in a complementary, rather than confrontational fashion, while maintaining enough dramatic tension to keep the listener transfixed throughout.
“Dumizi’s Dream” is where maqam meets both jazz and the blues. Droning modal tonalities and knotty Eastern scale microtones are touched by ElSaffar’s trumpet and Mathiesen’s saxophone, as drums (Nasheet Waits) and bass (Carlo DeRosa) shuffle along to to greet the bluesy strut of the oud (Zafer Tawil) and the shimmering, knotty, otherworldly tones of Tareq Abboushi’s buzuq (a long-necked lute).
In “Inana’s Dance (I, II, III),” the intense harmonics of jazz phraseology encounter the Persian and Sumerian’s less specific, more spacious rhythmic palette, creating a scintillating brew filled with stop-and-start kinetics and interactive soloing on horns and stringed instruments.
“Journey to the Underworld” is marked by ElSaffar’s deeply sensual maqam singing as the percussion and horns swirl up to meet him in shifting rhythms and snaky harmonics.
“Al-Badia,” the closing cut and the only selection that is not part of the “Inana Suite,” begins with a percussion exchange between hand drums and Waits’ kit. ElSaffar, the oud, buzuq, and bass enter here, and the musical engagement reflects the way secular maqam might be employed by merchants and singers in the marketplace. But ElSaffar’s trumpet, even as it moves along the music’s microtonal scales, actually swings back toward jazz in his elegant soloing. The ensemble gradually builds in intensity before both horns bring the melody back to the strings and close it out on a nearly danceable note. Inana is the most seamless meld yet of the various traditions ElSaffar represents; it offers listeners a thoroughly engaging, sensual, and enlightening encounter between the ancient and the modern, not in juxtaposition, but as seamless continuation in musical history and innovation.
Thom Jurek (AllMusic)