Red Earth (EmArcy Records)
Dee Dee Bridgewater
Released April 17, 2007
Grammy Nominee for Best Jazz Vocal Album 2008
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mVg8yM1BsJ_8F3w5n1BijgfAw60aBiHPQ
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/12wH1l7leh7zdgi7DQByN1?si=Coag2hsBRFK8FUzSQKBPcg
About:
Dee Dee Bridgewater has spent much of her long career ensconced in the history of jazz. She has an album of jazz standards and another honoring legendary singer Ella Fitzgerald. For her new album, though, Bridgewater explored her own roots. The Tennessee-born Bridgewater began her latest project exploring the African side of her family tree. But 150 years of family history turned up nothing.
About that time, Bridgewater began listening to the music of West Africa and feeling strangely drawn to the sounds of Mali. She traveled to the country in 2004 to investigate. Before her journey, though, she says she was skeptical. “I had grown up with very, very negative impressions of Africa,” Bridgewater said. “In schoolbooks that would talk about Africa, it was always about savages.”
During her travels in Mali, she discovered the continent’s deep cultural roots and a complex musical heritage by sitting in with musicians from the area. The end result is her new album of collaborations with Malian musicians, Red Earth: A Malian Journey.
In Africa, Bridgewater visited clubs to hear local musicians and felt an insatiable urge to join them on stage — something she says she never does. “It was the music in general. It just seemed familiar, like I knew it.” Bridgewater adapted an old African griot song “Red Earth (Massane Cisse),” the album’s title track, to her own experience growing up in Memphis, Tenn. “I’ve always had a fascination for red earth,” she said. “I love red earth.”
As a baby, Bridgewater says, she would take off her clothes and roll around in the Tennessee red earth. So at first sight of Mali’s red earth, she told her husband she knew in her heart she was home.
Melissa Block (npr)
Track Listing:
1. Afro Blue (Oscar Brown, Jr. / Mongo Santamaria) 5:11
2. Bad Spirits (Dee Dee Bridgewater) 5:49
3. Dee Dee (Dee Dee Bridgewater / Baba Sissoko) 2:57
4. Mama Don’t Ever Go Away (Dee Dee Bridgewater) 5:39
5. Long Time Ago (Dee Dee Bridgewater / Wayne Shorter) 6:48
6. Children Go ‘Round (Dee Dee Bridgewater) 6:05
7. The Griots (Dee Dee Bridgewater) 6:04
8. Oh My Love (Dee Dee Bridgewater) 6:03
9. Four Women (Nina Simone) 5:24
10. No More (Dee Dee Bridgewater) 4:45
11. Red Earth (Dee Dee Bridgewater) 5:17
12. Meanwhile (Dee Dee Bridgewater / Edsel Gomez) 4:25
13. Compared to What (Lassy “King” Massassy / Gene McDaniels) 5:21
Personnel:
Dee Dee Bridgewater: vocals
Edsel Gomez: piano
Ira Coleman: bass
Minino Garay: drums, caxixi, cojon, percussion, cymbals
Baba Sissoko: vocals, tamani, n’goni, background vocals
Cheick Tidiane Seck: calebasse, Fender Rhodes, karignan, Hammond organ, background vocals
Lansiné Kouyaté: Balafon
Habib “Dia” Sangaré: Bolon
Alou Kouloubali: calebasse
Lassy “King” Massassy: rap Vocals
Moussa Sissikho (soloist), “Petit” Adama Diarra, Cheick “Sékou” Oumar, Djifli Mamadou Sanogo: djembe
Maré Sanogo, Lamine Tounkara: doum-doum
Aly Wagué: flute
Djelimady Tounkara (soloist), Benogo Diakite (soloist), Gabriel Durand, Modibo Kouyaté, Jacob Soubeiga: guitar
Yakhoba Sissokho (soloist), Mamadou Diabaté, Cherif Samano: kora
Moriba Koïta (soloist), Bassekou Kouyate (soloist), Adama Tounkara: ngoni
“Pepito” Sekouba Kouyaté, Moussa Sissoko: tama Ramata Diakité, Oumou Sangare, Fatou, Mamani Keïta, Fatoumata Kouyaté, Kabiné Kouyaté, Amy Sacko: vocals, background vocals
Recorded August 24 – November 7, 2006, at Studio Bogolan, Bamako, Mali (except tracks 11, 12 and 13, recorded November 1-7, 2006, at Davout Studios, Paris)
Producer: Jean Marie Durand, Cheick Tidiane Seck, Dee Dee Bridgewater
Engineer: Yves Wernert, Jean-Paul Gonnod
Assistant Engineer: Aymeric Letoquart
Mixing: Jean-Paul Gonnod
Mastering: Sangwook “Sunny” Nam, Doug Sax
Photography: Philippe Pierangeli
Artwork: Jean Luc Barilla
Review:
Singer Dee Dee Bridgewater walks in with considerable credentials, including a hit list of Broadway accolades, an apprenticeship with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra and a string of acclaimed straight-ahead albums, but Red Earth: A Malian Journey trumps them all. While world-beat listeners will recognize these grooves, Bridgewater brings her own experiences as an African-American woman back to the motherland for what can only be called a fusion of feeling.
Enlisting the production talents of Cheick Tidiane Seck, the album recalls the power-pop sound of Selif Keita and the primordial blues of guitarist Ali Farke Toure, set to the heartbeats of Mali, as heard in the virtuosic kora (gourd harp) of Toumani Diabaté, the Wassoulou vocals of Oumou Sangare and various traditional instruments, including balafon (marimba), n’goni (lute), Peul flute, tamani and doum-doum (low- and high-pitched talking-drums), djembe, shakere (gourd rattle) and calebasse (gourd drum). The West is represented by Bridgewater’s working combo, covers of Mongo Santamaria’s “Afro Blue, Wayne Shorter’s “Long Time Ago, Nina Simone’s “Four Women and Gene McDaniels’ “Compared to What and the vocalist’s strong allegiance to and affinity for the great tradition of Holiday, Fitzgerald and Vaughan.
But Red Earth is a merging and melding of borders: while Bridgewater is uncannily at home scatting over “Mama Don’t Ever Go Away, doubling the fleet kora and n’goni lines on “Bad Spirits and trading choruses with vocalists Sangare, Kabine Kouyaté, Mamani Kèita and Baba Sissoko, the Malians have intuitions of their own; Fatoumata Kouyaté shows on the title track that he too can take it back to the chicken shack and Seck busts out some serious Hammond B3 chitlin’ circuitry on “Compared to What. With one foot in the funky soul of brother Horace Silver, the other in the polyrhythmic heterophony of Malian village life, Red Earth is global yet local, grounded in the commonality of human experience.
Tom Greenland (All About Jazz)
