Carib (Ropeadope)
David Sánchez
Released June 2019
Grammy Nominee for Best Latin Jazz Album 2020
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_n9DF-JfxfStpC2Qu5bTbGRNQA7biUcJ58
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/3AVGFHZfppICGSb74721jY?si=XHdggXiLTHiTvtU3TS77fA
About:
The African diaspora throughout the Americas feels to
me like a big river, flowing and changing its formation across various lands,
but remaining one immense watercourse. Carib is my continuation of that river,
a personal and musical stream I began when I became bandleader for my first
album, The Departure (1994) where you can clearly hear Puerto Rican rhythms
running throughout. Another fork, my album Melaza (2000), has the most
substantial connection with Carib because of its flow and the strong influence
of the bomba music tradition from Puerto Rico. I believe some of the greatest
contributions to contemporary music and culture have come from the African
diaspora throughout the Americas. Unfortunately, there seems to be too little
awareness of their influence, especially the vital stories told by the music.
So, I wanted to approach this album as a means to pay tribute to all Afro
descendent communities who have helped define my music and the culture’s broad
ranging beauty and idiosyncrasies. It’s striking, and it hurts me to see
the marginalization and poor sociological conditions in so many Pan African
communities, which are wrongly viewed as a simple, normal circumstance of life
and consequently receive a lack of attention and action to change those
conditions, and systems, which continue to create inequity. This recording is
part of a new series of my recordings which begins with all original pieces
inspired by the musical traditions of Puerto Rico and Haiti, then travels to
other Afro descendent musical traditions throughout the Americas.Carib features
traditional music from these two islands, because it still amazes me how
similar their music flows. I focused on the Congo-Guinee in Haitian music
because it is a musical tradition shared by many other Afro descendant
cultures. Haiti has an amazing and resonant history, filled with struggles;
foreign occupations, revolution, independence, national disasters, embargos,
long stretches of isolation, which, at times, both created a cultural vacuum in
the country and also circumstances to preserve the core of many traditions
coming from Africa. Some of Haiti’s struggles, reminds me of my own island. A
long time oppression created by colonists has played a central part in Puerto
Rico’s culture too. And after the devastation hurricane María wreaked on my
island, I saw more parallels with Haiti aftermath from their tragic earthquake
in 2010. Furthermore, for over a century, both islands have had their economy
systematically crippled in a diversity of ways. In reality, Puerto Rico has
always been a property, a casualty of imperialism, and the island has too long
been in a one-sided economic relationship in which the priority has never been
the well-being of country’s people. Yet the cultural identity feels very strong
and omnipresent despite all the struggles colonialism usually brings, and
ultimately it’s a genuine testament to the irrepressible people of Puerto Rico.
This album is in memory of my Father, Dimas and especially, my late wife Karla.
After a great deal of research and listening to Haitian music, Karla encouraged
and helped me take a trip to Haiti. It was an incredible and intense
experience, seeing the everyday people’s struggles. She felt like it was important
that I had this direct contact with Haitian culture. I feel like this recording
wouldn’t have been possible without her wisdom, sensibility and love. Even if
she wasn’t physically around when I was in the studio, she was constantly
present in many different forms and definitely a key component in the album’s
vibe. Although it has been a long three years of family health challenges and
loss, I’m grateful because I found the strength to finalize a project that
reaches my soul. Even if sometimes I don’t fully understand experiences in the
process of life, past or present ones, I’m thankful because they all are a part
of who I am and therefore will remain always in my heart.
Sinceramente
David
Track Listing:
1. Morning Mist 07:46
2. Wave Under Silk 07:21
3. Madigra 07:09
4. Fernando’s Theme 03:58
5. Mirage 07:43
6. Prelude to Canto 01:18
7. Canto 05:59
8. The Land of Hills 07:21
9. Iwa (Contemplation) 02:26
10. Iwa (Spirit going back home) 06:16
11. A Thousand Yesterdays 07:41
Personnel:
David Sanchez: saxophone, barril de bomba, percussion, vocals
Lage Lund: guitar
Luis Perdomo: piano and Fender Rhodes
Ricky Rodriguez: bass, electric bass
Obed Calvaire: drums, vocals
Jhan Lee Aponte: percussion and bomba barril
Markus Schwartz: Haitian percussion
Recorded December 19, 20 and 21, at Systems Two
Produced by David Sánchez and Robert Mailer Anderson
Recorded and Mastered by Mike Marciano
Review:
The words “profoundly beautiful” are often used to describe works of art, but often some works appear to give new meaning to those words – like the music on this album Carib by David Sánchez, for example. The album comes two and a half decades after his recording debut, The Departure (Sony/Legacy). Granted that an artist often dips his biographical brush into much of what he does – or at least casts his mind back to what forms experiential content – but Carib does this in a much more thoughtful – even philosophical – manner. Themes and content meld seamlessly on this repertoire as a result and driven by the naturally meditative sincerity with which Mr Sánchez presents his art always, means that every note you will hear out of his horn ripens and swells with the kind of gravitas before it is propelled into the atmosphere from the bell of his burnished instrument.
The words “profoundly beautiful” are often used to describe works of art, but often some works appear to give new meaning to those words – like the music on this album Carib by David Sánchez, for example. The album comes two and a half decades after his recording debut, The Departure (Sony/Legacy). Granted that an artist often dips his biographical brush into much of what he does – or at least casts his mind back to what forms experiential content – but Carib does this in a much more thoughtful – even philosophical – manner. Themes and content meld seamlessly on this repertoire as a result and driven by the naturally meditative sincerity with which Mr Sánchez presents his art always, means that every note you will hear out of his horn ripens and swells with the kind of gravitas before it is propelled into the atmosphere from the bell of his burnished instrument.
This kind of musicianship is associated with artists who are completely comfortable with the instrument they play, having gone to battle with it all of their adult lives. But using it to describe something as elemental as the rhythm with which your blood courses through your veins is quite another matter. This is where the music of Carib comes from and the majesty with which it has been conceived of and executed is breathtaking to behold. It is characterised by deep and dense colours pronounced in the deep and dense context of the African soundscape experienced through the filter of the line drawn between Puerto Rico, Haiti and Jazz, and moulded into an artifice comprising of plump melodies and harmonies rocked by Obed Calvaire‘s drum-set and the thundrous barril de bomba and other rousing percussion unique to the area, played magnificently by Jhan Lee Aponte and Markus Schwartz. Of course, Mr Sánchez has also enlisted several other members of the finest musical community playing today, all of whom are also completely attuned to his singular vision and artistry which is often couched in the soft meditative conversations of Lage Lund‘s guitar and Luis Perdomo‘s piano mediated by Mr Sánchez’s tenor saxophone.
There is also this: Many musicians of that cultural ethos (and others too) might use instruments to appropriate that feeling to express their stories. But what makes this experience quite simply singular; so utterly unique are the tonal colours that Mr Sánchez is able to drive his lungs and other parts of his body – including, of course, heart and mind – to translate into music. Which is how a song like “Morning Mist” of “The Land of Hills” becomes not simply a morning mist or land of hills, but the “Morning Mist and “Land of Hills” unique to Mr Sánchez’s soundscape and – in this case landscape – of Carib. That is, of course, not where it ends for all of this comes with as a windfall: the absolutely magical manner in which Mr Sánchez delivers all of this to you often pausing after a particular phrase that he has suddenly punctuated by a brief moment of dancing silence, as if he wants you, the listener, to savour the musical moment just as he did playing it for you.
How privileged we are then to be allowed to gain entry into Mr Sánchez’s world which may be public as in the landscape he describes and that everyone can see – as in “The Land of Hills” – and in the edifying music of “Iwa (contemplation and spirit of going back home)”, both of which have been culled from the cultural topography that is part of the DNA of the African Diaspora, dispersed over centuries, but also in the interior landscape of the mind which is revealed in the ethereal beauty of “Wave Under Silk”, “Madigra” and “Fernando’s Theme” as well as in “Mirage”, the cinematic “Prelude to Canto” and “Canto” and most compellingly in “A Thousand Yesterdays”, a song filled with glinting lights, mysterious depths, expectations, frustrations, hopes and joys. In short this is an album in which for sheer colour and variety, in the depth of its characterisation and the exceptional range and variety of musicianship Mr Sánchez imparts a power and stature to music in a manner that very few musicians of his generation have achieved.
Raul Da Gama (Latin Jazz Network)
