Griot: This Is Important! (HighNote)
Jeremy Pelt
Released February 12, 2021
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2021
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mG3BfG4t5IyCyFXep7O8pzYUMxW0JIsdM
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About:
It is only natural that Jeremy Pelt’s voracious curiosity would lead him to investigate the West African Griot tradition where stories, reminiscences and accomplishments from times past are handed down as oral histories. Researchers such as Art Taylor, William Russell and Alan Lomax have preserved interviews with older jazzmen but for his Griot odyssey, Pelt turns to his own peer group to record their thoughts on creating jazz, playing jazz and experiencing the life of a jazz musician of color in our own time. Each brief interview is followed by a composition by Pelt which perfectly captures the sentiments and emotions of its spoken-word prelude. To help him bring his vision to life, Pelt has assembled a hand-picked group of colleagues, featuring vibraphonist Chien Chien Lu, pianist Victor Gould, bassist Vicente Archer, harpist Brandee Younger and others. The tunes themselves run the gamut from the remarkable mixing of the sacred and the secular in “Carry Christ Wherever You Are,” to the Monk-like gallumphing opening unison in “Don’t Dog the Source,” and the urgent, “Underdog.” As Pelt himself says, “I want people to understand that this is for everybody,” that the project was undertaken to perhaps help them “understand that whatever they might be going through, their perspectives might run parallel to those of people who are generations apart from them. Maybe, to a certain extent, these younger people will find themselves in these stories.”
Track Listing:
1. Griot (Intro) (Jeremy Pelt) 02:58
2. Words by Paul West [Spoken Commentary] (Jeremy Pelt) 00:58
3. Carry Christ Wherever You Are (Jeremy Pelt) 06:55
4. Words by Larry Willis [Spoken Commentary] (Jeremy Pelt) 00:51
5. Underdog (Jeremy Pelt) 04:35
6. Words by JD Allen [Spoken Commentary] (Jeremy Pelt) 01:02
7. Don’t Dog the Source (Jeremy Pelt) 06:54
8. Words by Bertha Hope [Spoken Commentary] (Jeremy Pelt) 00:58
9. A Seat at the Table [Music With Commentary] (Bertha Hope / Jeremy Pelt) 03:00
10. Words by Harold Mabern [Spoken Commentary] [Explicit Content] (Jeremy Pelt) 00:38
11. Solidarity (Jeremy Pelt) 05:41
12. Words by René Marie [Spoken Commentary] [Explicit Content] (Jeremy Pelt) 01:25
13. A Beautiful (F*Cking) Lie (Jeremy Pelt) 04:57
14. In Spite Of… [Music With Commentary] [Explicit Content] (Jeremy Pelt / Warren Smith) 01:17
15. Words by Ambrose Akinmusire [Spoken Commentary] (Jeremy Pelt) 01:09
16. Relevance (Jeremy Pelt) 04:44
Personnel:
Jeremy Pelt, trumpet
Chien Chien Lu: vibraphone (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 16)
Victor Gould: piano (1, 3, 5, 9, 11, 13, 16), nord keyboard (14)
Vicente Archer: bass
Allan Mednard: drums (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 16)
Ismel Wignall: percussion (1, 3, 9, 11)
Brandee Younger: harp (13)
Recorded September 14 – 15, 2020, at Van Gelder Recording Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Produced by Jeremy Pelt
Engineered and Mixed by Maureen Stickler
Mastered by Katsuhiko Naioto
Photography by Ra-Re Valverde
Graphic Design by Irem Ela Yildizeli
Review:
A companion piece to his 2021 interview book Griot: Examining the Lives of Jazz’s Great Storytellers, Griot: This Is Important! finds trumpeter Jeremy Pelt playing songs inspired by some of his most potent interviews. Here, we get intimate and thought-provoking insights from many of the artists featured in the book, including Paul West, JD Allen, Harold Mabern, Rene Marie, and others. Each conversation is accompanied by an original work from Pelt and his quintet with vibraphonist Chien Chien Lu, pianist Victor Gould, bassist Vicente Archer, and drummer Allan Mednard. Musically, these are some of the most lyrical and harmonically lush songs Pelt has recorded and work in unison with the spoken interview tracks. Some tracks, including Pelt’s own introduction to the album, as well as his conversation with pianist Bertha Hope, find him underscoring the words with music. Elsewhere, he presents the conversations on their own without musical accompaniment and then follows with an instrumental track. Many of these conversations delve into issues of racial and cultural identity, and Pelt’s music is fittingly nuanced. Often his songs reflect the subject matter of the interview, as on “Carry Christ Wherever You Are,” which follows his conversation with bassist Paul West discussing his Lutheran minister father. Similarly, Pelt’s “A Beautiful (F*cking) Lie” follows his interview with vocalist René Marie discussing her dissonant feelings surrounding her identity as a black American. While Pelt’s music certainly stands on its own, the interviews included on Griot: This Is Important! help to frame the deep sense of community and tradition that inspired it.
Matt Collar (AllMusic)
