Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

Recently going through a drawer filled with cassettes, I found one containing KPFA?s broadcast of the first gig by Angela Wellman & New Roots at the 2002 Vallejo Jazz Festival. I had been listening to the festival?s music on my car radio before Ms. Wellman?s band began playing; once home, I grabbed a blank tape and recorded her band?s set. This cassette has become one of my treasures: it is a band full of great musical ideas and support for each other?s efforts, playing a set of standards, originals, instrumentals, vocals, and spoken word. And Babatunde Lea on drums.

The cassette begins with Wellman introducing its first song over the piano?s D-D-C-C-A riff that serves as the tune?s primary theme. ?This,? she states, ?is a piece you?ll find on Babatunde?s Ubiquity Records release. It?s titled ?Back On Track.? I?m the composer of it. We hope you enjoy it.? Enjoy it? I LOVED it, especially Wellman?s witty trombone solo, which maintained high levels of passion and creativity from start to finish, quoted briefly from both ?The Last Time I Saw Jeanine? and the main theme from ?Peter And The Wolf? (Prokofiev, not the singer in the J. Geils Band), and even threw in some vocalize-in-the-mouthpiece multiphonics, similar to the technique used to great effect by the German trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff. The rest of the set was every bit as good. This band never got ?back on track? because they stayed on track and ROLLED.

I was interested in hearing more from this band. I wound up finding the CD she had mentioned in her introduction, March of the Jazz Guerrillas by Babatunde Lea, at Vallejo?s JFK Library. This CD was released in 2000; it remains an excellent collection of mainstream and Latin jazz, beginning with the title track, which is based upon a riff using the first four bars of the uncredited Nat Adderly and Oscar Brand, Jr.?s ?Work Song.? This piece is more of a six-minute victory lap than a march and it sets the tone for everything that follows. Wellman?s ?Back On Track? is every bit as inspired as the version from the Vallejo Jazz Festival, minus the Prokofiev quote.

Kahlil Shaheed, whose work on flugelhorn has been mentioned in a previous L&BH CD review (?Chromatology? by UpSurge!; see the CD review archives per the 4/26/06 issue), delivers another wonderful solo on ?Na Iwosan (The Healing),? this time on trumpet. Shaheed, Wellman, and Richard Howell on tenor sax create some killer horn section parts. They play really BIG here, and Howell is a major force from song to song, not only while soloing, but also while singing on ?The Creator Has A Master Plan? and ?Nature Boy.? Hilton Ruiz, as always, gives the listener the history of jazz piano on this CD. His playing is engaging and surprising. ?Engaging? is also the word to use in describing Alex Blake?s work on bass. He is so much a part of the reason why this music succeeds. He is like the point guard on a basketball team, aware of where the music is going, complimenting everyone?s playing. If music was like basketball, he would have been given an assist after most of the solos on this recording.

As for the drums and percussion, Lea is joined by Bill Summers, Munyungo Jackson, and David Frazier. Howell even contributes some talking drum parts on the title track. Like master chefs, they control the music?s level of flame on the burner: these songs simmer, boil, and heat up in a hurry. Most importantly, they have a great sense of dynamics. This CD is not a showcase of percussion-as-bombast, but as both pulse and foundation.

Most of the names on March of the Jazz Guerrillas are probably unfamiliar to most listeners, but spend some time with its music and you will want to hear more from all of them.

For ordering and additional information, visit www.ubiquityrecords.com, your favorite record store, or JFK Library, located at 505 Santa Clara Street in Vallejo. MARCH!

Babatunde Lea will be returning to the Listen & Be Heard Poetry Caf? stage on Saturday, August 12 from 9pm-Midnight.

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