Barracoon (album)
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| Studio album by JD Allen | ||||
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| Label (s) | Savant Records | |||
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CD, download |
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Title (number) |
10 |
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Studio (s) |
Astoria, NY |
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Barracoon (1619–2019) is a jazz album by saxophonist JD Allen . The recordings were made on January 16, 2019 in Astoria, New York and were released in mid-2019 on the Savant Records label.
background
Barracoon was created during a trio recording session by JD Allens with two young talents, drummer Nic Cacioppo and bassist Ian Kenselaar , who plays both double bass and electric bass. The album title Barracoon refers to a barracks in which slaves were imprisoned and is the title of a long-lost book by Zora Neale Hurston , which did not find a publisher in 1931, was published in full in 2003 and in full only in 2018 and based on the stories of Cudjoe Kazoola Lewis about his 1860 journey with a slave ship to the USA. The title of the piece "The Immortal (H. Lacks)" refers to Henrietta Lacks , an African American woman whose cancer cells became the "immortal" HeLa cells in the 1950s without her consent , which are still profitable in medicine today Research are used. The subtitle 1619-2019 refers to the 400th anniversary of the day when the first 20 black slaves arrived on a Dutch ship in Jamestown, Virginia, and the Atlantic slave trade reached the North American continent.
Track list
- JD Allen: Barracoon (Savant SCD2177)
- Barracoon
- G Sus
- The Goldilocks Zone
- The Immortal (H. Lacks)
- 13
- Beyond the Goldilocks Zone
- Communion
- EYE Scream
- Ursa Major
- When You Wish upon a Star ( Leigh Harline , Ned Washington )
- All other compositions are by JD Allen.
reception
If only there were more political albums like Allen's Barracoon , Chris Pearson in The Times wished . “It was inspired by the 400th anniversary of the arrival of slaves in the US and our current unrest. Although the American tenor saxophonist would prefer that we use his pointedly titled melodies as a stimulus for further study, it's okay if we don't. It's a smart move: because the music is just as important as the message, it is more likely to be conveyed. ” Andrian Kreye ( Süddeutsche Zeitung ) ranks the album among the ten best albums of 2019; For the 46-year-old tenor saxophonist from Detroit, “his new trio with two musicians who are half his age is a new departure. And because the album is inspired by Zora Neale Hurston's book from 1927, the aggressive muscling also takes on a political context. "
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Photograph by William P. Gottlieb . Hawkins is considered the "father" of tenor saxophone playing
According to Ken Micallef ( JazzTimes ), Barracoon , Allen's 13th publication, follows a simple scheme: the tenor saxophonist presents a simple melody, which is then deconstructed by him and a rhythm section made up of drummer Nic Cacioppo and bassist Ian Kenselaar: “It's a traditional approach with untraditional results. Although Allen is a classic player in the style of Coleman Hawkins , Sonny Rollins and Ben Webster , he never settles on this sacred ground. ”The author sees further historical references in John Coltrane's music in the impressions phase and the softer formal language of Frank Lowe and Archie Shepp .
Eric Snider (Jazziz) noted, “Allen's massive tenor tone sounds like it's plowed from dark, loamy soil. Deep and beefy, as if measured with a rasp, interrupted by rattling, low horns and fleeting screams, it has an innate connection to the blues . ”The attraction of Allen's sound takes Barracoon far, the author continued, but it cannot quite close the deal Graduation. The ten pieces, all but one of the original Allen compositions, were based largely on simple melodic phrases , which is a welcome departure from the purposeful complexity heard in so many contemporary jazz compositions. But the motifs become redundant, which over time has a numbing effect. Similarly, Allen's improvisational paths tended to follow similar paths. A kind of stasis set in. An additional soloist - piano, guitar, another wind instrument - might have helped, notes Snider critically.
In contrast, Mackenzie Horne gave the album the highest score of five stars in All About Jazz and praised: “ To call Barracoon a great record would leave the wrong impression - even though it is actually a fantastic record. It would be humiliating to call it just a great example of post-bop production. This record is more important than that; this is not only important for Allen's artistic development, but also contributes to a larger historical framework. Barracoon frames Allen as a leader, storyteller and historian. "Everyone treats its content with love and disarming respect, wrote Horne; the record is a celebration of black persistence, with themes and titles that point to Zora Neale Hurston, Cudjo Lewis , Henrietta Lacks and the great tenor saxophonists who preceded them all.
JD Considine mentions in Down Beat that Allen had let listeners know in his liner notes that part of what was on the album reflected the saxophonist's reaction to the "political climate (around the world)," and According to the author, it is not difficult to establish a connection between the rushing emotions of the theme song and actual slave life, recounted in Zora Neale Hurston's anthropological study Barracoon , the story of the last “Black Cargo”. To his credit, however, most of Allen's titles aren't that obvious, leaving it up to the listener to decipher the emotional narrative.
Web links
- Listing of the album on Allmusic (English). Retrieved January 13, 2020.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Ken Micallef: JD Allen :. JazzTimes, August 1, 2019, accessed January 13, 2020 .
- ^ A b Mackenzie Horne: JD Allen :. All AboutJazz, September 13, 2019, accessed January 13, 2020 .
- ↑ Dealing with HeLa cells: Henrietta's legacy. In: Der Tagesspiegel . September 8, 2013, accessed January 14, 2020 .
- ↑ JD Allen: Barracoon at Discogs
- ↑ Chris Pearson: JD Allen: Barracoon review - accessible postbop with a message. The Times, July 28, 2019, accessed January 12, 2020 .
- ^ Andrian Kreye: The ten best albums. Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 6, 2019, accessed on January 7, 2020 (English).
- ↑ Eric Snider: JD Allen: Barracoon. Jazziz, September 1, 2019, accessed January 7, 2020 .
- ↑ JD Considine: JD Allen: Barracoon. Down Beat, September 1, 2019, accessed January 12, 2020 .