The new year isn’t new anymore, so there goes that angle of my tying into a kind of transition point with which to frame these reviews. So simply regard them as a few streams of music I’ve enjoyably floated down lately.
Dependable bringers of healing sounds, The Afro-Semitic Experience seek the breaking down of barriers all over, not merely those associated with the cultural bonds of the band’s name. Our Feet Began to Pray (Reckless DC Music, 2024) is two superb discs worth of their signature blend of jazz fusion and divine leanings joined with grooves that can be driving or laid back, depending on how the spirit moves ’em.
Pianist/vocalist Warren Byrd and bassist/vocalist David Chevan are the founders and main architects of the ASE sound, in which shared pasts musically transform into hopes for brighter futures.
Opening track “Unity in the Community” is a joyous fist-raiser that’ll lay good vibes on a crowd as well as any call-and-response anthem of its ilk (perhaps better), but immediately firing up the masses is by no means the sole order of the day. After all, the album’s title references journeys made on foot, which can take time. So the tracks include pieces that swing wordlessly yet are just as articulate as those that speak to the heart, with lyrics referencing contemporary ills and historical punches with equal relevance. The varied intricacies of the music are likewise a journey, with spirituals leading into and out of layered jams and inspired solos that join the African and Jewish diasporas in arguably the most important aspect of all: That of music.
I mentioned one of their songs in the single reviews’ column, but I wouldn’t be worth my salt if I didn’t also note the entire glory of Vento Do Mar (Mundus Productions, 2023), the debut album by Cacha Mundinho. A four-piece band that makes an impressive web of sound for being a mere four pieces, they’re led by Joana Almeida, a guitarist, vocalist, lyricist, and composer who’s enchantingly great at every one of the above. She relocated from her native Portugal to Amsterdam, recruited Maripepa Contreras (oboe, duduk, English Horn), Sjahin During (percussion) and Pedro Ivo Ferreira (double bass), and in so doing put together an ensemble that’s created a first album richly superb in all respects.
Moving with precise musical grace through shades of fado, a few sides of Brazil, other choice spots in the Lusophone world, flamenco, North Africa, the Middle East and India with intricacies learned from globally-applied jazz, this outfit spellbinds straight out of the gate. But no matter how complex the music, the intimate singer/songwriter at the core of it is never far away. If I had to choose a favorite long player of 2023 (I’m thinking maybe some editions date earlier), this might well be it.
A South African who migrated to Israel, bassist and composer Yosef Gutman Levitt leads an acoustic quartet that includes piano, guitar, and cello on The World and Its People (Soul Song Records, 2023). The 11 instrumental pieces have titles that bespeak the spirituality of Jewish tradition (“B’nei Heichala, “David’s Harp,” etc.) and are played with the delicate precision of classical chamber music. Even so, they have enough muscle to fully engage from a rhythmic standpoint as well as a melodic one. Beautiful stuff. Listen and let your mind drift off to some very heavenly spaces.
The Barcelona birthplace of singer and instrumentalist Carola Ortiz was no doubt an ideal entry point for exploration, leading to her four albums’ worth of intricate music, including the latest, Cantareras (Segell Microscopi, 2023).
Her multi-moods voice winds through wondrous combinations of Iberian traditions with jazz turns, medievally charged melodies reaching eastward for inspiration, percolating percussion, occasional electronic sprinkling and unexpected turns at, well, every turn.
Lyrically, the songs are about women’s issues past, present and longstanding, but no translations are needed to appreciate this splendidly constructed disc that’s over much too soon.
An exquisite meeting point of folkloric, classical, and jazz is sustained throughout Aire (Sunnyside Records, 2023) by Mexican singer and songwriter Magos Herrera. Her breathy, ever-in-the-moment vocals are flawless in Spanish, English, and Portuguese.
The dozen tracks here blend her own compositions with crystalline covers of other landmark songs from Latin America. It’s a beauty of an outing from start to finish, and any album that ends with a tribute to a shaman is more than okay by me.
Looking to the future, keep a fix on April 26, release date for Once We Had a Home (Toy Gun Murder, 2024), a collection of songs recorded inside the Bangladeshi refugee camp that barely accommodates a million or so Rohingya Muslims escaping genocide-level oppression in neighboring Myanmar.
Noted music producer Ian Brennan was allowed access to the camp in order to record music by some of the most marginalized people on the planet. That the captured result is simple acoustic fare fired by indomitable spirit comes as no surprise.
A mandolin and DIY percussion accompany melodically wailing male voices that sing, understandably, of the horrors that brought them to where they are and the cruelty of those who forced them there. But wait. A few mood-lifting love songs are in the rustic mix as well, and the singers manage to make such songs sound equally urgent in their response to adversity.
A brief nine tracks, the album nonetheless goes a long way toward putting the listener right in the heart of things. I’d say it’s essential listening, and it pains me to criticize any aspect of it, but I do wish that the Rohingya had put aside the outdated religious customs that precluded women from participating in these songs.
Author: Tom Orr
Tom Orr is a California-based writer whose talent and mental stability are of an equally questionable nature. His hobbies include ignoring trends, striking dramatic poses in front of his ever-tolerant wife and watching helplessly as his kids surpass him in all desirable traits.