Ta ka di mi

I missed Sandy Evans and band in concert the night before, but I did make their workshop on the Saturday. They introduced the session with an intriguing tune, Robben Island, a response to the South African apartheid movement and its personalities. We heard of its structure as mixing passages of 9/8 and 4/4 and use of transpositions against the Bobby Singh's tabla tuned in C; bassist Brett plays ostinatos on 3 chords, all including C#; Sandy solos on an unusual pentatonic of 1-b3-#4-5-7. Then on to hear of the band, how they work together, an introduction to the tabla and a paean on commitment to craft and a simple introduction to vocalised Northern Indian rhythms (Ta ka di mi, etc; each vocal tone is a type of tabla hit with consistent patterns underlying group improvisations) which we sang along to. These rhythms are commonly 7-9-11-13 ... 21 but can reach to 108(?) and a tabla player must hit the 1 with a "full stop" to precede that. We mused over differences from Western polyrhythms (multiple rhythms played concurrently; this Indian technique is a single, if complex, line), over approaches to composition, over differences between electric and acoustic bass (not least the calluses), how the band collaborates and creates together, and more. Then an opportunity for attendees to play. I had to go so missed that. The session was sadly short and I had too many questions and these are such informed and thoughtful players. What a pleasure and an opportunity. Thanks to Sandy and offsiders but also to the ANU Open School of Music for making this available.

Sandy Evans (tenor), Bobby Singh (tabla), Brett Hirst (bass) and Toby Hall (drums) presented a workshop at the Ainslie Arts Centre.

Java has history

Java Quartet have a history. Twenty years and seven albums and counting. They appeared at Smiths last week for the launch of their latest album, Together. Interestingly, last time I heard them was for the launch of their sixth album. The gig was the album, plus an encore or two, played in order. Starting gently as a quartet with The Hill song, a gentle groove with intense solos. That was the way with the outing. It's laid back, meditative; the grooves are unhurried. Solos grow organically from a limpid presence of relaxed bass and minimal, repeating melodic phrases. But there's development and power that appears with inevitability in solos. Greg's piano blisters with lengthy but tightly built scalar phrases that move through various dissonances. Matt is more open and his lines have bigger intervals, but there's a similar expansive modernity about it. I was trying to place bother these two and it's somewhere in the sixties. Mike's solos are more restrained, unfussy. The percussionists each take their features, and the blend of drums and tabla gives a rich undercurrent of rhythmic movement and colour. Tablas sing with absurdly quick tika and it was a pleasure to see up close how this is done. Bobby's not a core member of the quartet but features on this album and is a frequent collaborator. His hands blur as he lays down some of the quicker passages, of fingers flash to tap the different tones. It's a different sense of rhythm, expressed in vocalisations, too, and it was such pleasure with Mike's sympathetic drumming. I liked his solos, too. Morganics came on in the second set for a few DJ raps. They were pleasantly political, too; one about asylum seekers; one about Aboriginal land; another just about Canberra. It was claimed as freestyle but it seemed just too clever for an improv. I am a novice in such poetry, though, so I guess it was. If so, I am impressed. It turns out that Morganics has a Canberra connection too, so he may have been reasonably acquainted with his topic. Certainly, it was local. So, this was laid back in presentation but intense in release; nicely modern in jazz and ethnic in percussive colour and contemporary in vocal lyricism. Something old; something borrowed; something new.

Java Quartet are Michael Galeazzi (bass), Matthew Ottignon (tenor), Greg Coffin (piano) and Mike Quigley (drums). One their new album, Together, and at this gig, they added guests Bobby Singh (tabla) and MC Morganics (vocals)

Seeing the gig the same

Michael Galeazzi of the Java Quartet was telling me of a mate and PhD studies in music. He was investigating how different performers in a band see the same gig in different ways. It’s an interesting study, and I guess any highly trained performance art person must have experienced it. Jazz can be quite an emotional roller-coaster, but it’s part of the commitment and fascination and seriousness of it all. The time the band was in accord, after this Java Quartet gig at the University of Canberra, as was the audience. This was a great gig. Michael was up front, happy and joking and enjoying every minute. The percussion section (here I include the beatboxer along with the more obvious drums and tabla) were throwing challenges back and forth and revelling in the different sounds and styles of each of their instruments. Greg on piano and Matthew on tenor were laconic and cool but their blissful interplay said it all. This was the first gig of the tour to launch the Java Quartet’s new CD, Rejavanation, and the quartet was accompanied by two of its CD guests, Morganics on beatbox and freestyle rap, and Bobby Singh on tabla. It’s something I like, this fertile, cross-cultural experiment. It worked a treat and the band’s response just confirmed it.

I wondered if rejavanation hinted at rejuvenation, because there were a series of tunes from older JQ CDs that had been reimagined for the new CD and this concert. The album cover describes each tune by a style: trance, ambient dub, boom bap, etc.. The CD’s press release explains the music as a component of Michael’s Master studies at the Sydney Con, exploring “notions of hybridity through contemporary hypnotic landscapes” through the “meditative aesthetics of contemporary dj/dance culture and Hindustani ragas”. Intriguing and different, interesting beyond the jazz field, and obviously entertaining for the band. Because getting back to the band, they were having a great time.

Firstly I noticed the wonderful rhythmic feels. Drummer Mike was intense at surprisingly low volumes, then letting go at the end with double kick pedal; fabulous interplays between the complex tika-tak of the tabla and jazz drums and even vocal percussion; the way the beat squared up for the beatboxing from the more swung jazz segments. Then the simple, repeating melodies accompanied by moving chordal harmonies or echoing piano lines and the rippling piano and fluttering tenor bursting into full blown sax solos over intense and busy grooves. And the frequent bass solos on a Whitehead SASE that were sharp and edgy, but surprisingly deep in the recording I made on the night. Not at all strict jazz, but obviously jazz informed, and one branch of where it’s heading as it touches on other valid forms. Solos that just appeared from a band that has played together for years, and shows an unspoken interplay. There was even a ballad in there, a deeply felt, sparse thing of synth swells then sax then a touch of percussion. The whole was structurally and chordally simple, but subtly mobile and with an underlying percussive intensity. And it was even political, perhaps more validly than the current election. I missed most of the rap lines, but caught a few that spoke of Brisvegas: “Visions, valleys, concrete”; and refugees: “sometimes / we find / that time”, “sometimes / the best form of attack / is defence” and then a rap in 15 languages.

It was an intriguing jazz for a modern ear, and a mix of styles for a modern world. Great stuff. And very much enjoyed by performers and audience. The Java Quartet are Michael Galeazzi (acoustic bass), Greg Coffin (piano), Matthew Ottignon (tenor sax) and Mike Quigley (drums). Their guests were Bobby Singh (tabla) and Morganics (beatboxing, freestyling).

Subcontinental citizens

Citizens of Earth played at the Gods this week and it was a very different, very worldly set of sounds that we heard. CoE present a fusion crossover of Indian and jazz sounds: the complex flowing hand-drum rhythms of the tablas, the strangely-structured scales (for my ears) of Indian classical vocals and the floating sound of the sitar merged with Western alto clarinet (itself none too common), saxes, bass and drums. I was intrigued and enchanted, especially by the Indian classical music that got a few outings. Friends with some experience in this art had talked of its complexities and richness. We’ve all heard some and perhaps not taken too much notice, but the strangely spaced scales of the voice, its parallel in the sitar, and the richness of the tablas rhythms had me following every note. You could hear and sing the rhythms and patterns of tabla as his finger and hands pounded with all manner of taps and hits. You could feel the guitar-like nature of the sitar as he tuned up, but the intervals were other-wordly (or other-cultural). And the voice subsumed this all, with those odd scales and trill-like inflections. There was one solo where drums and tablas swapped passages, and I found myself stunned by the comparative richness of the tablas: they seemed to speak gently and truly, where the drums were similarly busy and expressive but relatively inelegant. Not the drumming itself, which was very capable, but the Western instrument was by nature less intimate: perhaps more swinging but less sensual (there must be a drummer joke in here somewhere). There was some good, steady bass, and a nicely simple but perfectly intoned solo that ended with chuckles after a lengthy faster passage. There were two woodwinds, Sandy on soprano or tenor sax, and Tony on alto clarinet. They were different tones, but I felt a similar approach in their solos: intellectual, diatonically exploratory, solid, uncompromising, although Tony did verge on emotive squeals in a duo he led. The tunes were mostly by members of the band with a few non-originals, but all were clearly in an Indo-fusion or -classical style. There were memories to me of John McLaughlin’s Shakti era, and someone else mentioned George Harrison and Revolver (presumably for the sitar tones; the Beatles wrote some tunes with slightly odd intervals but nothing so sophisticated or damn fast). There were lots of devilishly fast and complex and interrupted melodies played in unison by several instruments and voice and drums, with those modulating tabla rhythms underlying it all. The tabla, with grooves that were obviously Indian but perfectly understandable (for this read countable, and eminently singable, “dug dugga-dugga dugga-dugga dug”) to Westerners, less foreign than the intervals and scales. I noticed finger snaps that sat on 1-3 in place of a jazz 2-4, but the rhythm made sense to me. So my impression was of a wonderfully rich experience, some good crossover, but especially a memorable exposure to another set of artistic sensibilities in the Indian classical tradition. Much enjoyed and will be well remembered.

Sandy Evans (soprano, tenor saxophones) led Citizens of Earth with Sarangan Sriranganathan (sitar, vocals), Tony Gorman (clarinet), Ben Walsh (percussion), Bobby Singh (tabla) and Steve Elphick (bass).

Fringe dabber didj

The Multicultural festival is here again, and there are a few artists I’m hoping to catch up with. Last night, I managed two at the Fringe Festival marquee in Civic Square: Circle of Fire and Tjupurru.

The Fringe is a good place to see most of the visiting acts. It’s stylishly bohemian although it attracts all types, it’s free, and you have plenty of space and tent openings to move around, change your view, dance, chat, or just mill about. There’s seating too: tables and couches like a comfy lounge room, although I noticed the carpet was a bit squishy after recent rains. And it’s free. A nice combination. There are events on at the Fringe tent each evening for the next two weeks, from 7pm to late. See the program of acts at the Multicultural Festival’s site.

Circle of Fire are three drummers: tabla, western kit (although not always played with standard technique) and mixed percussion. The players are Greg Sheehan, Bobby Singh and Ben Walsh (I’m not sure who’s who). This was rhythmic set, as you’d imagine. The call for quiet for a tabla feature, in recognition of his years of training, was rather twee in this festival environment, and the finale of two players alternating on western kit was showy, but it went over well as a performance. The show was popular, there were lots of dancers, and the rhythms were genuinely complex and interesting, although not hypnotic. The venue didn’t really lend itself to hypnotics, anyway.

During and between the music sets we were presented with a performance art show of slowly moving bodies under colourful lighting. It certainly added more interest than the canvas curtain walls, and made for mobile and colourful surroundings. I understood this group was called Writer in a Box.

Tjupurru followed with a set of modern, Aboriginal music, at least I guess that’s what it was. He essentially performed a one-man-band set with that mesmeric combination of didgeridoo and voice, but this had a very modern twist. The traditional was there with a self-confident Aboriginal pride and respect for the traditional owners of the land, but there was also a very modern black awareness. The didj was a slide instrument, it was wireless miked and amplified along with his voice, the richness of the corroborree was created by layering voice and didj with digital loops. This was the past brought into the present: a fascinating performance and pleasingly and genuinely Australia. And to confirm the Aboriginal pride, there was a good deal of politics, too: well received by the audience, and well matched to this time of Sorry saying and the hope that comes with a new government.

Good music all round, and near enough for jazz.

National Multicultural Festival