Iraqi Jazz Fusion!

by Anthony Medici in Concert Reviews, Musician Reviews, Reviews, bands to watch

So, are you into Iraqi jazz fusion yet?  Or maybe you never heard of it?  I had a chance to listen to it last night (Saturday, Feb 7) at the Smithsonian’s Freer Museum Meyer Auditorium, in a performance by Amir El Saffar’s Two River Ensemble, with El Saffar on trumpet, santur, and voice, Rudresh Mahanthappa on alto sax, Nasheet Waits, drums, Carlos De Rosa, bass, and Jason Adasiewicz, vibraphone.  The place was packed– and your intrepid blogger was almost shut out.

Although the concert was free, a ticket was necessary for admission.  I had, for a variety of reasons, neglected to obtain an advance ticket from Ticketmaster (one pays only the service fee).  After all, who thought that ElSaffar and Iraqi jazz fusion, would be a tough ticket to get?  Imagine my dismay when I showed up an hour before the 7:30 concert for the free ticket distribution, to find an immense but orderly line of folks with the same idea. 

We were given waiting list numbered tickets and told we would have to wait until the Ticketmaster holders were seated; the remaining seats would then be issued.  I drew the #52 ticket on the waiting list.  My chances looked bleak, and I thought of heading home to the comforts of my own CD player.  Instead, motivated in part by Art, in part by the Blog, and maybe, just maybe, by the many lovely Iraqi, Kuwaiti, and other Middle Eastern women present, I decided to stick around (strike all your notions of Islamic fundamentalists; this was a hip, urban, cosmopolitan crowd, as are many, if not most, of the Iraqis I’ve encountered in the sizable expat community around DC).  I struck up a conversation with some waiting for admittance.  There were two distinct audiences:  Iraqis who came out to hear one of their own in a major performance (the Smithsonian cachet is still golden), and jazz fans curious to catch a new breed of jazz and to witness  a rising star in Mahanthappa.  My anecdotal evidence suggests there was only a bit of overlap between the two groups.  I thought this would make for an interesting concert experience. 

Some nice person asked if I wanted a lower number and slipped me #45 on the waiting list.  That was cool.  Even cooler was when someone asked me if I wanted a lower number and slipped me a #36 ticket.  Things were looking up and at 7:30, I got in!  In fact, I ended up with a nice seat about four rows from the front.  The band started off hot, with everyone wailing on their instruments.  The rest of the concert almost took the form of a suite, with hardly any absolute breaks in the music.  I believe the “two rivers” part of the title is more than poetic license.  Of course, it suggests the Iraqi traditional music current, and the American-Western jazz current, but I think it also indicates the “flow” of the music, with one musical idea moving into the next in an open manner.  When the streams converged, they reminded me at times of the music one finds on such Andrew Hill albums as “Compulsion” with Freddie Hubbard and John Gilmore on the front line, or “Grass Roots,” with Lee Morgan and Booker Ervin (and with Freddie Waits, Nasheet’s dad, on drums).  I’m not sure how big a hit this was with the Iraqi part of the audience, but I dug it. 

At other times, El Saffar took it into a distrinctly Iraqi/Middle Eastern mode, playing the santur, which Wikipedia describes as a hammered dulcimer of Iran, a trapezoid-shaped box often made of walnut, with 72 strings, that has also been played in Iraq for centuries.  El Saffar , balding and bearded, and with a passing resemblance to Salman Rushdie, also sang what I took to be Iraqi folk songs, while the rest of the band mostly laid out.  I respected and enjoyed this part of the performance, but probably not in the same way or to the same degree as the Iraqi members of the audience, nor could I say how successful El Saffar’s santur playing and vocals were from a traditional perspective.  

There has been a good bit of hype around Mahanthappa lately, mostly surrounding his new CD, “Kinsmen,” which integrates Indian and South Asian modalities with jazz, much the same way El Saffar has attempted with Iraqi and Middle Eastern music.    Since I have not had a chance to fully audition “Kinsmen,” I will not take the comparison further, but Mahanthappa’s alto playing is the real thing.  I can almost see a Blue Note deal in his future. 

Nasheet Waits is one of the top drummers in jazz today, and he is certainly one of the loudest, a trait that I don’t always find so appealing.  When you want to work up a crowd, Nasheet is your guy, and he did manage to do that Saturday night.  In quieter moments (not of his choosing), however, he tends to disappear.

Bassist Carlo DeRosa was steady on bass; however, if he is going to wear a hat during the performance, he needs to get hipper hattery; he was wearing the same ugly hat I was.

I had not seen Jason Adasiewicz previously, nor, I daresay, anyone else in the crowd, but he quickly became an audience favorite, partly because of his peculiar, flamongo-like, stiff-leggged method of playing the vibes, which often left him in a precarious state of balance.  More than once, I thought he was sure to keel over.  His four-mallet attack was much more sure.  The program notes state that Adasiewicz is a member of more than 20 working bands, including Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra, the Nicole Mitchell Quartet, and Ken Vandernmark’s Index Orchesta, and quotes a Cadence review of Adasiewicz as a “remarkably adroit colorist,” which I think is quite accurate.  Playing the vibes like a King Penguin just adds to the fun. 

Beethoven, Brahms, Bartok, Dvorak, Grieg, Siubelius, and innumerable other composers have recognized the value and vitality of folk music in their compositions.  Indeed, jazz itself includes many folk elements in its original synthesis.  With El Saffar and Mahanthappa, we are seeing something of a revival of folk elements in jazz.  This can add a rich vein of feeling and color to jazz improvisation, and give the improviser a well of ideas and feelings to draw from.   But  I think there is a danger in all this. 

The philosopher and literary critic Edward Said’s highly influential book “Orientalism,” examines how the West has often co-opted and used “oriental” motifs in its own art and writing as part, sometimes deliberate (the East as “other” and enemy), and sometimes unwittingly (the East as pleasant seasoning and decoration for hegemonic Western culture)  of a colonial approach to the East.  (See, for convenience, the Wikipedia entry on “Orientalism,” and note the long list of artists and musicians who have used the “oriental” in their art.  Better yet, read the book).

I think some of the positive response to this latest jazz trend partakes of this “Orientalism,” even well-intended as it is.  I think it also poses a challenge to the musicians themselves, even when they are drawing on their own tradition, whether it be Iraqi or Indian or other non-Western modalities.  There is always the danger, in lesser hands, of kitsch, or merely supplying the West’s voracious demand for the “exotic.”

Time will tell whether El Saffar, Mahanthappa, and others following this path avoid such dangers and bring forth something greater than the sum of its parts.