Ah, what gifts music offers us! Forgive such a banal intro, but it's the first thought that comes to mind just by having an album like this in our hands, even before listening to it. We're faced with a true Clash of the Titans, or rather, a Clash of the Eras that gives rise to a historical moment. The date is April 4, 1999, and the host of this "Rumble In The Mountain" is Hokkaido, Sapporo's Zippy Hall, a small venue with a capacity of 130 (lucky them…) people.
On one side of the ring, from Idabel, Oklahoma, James Marcellus Arthur "Sunny" Murray, embodying the Classic Period of our music and the incredible epic that permeated it. Among the first, along with Milford Graves, to unchain the drums from purely rhythmic tasks and push them to explore uncharted timbral textures, Murray was the sword arm of Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler, with whom he recorded At The Café Montmartre and Spiritual Unity, two albums that moved The Clock forward 20 years, to which it is ontologically impossible to attribute any star. His collaborations with Archie Shepp, Dave Burrell, Arthur Doyle, and David Murray are extraordinary, while his hyper saturated solo release Sonny’s Time Now, (Ayler, Cherry, Grimes and Worrell to complete the monstrous line-up), is in the Hall of Fame of our all-time favorites. “One of those crucial figures in jazz who appear just when they are needed”, said Val Wilmer about him.
On the opposite side of the square, from Yokohama, Japan, sits Yoshisaburo “Sabu” Toyozumi, an affiliate, together with Kaoru Abe, Masayuki Takayanagi, Masahiko Togaghi, Masahiko Sato and Mototeru Takagi, with the Sonic Terrorists Squad that pushed free music where no one thought it was possible. We've always liked to think that, if the Free of the '60s was the punk of jazz, the subsequent European school was its hardcore declination, but from the Land of the Rising Sun they pulverized even this, going further, much further. Since you're here, this is probably a redundant suggestion, but if by chance you haven't already, by all means get Soejima Teruto's book Free Jazz in Japan: A Personal History, an unmissable account of that period and those fearless characters. In 1971, Toyozumi became the first non-American member of the AACM and in the following years actively participated in inviting some of his Masters, such as Broetzmann, Bailey, Mengelberg, and Murray himself, to play in Japan. The Clash of Sapporo, which unfolds through two songs, "Mischievous Saga" and "Brave Warriors," is not wrestling, it's a real fight between top-notch Heavyweights, punching with nothing but their drums and cymbals, no other instruments, no post-production.
While we'd listened to (without being too keen on) a few solo drums records, an outfit like this represents an absolute novelty for us, one that has won us over unconditionally. Don't get misled by figuring out an individual, sterile show of strength, since here we have by both the contenders, the clear, shared aim to join forces to generate a brand new Mega Rhythm. It would be perhaps a sterile exercise to talk about interplay between two drummers, but what emerges from the album in an absolutely compelling way is the willingness (there's no need to waste a single syllable on their skills, obviously) of the two Champions to mutually find common ground, within dynamics that are sometimes seismic, sometimes more delicate (relatively speaking...), or to leave part of these spaces to the other, in a smooth and natural way, without the listener feeling like one of them is putting down the drumsticks for a while.
Not easy listening for sure, but Forum’s readers will certainly have no problems tackling this 65 minutes of challenging music from a one of a kind, extraordinary album. No ifs or buts.
0 comments:
Post a Comment