04/21/2015
Yacine Boulares struck up a conversation with a fellow Francophone musician at a jazz club late one night. It changed his life.
The multi-reed player made what he jokingly calls “math music,” the intellectual jazz savored by the few, when not working as a sideman and session player for the likes of Placido Domingo and Tabou Combo. But after he met drummer Jojo Kuo, the avuncular, genial Cameroonian successor to Tony Allen in Fela Kuti’s band, Boulares found himself captivated by a new set of rules: Play for dancers, put the groove first, connect with the heart. Kuo took the Parisian transplant under his wing, inviting Boulares to jam at late-night sessions and then become a regular member of his band.
“There’s a pocket to this music, that is natural to Cameroonian players,” Boulares explains. “When you’re playing with them, it’s like sitting on the nose of a jet. There is drive that can push the whole band. That’s the magic. When they play, everyone locks.”
From the locking intersection of heart and head, of groove and crystalline structure, flowed Ajoyo (Ropeadope; release: April 21, 2015), a high-flying hybrid of jazz, traditional dance rhythms from Cameroon, and just a touch of Afrobeat. Inspired by the sounds of Kuo’s native land, Boulares crafted original pieces of thought-provoking party music. Then he recruited a diverse crew of African, Afro-diasporic, and cross-cultural crack musicians to find the pocket.
The ecstatic “Chocot” brings the Cameroonian bikutsi drive to bear, giving Boulares’s soprano sax free rein to rage. “Tashikere” shimmies, as vocalist Sarah Elizabeth Charles’s voice leaps joyfully over complex bursts of horns. “Benskin” effortlessly combines the polyrhythms and polyphony of the best African dance music with a serious penchant for jazz depth and reflection. It’s danceable philosophy, in the perfect pocket.
read more: http://ajoyo.rockpaperscissors.biz/dispatch/13434/9NBloqWFV_ud81-exbeu2A?recipient_id=300759&storyamp_track=5199
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