Roy Ayers, José Gonzalez, Jordan Rakei, Mishka Adams, DJ Erwin Edralin and more at Malasimbo Arts & Music Festival

By Coconuts Manila | Coconuts Manila – Fri, Jan 17, 2014 4:37 PM PHT
Jazz artist Mishka Adams and house music DJ Erwin Edralin are two more local talents confirmed to participate in the fourth edition of Malasimbo Music & Arts Festival next month, says festival director DJ Miro Grgic. 

They will be sharing the stage with legends Roy Ayers and Lonnie Liston Smith, as well as widely known and respected musicians José Gonzalez and Mad Professor.

At a press lunch yesterday in Sofitel Philippine Plaza, the 34-year-old Croatian-Australian sound engineer and manager behind the festival, staged annually with the beautiful Mount Malasimbo near Puerto Galera in Mindoro as backdrop, said that this year's highlights is not necessarily about big names.

It's about performers who stay true to the festival's origin as a roots and reggae event, and music that will complement the grass amphitheater venue. "We tried playing rock music there before but it didn't work," explained Grgic.

Lineup
"We know you all want Erykah Badu, but this is the closest we can get to her," he joked as he announced the participation of 73-year-old Ayers, vibraphone player and pioneer of Neo Soul who has been a major influence on Badu's music. 

Another performer, American jazz pianist and Grammy winner Robert Glasper of Robert Glasper Experiment, has been producing music for the American singer-songwriter and actress.
Joining Ayers is his contemporary and fellow soul-jazz fusion pioneer Lonnie Liston Smith.

Other crowd drawers include indie folk singer-songwriter and guitarist José Gonzalez (Sweden), vocalist and spritual jazz and jazz funk pioneer MBE Omar (UK), downtempo guy Jordan Rakei (Australia) and rasta dub musician Mad Professor (Guyana).

Also peforming are Osunlade (US), Greg Wilson (UK), Mark de Clive-Lowe (LA), Low Leaf (UK), as well as June Marieezy and Heavy Boogie, both based in Manila.

Malasimbo Music and Arts Festival was first staged in 2011 to a crowd of 1,500 music lovers. This year, the organizers are targetting 6,000 attendees, 1,500 more from last year. It will last for five days, compared to last year's three. 

One of the festival's firsts is a "Boracay goes to Malasimbo" travel package to lure in tourists in the famous white beach, with live-aboard accommodations. 

Another one is a collaboration tent which will have a recording studio, a place where local musicians can work with foreign perfumers.
Read more: http://ph.omg.yahoo.com/news/roy-ayers-jos-gonzalez-jordan-rakei-mishka-adams-083742132.html

Roy Ayers: Soul Vibes

Reprinted from http://jazzwax.com

Back in the early 1970s, Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Tony Williams and John McLaughlin leveraged Miles Davis' new electric approach to jazz and created different streams of  jazz-rock fusion. At the same time, vibraphonist Roy Ayers went off in a separate direction—pioneering electronic jazz-funk, which Herbie Hancock would build on with Headhunters in 1973. This Thursday, Nov. 17, Ayers will make a rare performance appearance in Los Angeles at the Exchange LA club, from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.Go here for more information. 

Starting in 1970, with his group Ubiquity, Ayers shrewdly combined the bounce-rock feel of Sly Stone and riff-centric bottom of James Brown—using his cool, ringing vibes, electric piano and synthesizer to bond all of the elements. The result was a new electronic jazz-funk form that was both relaxing and energizing. Unlike many cookie-cutter funk bands of the period, Ayers added a different level of sophistication and soul, a more chilled approach that was possible largely because of his knack for jazz composing and arranging.

But Ayers' music wasn't strictly instrumental or groove-obsessed. In addition to implementing a seductive rubbery-ness to the bass and a pinball bumper-bell quality to his vibes, Ayers compositions shifted around a great deal, and he often added a soul vocal choir, giving the mix an earthy, gospel quality.

Ayers' successful blending of jazz, funk and soul was so potent that many action movies that starred predominantly black actors (known euphemistically as "blaxploitation" films) began to adapt his sound for their soundtracks. Ayers even scored one—Coffy (1973)—which remains one of the most imaginative examples of the genre. 

Ayers' biggest hit came in 1976, when he released Everybody Loves the Sunshine, a jazz-disco ballad that relied on a single throbbing riff and electronics to depict the sound of blinding solar heat. A high point for Ayers, the hit proved that an electronic riff could be repeated over and over again without ever sounding dull or even repetitive.

Born in Los Angeles in 1940, Ayers received his first pair of mallets from Lionel Hampton when he was 5 years old. His first leadership date came in 1963—West Coast Vibes,for United Artists. In the '60s, he recorded with Jack Wilson, Gerald Wilson, Herbie Mann and many others.

Throughout the '70 and '80s, Ayers and Ubiquity continued to develop jazz-soul fusion, which in the '90s gave rise to acid jazz, a conglomerate form that combined jazz, funk, hip-hop and looped beats. Ubiquity's fondness for riffs and textured instrumentation made for ideal samples by hip-hop groups. One of Ayers' last jazz-soul leadership dates before he began moving into house music wasNaste, in 1995.

My only wish is that I could be in Los Angeles on Thursday to see and hear Ayers live. For too long his impact and legacy have been overlooked and underappreciated. Trust me, once you become familiar with Ayers and his music, it's impossible to let them go.

JazzWax tracks: Roy Ayers' has a sizable discography. My favorites include:

• West Coast Vibes (1963)
• Virgo Vibes (1967)
• Ubiquity (1970)
• Coffy (1973)
• Everybody Loves the Sunshine (1976)
• Lifeline (1977)
• Step Into Our Life (1978)
• Naste (1995)

For a mix of Roy Ayers' music by DJ Anthony Valadez, go here and scroll down.

For more on Roy Ayers, visit his site.

JazzWax clips: Here are four of my favorite tracks. Be warned, it's easy to get hooked on this stuff. Like all fusionistas from the period, Ayers was way ahead of his time...

Treasure from Naste... - Used with permission by Marc Myers

Roy Ayers - Running Away

Roy Ayers

Once one of the most visible and winning jazz vibraphonists of the 1960s, then an R&B bandleader in the 1970s and '80s, Roy Ayers' reputation s now that of one of the prophets of acid jazz, a man decades ahead of his time. A tune like 1972's "Move to Groove" by the Roy Ayers Ubiquity has a crackling backbeat that serves as the prototype for the shuffling hip-hop groove that became, shall we say, ubiquitous on acid jazz records; and his relaxed 1976 song "Everybody Loves the Sunshine" has been frequently sampled. Yet Ayers' own playing has always been rooted in hard bop: crisp, lyrical, rhythmically resilient. His own reaction to being canonized by the hip-hop crowd as the "Icon Man" is tempered with the detachment of a survivor in a rough business. "I'm having fun laughing with it," he has said. "I don't mind what they call me, that's what people do in this industry."

Growing up in a musical family -- his father played trombone, his mother taught him the piano -- the five-year-old Ayers was given a set of vibe mallets by Lionel Hampton, but didn't start on the instrument until he was 17. He got involved in the West Coast jazz scene in his early 20s, recording with Curtis Amy (1962), Jack Wilson (1963-1967), and the Gerald Wilson Orchestra (1965-1966); and playing with Teddy Edwards, Chico Hamilton, Hampton Hawes and Phineas Newborn. A session with Herbie Mann at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach led to a four-year gig with the versatile flutist (1966-1970), an experience that gave Ayers tremendous exposure and opened his ears to styles of music other than the bebop that he had grown up with.

After being featured prominently on Mann's hit Memphis Underground album and recording three solo albums for Atlantic under Mann's supervision, Ayers left the group in 1970 to form the Roy Ayers Ubiquity, which recorded several albums for Polydor and featured such players as Sonny Fortune, Billy Cobham, Omar Hakim, and Alphonse Mouzon. An R&B-jazz-rock band influenced by electric Miles Davis and the Herbie Hancock Sextet at first, the Ubiquity gradually shed its jazz component in favor of R&B/funk and disco. Though Ayers' pop records were commercially successful, with several charted singles on the R&B charts for Polydor and Columbia, they became increasingly, perhaps correspondingly, devoid of musical interest.

In the 1980s, besides leading his bands and recording, Ayers collaborated with Nigerian musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, formed Uno Melodic Records, and produced and/or co-wrote several recordings for various artists. As the merger of hip-hop and jazz took hold in the early '90s, Ayers made a guest appearance on Guru's seminal Jazzmatazz album in 1993 and played at New York clubs with Guru and Donald Byrd. Though most of his solo records had been out of print for years, Verve issued a two-CD anthology of his work with Ubiquity and the first U.S. release of a live gig at the 1972 Montreux Jazz Festival; the latter finds the group playing excellent straight-ahead jazz, as well as jazz-rock and R&B. ~ Richard S. Ginell,
All Music Guide