The musical traditions of the eastern and western worlds are bridged through the improvisations of Bombay, India-born percussionist/vocalist Trilok Gurtu. Gurtu's mastery of post-bop jazz has not gone unnoticed. Downbeat magazine named him "best percussionist" in three critic and popularity polls and proclaimed, "musically, the world is his... [+] Read More

The musical traditions of the eastern and western worlds are bridged through the improvisations of Bombay, India-born percussionist/vocalist Trilok Gurtu. Gurtu's mastery of post-bop jazz has not gone unnoticed. Downbeat magazine named him "best percussionist" in three critic and popularity polls and proclaimed, "musically, the world is his stage". Jazz magazine, Straight No Chaser took a similar view, writing, "this music has a transcendental quality and removes any obstacles that lie between western and eastern improvised music." Gurtu's eclectic approach has enabled him to collaborate with some of the world's greatest musicians. A member of trumpeter Don Cherry's band from 1976 to 1978, Gurtu has worked with such influential musicians as jazz guitarists Philip Catherine, John McLaughlin, Ralph Towner, Pat Metheny and Larry Coryell, rock guitarist David Gilmore, saxophonists Jan Garbarek and Bill Evans, percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, jazz keyboardist Josef Zawinul and classical pianists Katia and Marielle Labeque. Gurtu was a member of acoustic jazz fusion group, Oregon, from 1984 to 1988. A native of Bombay, India, Gurtu hails from a musical family. His grandfather was a well known sitar player and his mother, Shobha Gurtu, was an influential singer of Indian classical music. Studying to play the tablas from the age of six, Gurtu attracted international attention in the mid-1970s when he performed with Charlie Mariano and John Tchicai. In 1977, he accompanied vocalist Asha Bhosle during her New York concerts. After touring and recording with Don Cherry for two years, Gurtu emigrated to Hambug, Germany in 1978. Shortly afterwards, he toured with Belgian guitarist Philip Catherine and recorded an album, End Of August, with Catherine and Mariano. In the summer of 1993, Gurtu toured Europe in a duo with Josef Zawinul and recorded an album, Crazy Saints, with Zawinul and Pat Metheny. Gurtu continues to teach drum clinics and perform at classical events with modern dancer Carolyn Carlson. In the summer of 1998, he toured with Andy Summers and Larry Coryell. The year 2000 saw the release of African Fantasy. Beat of Love followed the next spring. ~ Craig Harris, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Before the term world music was a twinkling in anyone's eye, 3 Mustaphas 3 were doing it, mixing up different cultures into a gleeful grab bag of music and leaving a heritage that has influenced musicians all over the world. Legend -- their own legend -- has it that the Mustaphas were smuggled out of their mysterious Balkan hometown of Szegerely... [+] Read More

Before the term world music was a twinkling in anyone's eye, 3 Mustaphas 3 were doing it, mixing up different cultures into a gleeful grab bag of music and leaving a heritage that has influenced musicians all over the world. Legend -- their own legend -- has it that the Mustaphas were smuggled out of their mysterious Balkan hometown of Szegerely (where they played at the Crazy Loquat Club) in refrigerators, ending up in England. Not only did they play Balkan music, but a crazy quilt of pieces that they'd first heard on the (extremely eclectic) jukebox at the Crazy Loquat. At great story, but utter rubbish, of course. The truth was more prosaic. In 1982, Ben Mandelson (Hijaz Mustapha), a guitarist and musicologist, began playing with bassist Colin Bass (Sabah Habas Mustapha) and a revolving door of people all of whom assumed bizarre Mustapha relative names, including former Damned member Lu Edmonds, who proved himself adept at the saz and various other ethnic stringed instruments. What they ended up stitching together, both on record and live, drew from Latin, African, Indian, filmi, country, Balkan -- if it was out there, it became a Mustaphas influence. They played frequent shows in Britain and throughout Europe, and even toured the U.S. before releasing their debut album, Shopping, on Mendelson's Globestyle label in 1987. With world music gaining a higher market profile thanks to Paul Simon's successful Graceland, there was a more receptive audience for the strangeness the Mustaphas were purveying, and their touring schedule became more frantic. But they did still find time to record, coming out with the magnificent Heart of Uncle in 1989 and then Soup of the Century a year later. They became a cult act, with an audience that ranged from world music snobs to hippies to punks, all attracted by the band's wicked sense of humor; they had an outright refusal to take anything, especially themselves, seriously. Underscoring it was an excellent, if anarchic, musical sensibility, and respect for the cultures from which they drew their music. The question was, how far could they take it? 1991 brought Friends, Fiends & Fronds, a compilation of alternate mixes, singles, and rare tracks, which filled in some time. And the band continued to tour, although not as heavily as before. By 1992 there was still no "new" album, and the group seemed to be giving up the ghost. Certainly a year later, with no album in sight and dates sporadic at best, it seemed as if 3 Mustaphas 3 had gone the way of all flesh. Sabah Habas Mustapha began to focus on his solo career, playing Indonesian dangdut music and writing a massive Asian hit, "Denpasar Moon," in addition to filling the bass slot with aging prog-rockers Camel. Lu Edmonds became a Mekon, touring and recording with them, and Mendelson turned his attention to producing records for Globestyle. However, no one has ever knocked the Mustaphas completely on the head. The band has always maintained that they would reform if the money was right, but no one has yet to come up with a suitable offer. The closest to a reunion has been Mendelson and Edmonds playing together as part of Billy Bragg's backing band, the Blokes, beginning in 1998. Although no gigs were mentioned, Mendelson and Bass did get together in a recording studio in early 2001 to select tracks for a much-belated Mustaphas live album, due to see the light of day in the summer of that year. ~ Chris Nickson, All Music Guide [-] Hide

The musical traditions of the Arabic world are fused with jazz improvisation and European classical techniques by Lebanese-born oud player and composer Rabih Abou-Khalil. The CMJ New Music Report noted that Abou-Khalil has "consistently sought to create common ground between the Arab music mileau of his roots and the more global musical world of... [+] Read More

The musical traditions of the Arabic world are fused with jazz improvisation and European classical techniques by Lebanese-born oud player and composer Rabih Abou-Khalil. The CMJ New Music Report noted that Abou-Khalil has "consistently sought to create common ground between the Arab music mileau of his roots and the more global musical world of today." Down Beat praised Abou-Khalil's music as "a unique hybrid that successfully spans the world of traditional Arabic music and jazz." Although he learned to play the oud, a fretless, Lebanese lute, as a youngster, Abou-Khalil temporarily switched to the classical flute, which he studied at the Academy of Music after moving to Munich, Germany, during the Lebanese Civil War in 1978. In an attempt to explore new ways to play Arabic music, he returned to the oud and began to incorporate techniques more often played on jazz guitar. In the early-'90s, Abou-Khalil was commissioned by Southwest German radio to write two pieces that were debuted in a performance with the Kronos String Quartet at the Stuttgart Jazz Summit in 1992, and recorded with the Belanescu Quartet four years later. Abou-Khalil has worked with a mixture of Arabic, Indian, and American jazz musicians, including alto saxophonist Sonny Fortune, frame drummer and percussionist Glen Valez, conga player Milton Cardona, harmonica ace Howard Levy, and bassists Glen Moore and Steve Swallow. ~ Craig Harris, All Music Guide [-] Hide

The second track from Tomorrow Is the Question -- Ornette Coleman's 1959 wake-up call to the fusty hard bop movement -- is a medium tempo blues, "Tears Inside." After the statement of the tune's two-beat, countrified-bebop theme, trumpeter Don Cherry plays a solo that -- for all its frail beauty and general adherence to modern jazz's harmonic... [+] Read More

The second track from Tomorrow Is the Question -- Ornette Coleman's 1959 wake-up call to the fusty hard bop movement -- is a medium tempo blues, "Tears Inside." After the statement of the tune's two-beat, countrified-bebop theme, trumpeter Don Cherry plays a solo that -- for all its frail beauty and general adherence to modern jazz's harmonic conventions -- sounds as if it might have been played by Miles Davis or Chet Baker. Coleman and Cherry were vanguardists, to be sure, and they were received as such by critics, musicians, and audiences alike. Even so, today, in listening to these early free jazz sides, one wonders what all the fuss was about, for it's clear that both musicians -- especially Cherry -- played in a style derived from the mainstream of jazz's development.

Naturally, the passing of four decades provides us a perspective denied listeners at the time; changes that seem slight to us today were magnified then. Coleman and Cherry's elastic relationship to pitch and swing-time were certainly a liberation from the tyranny of equal temperament and literal pulse. Despite the music's revolutionary characteristics, however, no one would now deny that the work of these men is an extension or interpretation of the jazz tradition. This is particularly obvious in Cherry's case; abstracted from his contexts, Don Cherry's style was in a real sense grounded in bebop. He wasn't an especially strong bebop player by classic standards -- his range and facility were somewhat limited, for one thing -- but externally, his style bore the marks of modern jazz in terms of melody, harmony, rhythm, and phrasing.

Evaluating Cherry in classic terms is a mistake, for like Miles Davis -- and Coleman, for that matter -- concepts of Western musical objectivity were nearly irrelevant to his work. Cherry was not gifted with extraordinary chops, but those are classicist concerns, and his was a wholly romantic art. Cherry's greatest strength was less easily quantified, less tangible: an ability to convey emotional depth via a subtle manipulation of musical elements. An improvised Don Cherry line might bear all the typical contours of bebop, but Cherry micro-managed every aspect of his playing, rhythmically, harmonically, melodically, timbrally, and dynamically. Like Coleman, Cherry's sound came as close to the expressive qualities of the human voice as was instrumentally possible. And his playing was utterly spontaneous; Cherry was among the most unpredictable of improvisers. His frequent stutters in mid-solo may have stemmed from a limited vocabulary of canned phrases, but his resultant recoveries were the stuff of which great jazz is made.

Cherry first attained prominence with Coleman, with whom he began playing around 1957. At that time Cherry's instrument of choice was a pocket trumpet (or cornet) -- a miniature version of the full-sized model. The smaller instrument -- in Cherry's hands, at least -- got a smaller, slightly more nasal sound than is typical of the larger horn. Though he would play a regular cornet off and on throughout his career, Cherry remained most closely identified with the pocket instrument. Cherry stayed with Coleman through the early '60s, playing on the first seven (and most influential) of the saxophonist's albums. In 1960, he recorded The Avant-Garde with John Coltrane. After leaving Coleman's band, Cherry played with Steve Lacy, Sonny Rollins, Archie Shepp, and Albert Ayler. In 1963-4, Cherry co-led the New York Contemporary Five with Shepp and John Tchicai. With Gato Barbieri, Cherry led a band in Europe from 1964-6, recording two of his most highly regarded albums, Complete Communion and Symphony for Improvisers. Cherry taught at Dartmouth College in 1970, and recorded with the Jazz Composer's Orchestra in 1973. He lived in Sweden for four years; he used the country as a base for his travels around Europe and the Middle East. Cherry became increasingly interested in other, mostly non-Western styles of music. In the late '70s and early '80s, he performed and recorded with Codona, a cooperative group with percussionist Nana Vasconcelos and multi-instrumentalist Collin Walcott. Codona's music was a pastiche of African, Asian, and other indigenous musics. Concurrently, Cherry joined with ex-Coleman associates Charlie Haden, Ed Blackwell, and Dewey Redman to form Old and New Dreams, a band dedicated to playing the compositions of their former employer. After the dissolution of Codona, Cherry formed Nu with Vasconcelos and saxophonist Carlos Ward. In 1988, he made Art Deco, a more traditional album of acoustic jazz, with Haden, Billy Higgins, and saxophonist James Clay. Until his death in 1995, Cherry would continue to combine disparate musical genres; his interest in world music never abated. Cherry learned to play and compose for wood flutes, tambura, gamelan, and various other non-Western instruments. Elements of these musics inevitably found their way into his later compositions and performances, as on 1990's Multi Kulti, a characteristic celebration of musical diversity. As a live performer, Cherry was notoriously uneven. It was not unheard of for him to arrive very late for gigs, and his technique -- never great to begin with -- showed on occasion a considerable, perhaps inexcusable decline. In his last years, especially, Cherry seemed less self-possessed as a musician. Yet, his musical legacy is one of such influence that his personal failings fade in relative significance. ~ Chris Kelsey, All Music Guide [-] Hide

One of the first African musicians to gain widespread international recognition, Hamza El Din is a Nubian master of the oud, or the fretless lute. Western listeners are as likely as not to have been exposed to his work via the Grateful Dead, who played with him on-stage occasionally. (El Din also helped arrange the Dead's tour of Egypt.) He... [+] Read More

One of the first African musicians to gain widespread international recognition, Hamza El Din is a Nubian master of the oud, or the fretless lute. Western listeners are as likely as not to have been exposed to his work via the Grateful Dead, who played with him on-stage occasionally. (El Din also helped arrange the Dead's tour of Egypt.) He played an integral role in modernizing Nubian music, using his work to both evoke and tell stories of Nubian life.

El Din was originally trained to be an engineer, but changed direction and enrolled in the Middle Eastern School of Music, where he began to compose his own songs. On a fellowship to study Western classical music in Rome, he met American Gino Foreman, who exposed Hamza's work to Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. This resulted in a contract with Vanguard. His mid-'60s debut, Al Oud -- Instrumental and Vocal Music From Nubia, was one of the first "world music" recordings to achieve wide exposure in the West.

In the second half of the 1960s, El Din spent much of his time in America, living in guitarist Sandy Bull's apartment for a while. Taking a series of teaching positions in various American locations, he also found time to record a Nonesuch album in 1968, Escalay, that is considered one of the best documents of Nubian music. Eclipse is his most notable post-Escalay record, raising his profile in the U.S. when it was reissued on CD by Rykodisc. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Trilok Gurtu's percussion work has powered a number of great albums that effectively fuse world music with jazz, allowing for both tight performance and free improvisation. This collection is therefore a gem, selecting ten cuts from six albums. Both an excellent overview and a wonderful place to begin acquainting yourself with Gurtu's music, and... [+] Read More

Trilok Gurtu's percussion work has powered a number of great albums that effectively fuse world music with jazz, allowing for both tight performance and free improvisation. This collection is therefore a gem, selecting ten cuts from six albums. Both an excellent overview and a wonderful place to begin acquainting yourself with Gurtu's music, and thus an essential addition to any jazz or world music collection. ~ Steven McDonald, All Music Guide [-] Hide

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The trailblazing ethnic-fusion group Shakti embodied complimentary values from distinct musical traditions. With tabla czar Zakir Hussain, the North Indian Hindustani penchant for perfection of form and technique are heard. Through the impassioned playing of ghatam master T.H. Vinayakram and violinist Shankar, the South Indian Karnatic quest for... [+] Read More

The trailblazing ethnic-fusion group Shakti embodied complimentary values from distinct musical traditions. With tabla czar Zakir Hussain, the North Indian Hindustani penchant for perfection of form and technique are heard. Through the impassioned playing of ghatam master T.H. Vinayakram and violinist Shankar, the South Indian Karnatic quest for spiritual ascension is felt. And with the post-bebop guitar work of John McLaughlin, who came to the group after playing with the electrified Miles Davis Band and Mahavishnu Orchestra, comes a determination to challenge traditional musical conventions. On the Best of Shakti, the embodiment of these complimentary musical values, along with a shared affinity for improvisation and ensemble performance, come across loud and clear. Pulled from the band's three original albums, Best of Shakti kicks off with a live number: the rip-roarious "Joy." This 18-minute work showcases McLaughlin's galloping picking patterns. Shankar's more lyrical sensibility contrasts well with McLaughlin's sonic fusillade. "Joy"'s blistering rhythms are fleshed out and expanded upon by Zakir Hussain, T.H. Vinayakram, and mridangam player R. Raghavan (the mridangam is a double-headed Karnatic hand drum). The remaining eight songs, which are taken from Handful of Beauty and Natural Elements, were recorded in the studio. Though these tunes are missing the frenetic ambience heard in "Joy," the studio sessions bring about clarity in the mix, allowing each instrument to heard without difficulty. Unlike so much contemporary "world music" that is built with bland beats and tired melodic phrases, Shakti managed to incorporate global characteristics into their music without watering down the finished product. All in all, Best of Shakti is a great retrospective album that summarily presents the band's talent at melding complimentary values into a cohesive whole all their own. ~ John Vallier, All Music Guide [-] Hide

German trio Dissidenten invokes Kipling, Coltrane, the Bhagavad Gita and recite poetic musings on the significance of rhythm. A bit pretentious? Sure, but the band is gracious enough to let guest artists the Karnataka College of Percussion on vocals, tanpoura, violin, and drums steal the show song after song -- especially on "Monsoon" when the... [+] Read More

German trio Dissidenten invokes Kipling, Coltrane, the Bhagavad Gita and recite poetic musings on the significance of rhythm. A bit pretentious? Sure, but the band is gracious enough to let guest artists the Karnataka College of Percussion on vocals, tanpoura, violin, and drums steal the show song after song -- especially on "Monsoon" when the D's strip down to jockey shorts and electric piano to let a chorister strut her Carnatic pipes. In fact, so many guests take front and center in this sense-spinning fusing of classical Indian music, funk, and rock, you'd think the Germans had relegated themselves to session musician status. They play expert backbone, though, organizing a complex project that easily could have thudded. ~ Bob Tarte, All Music Guide [-] Hide

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