Play that funky music (and all that jazz)

We remember first hearing the saxophonist Courtney Pine in the early ’90s when he played session in one of the early albums of the British club group Soul II Soul. Even then Pine’s sax had a distinctive smoldering style, with a decent amount of funk simmering underneath. He seemed to be a perfect fit – at least for that one song – in Jazzie B’s ensemble, which tapped rhythm and blues and soul to come up with a prototype of house or is it acid jazz?

The British Council lately sent this corner a copy of Pine’s latest, entitled Devotion, accompanied by a press release saying the sax player will be having a concert in the Philippines around mid-November, i.e., barring any terrorist escapades or related alarmist threats. The British Council sponsoring Pine also came across like a perfect pair – the admittedly snobbish British have basically more musically evolved tastes than their Caucasian cousins across the Atlantic. So Pine, a black man playing in good old ’Pinas, cannot be anything but a reclamation of the blues for us little brown brothers – we don’t have to go picking cotton in some abstract southern field to know how the blues feels.

Devotion, like the middle word in the Carlos Santana-John McLaughlin album of the early ’70s, Love Devotion Surrender where there is a sterling version of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, has Pine blowing paeans to the masters and taking the music form a step or two further.

Pine has been compared to Coltrane, and rightfully so, especially in his Indian meanderings and hints of spirituality with the use of sitar, something which McLaughlin had also explored in his band Shakti.

Perhaps Wayne Shorter could come to mind too, in those instances when the younger sax player rivets across the keys sounding like he’s playing two horns simultaneously.

The title song Devotion is effectively a jazz reggae cut, as much a chart culled from Kingston as it is from New Orleans. Pine’s fondness for reggae is evident in a number of other cuts, instrumentals not really in dire need of dub in a rope-a-dope style. In the two songs with vocals, Bless the Weather (with David Mcalmont) and When the World Turns Blue (with Carlene Anderson), Pine is content playing counterpoint and shading the background, ready to pick up and take the song to flight in the next coda or bridge.

In When the World Turns Blue, the players overdo it a bit because there are some three versions of the song, using different mixes. Yet Anderson holds up well, because such is Pine’s faith in her and her voice that goes beyond blue.

In the newsletter UKLINK of the British Council, there was also a news item saying jazz vocalist Lynn Sherman has been signed up by Candid Records, an interesting and welcome development for our own local jazz scene, Lynn being a regular of the Ugoy-Ugoy band. We can’t help but wonder if Lynn is the younger sibling of old UP Village neighbors Jackie and Susanne Sherman, contemporary of my sisters at the Diliman campus.

Chances are she is, the world being small as it is blue.

The local distributor of Candid Records has also sent Playback a cache of CDs that is definitely a feast for the ears, if there is such a thing. Well, from now on there is, the moment you put Clare Teal’s Orsino’s Songs, Olga Konkova’s Some Things From Home, or Alex Wilson’s R&B Latino on the player.

We can’t help but marvel at Teal’s control and predilection for Shakespeare, and even her treatment of old standards not only gives the songs new wind but makes them sound like contemporary tunes. In I Loves You Porgy, the Gershwin number, Teal does a vocal turn sure to make your hair stand on end – you don’t know restraint unless you hear Teal’s voice wrap around that song. And she’s a songwriter too, co-writing four of the songs on the CD that has a little of torch, bebop, boogie and plain oomph.

Pianist Konkova’s worthy runs on the keyboard echo a younger incarnation of Keith Jarrett, or is it Carla Bley, this time with a Russian twist? Konkova even employs Jarrett’s former drummer Jon Christensen in almost half the CD program, while hubby Per Mathisen keeps everything moored to a Nordic wistfulness with his bass. There is a lot going on in these trios, yet leaving enough space between bars for the listener to grow into. Konkova’s piano can also be reminiscent of the work of classical pianist Katia Labeque, who did an album with McLaughlin entitled Mediterranean Concerto, as well remind one of Jarrett’s own immortal album of trios, Somewhere Before.

Wilson’s music, on the other hand, may be for acquired tastes, recalling the soundtrack heard in the now boarded up Café Caribana along Nakpil Street, Malate.

Perhaps the only way to describe R&B Latino is Santana without the guitar. Lots of mambo jumbo that leave you hankering for gumbo and jambalaya. Kick out the jams, amigo, will you?