Review: Ornette Coleman/The Master Musicians of Jajouka at the Meltdown Festival, Royal Festival Hall, Sunday June 21st, 2009...

Support band out of the ordinary for the South Bank – in that they actually complemented the show rather than made up the numbers. The Master Musicians of Jajouka, whom I saw outside on the terrace a few days before, were inside tonight and delivered a fascinating and well-received show. Minimal skirling melodies that overlapped and shifted, surrounded by wild drumming. Out in the desert this must be an overwhelming experience – pretty good here, as well. The MMOJ are a visually striking crew – the green robes, white turbans (black for the leader), yellow shoes. Showmen as well, they know how to get the crowd moving. One of the drummers broke from the line at one point, did a weird dance out front and got the audience raggedly clapping along... great fun. The only annoyance – the usual crap, people wandering in late throughout, which is mightily distracting. Easy enough to stop: let no one in during a number. What is it with the South Bank? But onwards...

To the main event, on this last night of his curatorial duties for Meltdown... Ornette gets physically older, but still retains his radical edge with his sharp intelligence and his ever-youthful spirit. A gentle presence, softly spoken – although his announcements was barely audible anyway due to the rubbish sound (again – Mapsadaisical made the same point in his review of an earlier gig). The drum balance seemed odd, as well... Ornette played a lot throughout, never coasting, as his seniority would have allowed, looping through some of his favorite tunes and I couple I didn't recognise, which recurred in places, like refracting mirrors that offered new visions of old material. Backed initially by Tony Falanga on acoustic bass and Al McDowell on electric bass, who both wove a stunning and intricate tapestry of lines throughout. Falanga roaming deep while McDowell in the main played high up, giving a guitar line almost. Denardo, always a heavy hitter, held it all together (despite the eccentric and muddy sound). They gave up sudden explosions of those twisty reconstructed boppy themes – including a couple of good-natured false starts - and some slowed down, haunting, lyrical moments – especially coming from Falanga's arco bass. Positioned at the leader's right shoulder, he seemed to be the conduit to the rest of the band. Ornette, switching between his alto, violin and trumpet, paced himself as you would expect but played more than I remember the last time I saw him, using favourite licks sure, then occasionally spinning a sudden twist out of nowhere, his sound still as powerful and intense as ever. He leads from the front while allowing his musicians the freedom to exercise their imaginations – to produce a unique sound world. Which is as drenched in the blues as it always was, the main bloodline of his contributions to the 'free jazz' revolution, yet has a generous inclusiveness which is an intrinsic part of his musical philosophy - for example, Malanga bringing Bach into the gig when he reprised the Prelude that Ornette had ragged on circa the 'Tone Dialling album where the classical line was played on electric guitar. (Actually, I think it worked better here).

The inclusion continued with guest appearances as befitting the last night: Flea,from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, sent out some fleet bass, and Baaba Maal (I think) who briefly popped up for some wordless vocal colour. Then the Master Musicians of Jajouka returned to jam at the end – a wild and joyous noise that rocked the place. Another masterclass in harmolodics? - it was fascinating to see how a space slowly spread outwards from the Arabian band to encompass contributions from the others with Ornette joining in and his musicians picking their own (somewhat hesitant) way into the chaotic democracy being created. The packed house had given a tumultuous reception throughout, but this blew the doors off, the audience up on their feet for a long bout of applause, some girl calling out 'We love you, Ornette,' - to which he made a nice reply – what I caught of it. The crap sound again... To the encore – 'Lonely Woman,' as usual, now joined by one of his long-standing cohorts, the mighty Charlie Haden, playing in a trio with Denardo and his father to end the evening and the festival. Somehow fitting, taking the music back to near its beginnings, while giving a frail and wistful update, spirit balancing out and overriding the encroaching years.

A ragged but overwelmingly emotional and brilliant night, then... Harmolodics triumphant – and love...

Sunday in the City...

A great day on Sunday – got to town, checked in to hotel and then off to the Tate Modern – saw the Futurism show and the Per Kirkeby – too much to absorb in one go, really, so another visit asap. The Futurism exhibition is amazing, the Kirkeby... mmm, not sure, his early stuff looks a bit scrappy but some of the later enormous canvases have a certain power. Reserved judgement – too quick a shunt round to make up my mind. Then off to the Festival Hall down the river walk – where I came across the guys in the photo. Another great band of buskers, the East Europeans showing the locals how to do it. The trumpet gave the music a flavour of Mexican, oddly – great surging stuff, perfect for a sunny afternoon.
Got to the Queen Elisabeth Hall and tried to break in! Forcing the door, I didnt realise at first that it was locked. Then noticed a CLOSED sign. Though: WTF – where's the gig? Then checked my ticket and discovered Ornette was playing the main joint. Hmmm... wake up, Warner... wandered in to discoverLeafcutter John and his combo setting up in the Clore Ballroom so grabbed a foul over-priced lager and found a seat. Leafcutter (was he a gardener in another existence? Must go google...) was doing his balloon routine at first but the set progressed into some interesting areas and was nicely abrasive, given the odd circumstances of its positioning, people wandering about etc. But quite a good crowd sat listening. A good - and uncompromising - no pub bands - warm up for the main show... review to follow...

Noted in passing – Mapsadaisical has a review of the earlier Coleman show on the 19th June... check out the other write-ups for Meltdown on the same site...

Review: James 'Blood' Ulmer at the Queen Elisabeth Hall, London, Tuesday June 16th, 2009...

James 'Blood' Ulmer was a blast... but my predictions about the poor quality and mismatching of the South Bank's support groups were verified again – as overall curator, Ornette holds the blame, although I guess this disparate bunch were put through on the local nod. I spent the set drifting off mostly when I wasn't inventing insults for this review. Put to one side in the end – what is the point? In the interests of recording the event, someone called Shlomo bounded on, with the demeanour of an early morning children's show host and announced a quartet of 'improvising' vocalists would improvise a set inspired by listening to some of Ornette Coleman's records and by his harmolodic theories. Two of them were ok-ish – apart from some boobedoo scatting which should have been left in some low rent supper club way back. Apparently Shlomo was 'Artist in Residence' and had been rowed in to create a 'Harmolodic' vocal event. Bits of it were not too bad – when the two singers who had some idea of what jazz is – albeit in its mainstream incarnation – seemed to be grasping towards something interesting. But it bogged down in the human beat box lockstep of the other two – look, I can sound like a hi-hat. Tish tish... Far out, as we used to say... Ba-boom...

Ulmer played a long set, as if in some karmic compensation for the earlier froth. He passed through various bands when he arrived in New York in the early 1970s, including Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, but ended up studying and playing with Ornette for several years during which he was deeply imbedded in the saxophonist/composers harmolodic theories while playing electric guitar in his band – hence the festival link. A big man, he came on stage and sat in front of a low riding music stand, a couple of monitors, a vocal mike, a couple of pedals, his guitar and amp. That was it. He proceeded to demonstrate not just how vital the blues still can be, but arguably, how central their freedoms were historically to 'free jazz' – well, that part of the African-American stream, exemplified by his mentor's influence – to whom he offered fulsome praise throughout. Whatever 'harmolodics' may or may not be – and that's an on-going debate without end – I certainly got the feel of it here. His guitar was anchored firmly on a monotonic bass underpinning an open guitar tuning which goes back to the country blues and various folk music modalities but the spurts of single note lines display his jazzier side. Few have put these elements together into such an organic whole. At times the lack of key changes veered to a certain monotony – but Ulmer would pull you back with a flashing and unpredictable run, a sudden change of rhythm. The music ebbed and flowed across a variety of levels – back porch picking meets the concert hall via many cultural and musical points in between, shotgunned into an area where, for the duration of the set, the barriers were erased. The blues disrupted, chopped up and taken to areas beyond the museum/heritage space they often too easily reside in. Ulmer has brought his singing skills to the fore over the years, tonight delivering a set of free-rolling compositions inspired by Hurricane Katrina, his family, relationships: 'Harmolodic Kisses' – wouldn't I just love to see a title like that in the top-twenty – the old tensions between the Devil and the Lord, barrelhouse and church, tangling his vocals in the guitar line that delivers unpredictable sideways leaps and skitters. Echoes of John Lee Hooker and Lightning Hopkins in both the freedoms of the playing and the timbres of the singing – and, to my ears, an odder cultural cross reference, something about the dry way he hit on certain words reminded me of the splendidly named folk singer Bascom Lamar Lunceford – who came North Carolina. (Ulmer was originally from from South Carolina). Indeed, there were a few almost country riffs poking through in places...

His in-between patter was easy-going yet informative – in an albeit gnomic way – his speaking voice very soft and deep which made him a little hard to understand at times – could have been the sound system, perhaps. I didn't make out a lot of his lyrics either because the guitar lines, dancing, echoing, predicting and chasing the vocal stream, blended in maybe too well. Again a bit more separation in the mix would have helped. Overall, it didn't matter – in the sense that if you were listening to any intense performance in a language far from your own the intrinsic feeling/soul will hit you. This is music of passion laced with a wider anger at social and political injustices, leavened with humour and humanity. He broke up the rhythms, slowed down, sped up – all of it done with his thumb, which gives a certain texture to the string impact – not the sharp click of a plectrum or the pull and snap of finger-stylings but a flexible digit to strum, bass thump and unleash the single string melodies. Wes Montgomery fed back into the history and whirled round to emerge in a new century. If Mississippi blues was the music that retained more obvious fragments of the African heritage, and that bloodline was on particular display here, the modal tuning gave occasional hints of other related musics – North African/Arabic. Plus that occasional country tinge... What also fascinated me was the variation he got from what can be a limiting strategy, this use of an open tuning. The chromaticism of the single note runs pushed a level of tension across the static pull of the repeated bass note and tuning overtones, where the vertical architecture of folk/blues meets jazz linearities and is stretched into new areas. A moving, living breathing music with scope to evolve further. Struggling to define Mr Ulmer's muse beyond its constituent parts, I wrestled with – the usual categorical wahoo – and even 'postmodern' cropped up at one point... then realised that Ornette had, of course, been there already. Harmolodics, is what it is...

Ornette's concepts have a lot of life left in them. As James 'Blood' Ulmer proves. Great show, I look forward to seeing Mr Coleman and company on Sunday night...

Back from London - review to follow...

Back from the James Blood Ulmer gig - on the terrace before the show, these guys were playing - some nifty footwear. Pity they weren't doing the support - the Curse of the South Bank is getting predictable - Shlomo's Harmolodic Bollox this time out. Still, Blood Ulmer was impressive - a great show... review to follow asap...

Breaking the silence... off to London (again)...

I have been deeply embedded in an ongoing project which is moving nicely forwards... so time for a break! Off to London later on to have a mosey round the Futurism Exhibition at the Tate Modern. A walk down by the river, then grab a beer and off to James 'Blood' Ulmer's gig at my unfavourite venue... hope the support is better than they usually are... report tomorrow...
Part of Ornette's Meltdown Festival - going to catch him on sunday night...