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...
