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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

A dip into Mexico City street music and avant-garde

Here’s writing I worked hard on last year, published in slightly different form as a “Global Ear” column in The Wire (UK) December 2019. Rafael Arriaga’s photos (unless credited otherwise) are a fit complement, as is Jazzamoart’s painting, “El Bop de los Alebrijes.”

El Bop de los Alebrijes, © Jazzamoart

The Harmonipan players, khaki-uniformed men and women grinding away for spare change on out-of-tune, ill-repaired 100-year-old portable German organs in the midst of Mexico City’s car-jammed boulevards, were the most surprising element of the soundscape on my recent quick trip to an under-recognized center of musical dynamism. These itinerant musicians offer, usually with a smile, distorted, note-gapped calliope airs as a momentary diversion from the zillion competing details of life in North America’s second most populace urban area (behind New York City), continuously inhabited since the eighth century and currently totaling more than 21 million.

Zocalo, Ciudad de Mexico, photo by Denis Vazquez/Flickr

As most of those 21 million seemed to be simultaneously on the roads, edging relentlessly in every direction for brief advantage, the organists’ random fragments of dusty melodies, incongruous as soundtracks in a Luis Bunuel film, served as a reminder to lighten up. Alain Derbez, the writer, musician, broadcaster and arts instigator I was visiting always rolled down his window to give the organ grinders a few coins.

I had met Derbez at the first Varadero Jazz Festival in Cuba in 1981, bonding as fellow journalists away from home do, and staying in loose touch. Over the decades we saw each other once at the Guelph Jazz Festival and Colloquium, and during trips to New York City he’s stayed in my apartments. He has always urged me to come to Mexico.

When he emailed to say that over a few days in late September French bassist Joelle Leandre was leading an improvisation workshop with young players, pianist Myra Melford and clarinetist Ben Goldberg were to perform on their own and with local musicians, that he himself was to gig with a free improv quartet at a jazz-dedicated club, and that he and his wife would put me up, the time seemed right.

I’d only been to Mexico twice before, with my parents as a pre-teen and for a couple days in the ’80s to hang out in a little town on the east coast of the Gulf of California, just over border from Arizona. The country does not have a high profile in generally accepted narrative of jazz and other progressive music, although it should Mexico City has a thriving community of skilled, sophisticated and risk-taking musicians, having produced and attracted modernists and innovators in all the arts since at least the 1920s emergence of Rivera, Kahlo, Orozco, Siquieros, including in the ’30s Carlos Chavez and visiting Aaron Copland, in ’40s and ’50s direct Bunuel and piano-roll composer Conlon Nancarrow – both of whom became naturalized citizens.

Jazz fans may think of Mexico as where Charles Mingus and Gil Evans went to die, but cultural exchange over the vast territory has always been rich and multi-directional — since well before Western Swing’s Bob Wills popularized “Mexicali Rose” and “Spanish Two-Step” in the 1930s. As detailed in El Jazz en Mexico, Derbez’s history, the Mexican Eighth Cavalry Regiment band of nearly 100 musicians wowed New Orleans in 1884 and ’85, when they appeared at the World Industrial and Cotton Exhibition, and some Regiment players stayed north, at least for a while.

Recent research has revealed that some early New Orleans jazz instrumentalists regarded as Cuban actually were Mexican.; Derbez cites New Orleans’ resident native Mexicans Lorenzo Tio Sr., Louis “Papa” Tio, and Lorenzo Tio Jr. as having taught clarinet to Sidney Bechet, Barney Bigard and Jelly Roll Morton, among others. That the Mexico/U.S. borderlands are so obviously porous is not universally admired; it’s the reality that has fueled extreme anti-immigration rhetoric and efforts by President Donald Trump.

But if anyone should concerned about cultural infestation it should be the Mexicans, considering the U.S.’s outsized influence in all things south of the border. Just consider the omnipresent folk music: forms favored by the southern U.S.’s European immigrant settlers – elements of polkas, jigs, waltzes and boleros of German and Polish, Irish, Austrian and Hispanic extraction remain prominent in the rancheras, nortenos and danzons requested of musicians working in Mexico City’s lively cantinas.

These are old school taverns, which serve tapas or “small plates” (I sampled ossa busco, chicarronne — fried pig skins — with salsa, a bean salad, shrimp in broth, tripe) to encourage and buffer alcohol consumption, range in size and elegance (“You go to a restaurant to eat and drink,” Derbez explained. “You go to a cantina to drink and eat”). Most have an acoustic combo – typically a guitarist or two, perhaps a fiddler or a percussionist with a hi-hat and timbales or a button accordionist, all capable of singing. This troupe walks from table to table, amid dice and domino players, loners nursing drinks and noisy family parties, soliciting requests.

© tripadvisor

Their per-song charges vary, maybe averaging maybe 50 or 60 pesos, about $3 or £2.5. At the Golden Lion Cantina, a table full of male office workers raised their voices in ebullient chorus, asking for one familiar theme after another. “They’re going to owe a fortune,” Derbez observed. He sometimes gigs in cantinas, playing accordion or soprano sax.

Generous and warm hosts, Alain and Marcela Derbez enabled my quick early October visit to be a deep dive into their artistic circle. Beyond his history El Jazz en Mexico, Alain has published essays (Plume en mano, Entre blues y jazz), poetry and novels. He lectures and presents his books widely, has a radio program, and plays professionally a couple times a month, employing a harmonium and blues harmonica, as well as soprano sax saxophone and squeezebox. Marcela is a a clinical psychologist and poet; their daughter is a feminist art critic and talented, entrepreneurial illustrator, their son a nascent rock star, in one Youtube sample (“Diles que no me maten – Cayó de su Gloria el Diablo”) declaiming a la Jim Morrison over psychedelic atmospherics. Busy as he is, he makes time to make things like three days of performances for friends just passing through possible.

“It was not a festival, I just had the contacts, and it was a good coincidence that Joelle was here giving this improvisation workshop,” Alain insisted of the three concerts he’d organized at Casa del Lago, an avant-garde cultural center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, situated in the middle of Mexico City’s Bosque (forest) de Chapultepec. While I was there the Casa celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding with a happening in which enlisted artists — Alain of course participated — read a summary of one year of its activities from a piece of paper, then did something “musical” with the page, crumpling it noisily, buzzing it like tissue over a comb, singing while flapping the paper as loudly as possible.

The Casa’s director José Wolffer, possessing a broad perspective on new arts endeavors, curated that event, which had a Fluxus air. On our second meeting he presented me with a copy of México Electroacústico 1960-20070, a three-cd set he’d instigated that’s comparable to Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center or Ohm: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music 1948-1980. All the tracks explore the sonic breadth available from electo-acoustic ensembles and/or compositions, most of them pursuing evocative, organic developments through flowing narratives. I’m especially taken with the dramatic tape piece “Juegos Sensoriales” (1987) by Francisco Nuñez.  

outdoor stage of Casa de Lago

The Casa itself, a Beaux Arts building opened in 1909 to house the Automobile Club of Mexico, sits on the lip of a man-made pond in the midst of the vast park that contains a castle, a zoo, the National Auditorium, sculptures and historical monuments, gardens, and most significantly the the world-renown Museo Nacional de Antropología, which profoundly establishes that civilizations flourished for centuries south of the Rio Grande, regardless of the U.S.’s ignorance and dismissal of that history. There are also eight other museums, rows of stalls with vendors hawking cheap souvenirs, and buskers such as a youth who played Bach on amplified cello. It was all new to me but of course Mexicans roam the grounds as familiarly as if in their back yards.

Some drifted over to the Casa’s free, mid-afternoon performances on an outdoor stage with covered seating for some 250 people. Listeners with no experience or expectations as well as musical devotees sat through these shows.

Myra Melford, Ben Goldberg, Israel Cupich, Gabriel Puentes, Miguel Costero at Casa de Lago stage; photo by Rafael Arriaga

Leandre did not perform with her dozen pupils, youngsters relative to Derbez, who is in his early ‘60s. She had tutored them on free improv strategies, emphasizing boldness, commitment to their instruments, and the importance of listening to each other. The basic advice was evidently taken to heart by the two guitarists, two players of synth and electronics, several percussionists, a pianist, bassist, woman with a sitar and man blowing high-pitched bamboo Japanese flutes. Their combinations were not all inspired, but there were no disasters and some bright moments.

On the following afternoon, Melford and Goldberg delved into their intricate, often reflective compositions that open wide for improvisation. Myra, although physically small, can dominate a grand piano, exploding from precise figurations into massive clusters, keyboard-length sweeps and propulsive rhythmic episodes without ever losing her place. Ben blows the quirkiest of melodies with composure, his tone even across the clarinet’s wide range. He employed circular breathing softly in passages akin to long, bluesy sighs.

Myra Melford and Joelle Leandre image © Rafael Arriaga

Joining them, Leandre used her bass as a physical extension with which to roughhouse. This set and the next day’s, in which Melford and Goldberg collaborated after just one rehearsal of their distinctive repertoire with Gabriel Puentes on drums, Luis Miguel Costero, percussion, and Israel Cupich on double-bass, won them all new fans.

Derbez, Costero, Melford, Goldberg, Cupich, Puentes

However, I already knew of Melford, Goldberg and Leandre’s prowess. It was the joyful and multiform aspects of two sets I witnessed at the club Jazzatlán that convinced me unconventional musical performance is alive and well in Mexico City. 

Jazzamoart (at sculpture, back to camera), Mauricio Sotelo, Alain Derbez, Gabriel Puentes

Derbez played soprano sax and blues harp; Puentes, who came to Mexico City from his native Chile in 2000 to record the soundtrack for the crime film Amores perros and never left, sat at the traps. Mauricio Sotelo wore a Chapman Stick and had within reach unique invented instruments, metal sculptures to pluck, strike or bow, hand-forged by his brother Francisco, with whom he co-leads the heavy metal/prog-rock band Cabezas de Cera (Wax Heads). Pianist Ana Ruiz, who has proudly played free since 1972, influenced by Cecil Taylor, among others, was at the back of the stage.

Ana Ruiz

Behind her two tall cardboard figures, resembling the towering Toltec statues I’d seen in the Museum of Anthropology, were propped against the wall. As the band began and its music quickly developed from tentative licks into a full rush of voluminous sound, visual artist Javier Vazquez Estupinan, better known as Jazzamoart, sliced at the cardboards with a box cutter and daubed them with paint.

I’ve seen visual artists work in the moment with improvised music in Chicago and in New York, typically from a point in the audience.. At Jazzatlán, Jazzamoart was onstage, action-painting as a member of the band. 

He was absent, however, when the second set began. Sotelo put down a throbbing bass line, Puentes used brushes for a nervous tattoo, Ruiz pressed dark chords, and Derbez blew the mournful theme of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.” True to Coleman’s harmolodic ways, they let their impulses shape a group exploration evoking distress unto anguish and empathetic concern, unbound while sustaining to the song’s essence. 

As the players reached a climax, bolts of brightly colored paper suddenly erupted from behind them. Giving new meaning to the phrase “sheets of sound,” the sheaves, shot forth in a seemingly endless stream by Jazzamoart, kept coming, flooding the stage.

Gabriel Puentes, backed by Jazzamoart sculptures

Ruiz, standing at her keyboard, laughed wildly, Puentes cut through the curling lengths with his sticks, Sotelo shifted to uplift, and Derbez, blowing with his eyes closed, unaware, increased his intensity. Their passion became merrily mad. The crowd, consisting mostly of couples in their 30s and 40s, watched with wonder, amusement and finally enthusiastic applause. At conclusion, everyone was smiling broadly — which is unusual in my experience of free improv events. 

The next night, Jazzamoart hosted a sumptuous wine-and-cheese party at his atelier. His paintings, dense with impasto renderings of musicians, Don Quixote, soccer players and figures such as Rembrandt with a saxophone, were hung or stacked everywhere. An amateur drummer, he had instruments for jamming in our gathering space. Melford and Goldberg were there, as were Derbez and his wife, photographer Rafael Arriaga, Puentes, Sotello, several companions and friends. They spoke of the weekend’s music, of their pasts — Puentes had abandoned an advanced degree in modern English literature to concentrate on music — and the present. 

Goldberg, Mandel, Jazzamoart, Melford, Derbez

All were positive about their careers to date, Sotello especially. He talked about how free improvisation was liberating, after years he’d spent in hard rock and heavy metal contexts. He mentioned musicians who had left for the U.S., Canada and Europe in pursuit of their careers, saying most had returned.

“It is expensive to live in the States,” he said, “and we are paid just as much here. There are plenty of opportunities to play in Mexico City, good venues, and talented people are coming from all over the world because they sense there is something happening here. Why not? We have a great future.”

Hyde Park Jazz Fest, summer’s last dance (photos)

Chicago’s Hyde Park Jazz Festival in the first days of fall (Sept. 23 & 24th) which were unusually hot, is an exceptional event, curated for creative artistry, local and otherwise, drawing a highly diverse crowd

Late afternoon jazz dance. All photos by Marc PoKempner unless otherwise credited.

to a fair that mixes popular and specialized performances at a range of boutique venues.

Produced by an independent 501c3, the 11-year-old Hyde Park Jazz Festival receives some support from the University of Chicago’s Office of Civic Engagement, and has co-founders in principals from the Hyde Park Jazz Society but relies for funding on grants it applies for on its own and solicited individual giving. The fest occurs mostly on the U of C campus, which strives to be more inviting to its surrounding black residential neighborhoods than it’s been for decades. The efforts seems to work — a racially integrated crowd of several thousand, skewing middle-aged but including students (the term had just started) and families with kids, attended, all free of charge ($5 donations were encouraged). Some set up discreet tents, inflatable loungers or camp chairs within hearing distance of the outdoor stages at either end of a pedestrian mall on the Midway, socializing while taking in sun and street food. Others took refuge in the darker, cooler venues of the Logan Center for the Arts, the DuSable Museum, the Smart Museum or the Little Black Pearl art and design center on 47th St. 

Hyde Park Jazz Fest audience in the Midway.

No way to be everywhere, hear everything. My idea of fun.

Beckoned, walking to the site, by the muted trumpet of Marquis Hill in drummer Makaya McCraven’s band with rare, pleasing vibes-guitar duo (Joel Ross and Matt Gold, respectively) and in-demand bassist Junius Paul. Glanced in on Thelonious Monk’s biographer Robin D.G. Kelley‘s talk, hustled to the premiere of the Bamako*Chicago Sound System, flutist extraordinaire Nicole Mitchell’s collaboration with Malian kora player Ballake Sissoko,

Bamako*Chicago Sound System, Nicole Mitchell sixth from left, Ballake Sissoko farthest right

balafon virtuoso Fassery Diabaté and singer Fatim Kouyaté with Chicago vocalist Mankwe Ndos,bassist Josh Abrams, percussionist Jovina Armstrong and former Chicagoan guitarist Jeff Parker.

Amina Claudine Myers

This was swaying, tuneful music, superficially light as a breeze but with transparent, undulating layers of activity. I presented Ms. Mitchell with the Jazz Journalists Association’s 2017 Jazz Award for Flutist of the Year — it is her eighth consecutive such honor — and she accepted it mirthfully before the performance. As always, her personal improvisations are melody-rich, and she performed one solo that was genuinely edgy, pushing her instrument and the song’s formal limitations, too. See Lauren Deutsch’s photos of Nicole Mitchell for apt visualizations of her music. The cross-cultural ease of Bamako*Chicago Sound System’s ensemble is heartening.

A few blocks away, at the Hyde Park Union Church, Amina Claudine Myers performed gospel songs from her childhood on piano. I only heard part of the performance, I think she played organ and sang, as well. Myers, a foundational member around 1965 of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians is still active in its New York chapter, though she’s less well-known than many of her AACM cohort. Her experience with her spiritual material is undeniable, and of course it imbues jazz.

Ben Goldberg, clarinet

Clarinetist Ben Goldberg, from the Bay Area, cast a secular if similarly ethereal ambiance in the Logan Center performance penthouse (9th floor looking towards the Lake) when night came on. He considered compositions of Thelonious Monk, 100th birthday boy/immortal genius. Almost a third of the full house cleared out after the second long episode in which he thoughtfully deconstructed such compositions as “Work,” “Ask Me Now,” “Mysterioso” and the hymn “Abide with Me.” Said Goldberg, “I understand, solo clarinet is not for everyone,” and when the room had re-settled, added, without rancor, “The lightweights are gone.” His evocations of Monk’s themes, phrase by phrase, started at high point of understanding and went up from there.

Bill McHenry and Andrew Cyrille, photo by Dennis McDonough

I missed a lot — hometown favorites Ari Brown, Dee Alexander, Tomeka Reid, too many others — but happily heard drummer Andrew Cyrille and tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry in a large hall in International House. A broadly-informed, highly skillful and imaginative drummer, Cyrille is still most associated with his 1960’s – ’70s collaboration with pianist Cecil Taylor, documented on the two masterpieces Unit Structures and Conquistador!, although prior to Taylor he’d supported Coleman Hawkins and Mary Lou Williams, among others. It’s less often recalled that he recorded what may be the first all solo drums album, What About? in 1971 (and another, The Loop, in ’78), the historic four-drummer album Pieces of Time (with Kenny Clarke, Famadou Don Moyé and Milford Graves in ’84), has

Andrew Cyrille concentrates on tom-toms with his mallets; photo by Dennis McDonough

led and recorded several distinctive ensembles from the ’70s through last year’s The Declaration of Musical Independence featuring guitarist Bill Frisell, synthesist Richard Teitelbaum and bassist Ben Street, as well as Trio 3 with reedsman Oliver Lake and bassist Reggie Workman, and this duet project with McHenry (recorded as Proximity).

I’ve known Cyrille personally since profiling him for DownBeat in the ’80s. I traveled with him briefly in the Soviet Union, invited him to address Jazz Journalists Association meetings at the New School Jazz program (where he’s taught for decades) and do lecture-demonstrations at my NYU classes. His distinctive strengths are embedded in the extraordinary range and responsiveness of his sensibility.

Cyrille can wield and drive a slashing attack or underlie a passage with sustained but muted drama. He is always structurally and compositionally aware, so purposeful, but he’s also quite willing to go with a collaborator’s flow. He tunes his drums carefully, yet will play anything — I’ve seen him stand from behind his kit, put his sticks to chairs,

Andrew Cyrille, NYC, 2012, photo by Sánta István Csaba

stands, tables, the wall and the floor until he returns to his stool without having missed a beat. He is a jazz master, if not yet acknowledged as such by the National Endowment of the Arts nonetheless known to fans of improvised music worldwide. Here he’s playing a snare with his teeth or tongue, like Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Guy mouthing guitar strings.

McHenry is a fine match, exploring horn motifs steadily, methodically, free to do anything/go anywhere but hewing to his own clear logic. Together, they exemplified a balanced partnership intent on physically generating and shaping sound.

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Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

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