In February 2021, percussionist, pianist, and composer Joe Chambers issued Samba de Maracatu, his first album for Blue Note since 1998. Just under a year later, he returns with Dance Kobina. The earlier album reflected a famous samba rhythm birthed in the northern Brazilian state of Pernambuco, amid the West African diaspora. This set, recorded in New York and Montreal, continues its exploration of historic links between jazz, Latin, and African musics, focusing attention on guaguancó, a subgenre of Cuban rumba. He plays ...
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In February 2021, percussionist, pianist, and composer Joe Chambers issued Samba de Maracatu, his first album for Blue Note since 1998. Just under a year later, he returns with Dance Kobina. The earlier album reflected a famous samba rhythm birthed in the northern Brazilian state of Pernambuco, amid the West African diaspora. This set, recorded in New York and Montreal, continues its exploration of historic links between jazz, Latin, and African musics, focusing attention on guaguancó, a subgenre of Cuban rumba. He plays drums throughout and vibraphone on four tracks, in ensembles ranging from piano trios to sextet. He co-produced the album with pianist Andrés Vial. Its nine tunes include three by the leader.Set opener "This Is New" -- a standard written by Kurt Weill that Chambers recorded first with Chick Corea on 1966's Tones for Joan's Bones -- is a hard-swinging post-bop take delivered by Chambers, pianist Richard Germanson, and bassist Mark Lewandowski. While his triomates play it bright and straight, Chambers adds Afro-Latin accents, stretching tempo and beat, and creating a multi-dimensional dialogue between players. The title cut, one of two penned by Vial, showcases propulsive connections between son, guaguancó, and West African calypso. Vial plays piano, with Ira Coleman on bass, Caoilainn Power on alto sax, Michael Davidson on vibes, Chambers on the kit, and Congolese percussionist Elli Miller Maboungou on Ngoma drums. It rumbles with undulant, percolating dance rhythms amid killer vibes and piano solos and locked-in rhythmic interplay. "Caravanserai" is a Chambers' original offered as a very fast rumba. The composer plays drums and vibes that he judiciously places between rippling lines from Germanson and syncopated Latin percussion from Emilio Valdes Cortes, as Lewandowski holds the center. Vial's "City of Saints" is a brooding modal post-bop number that juxtaposes long lyric lines via the dreamy communication between Power's alto and Davidson's vibes. A circular Coleman bass vamp and Afro-Latin rhythms from Chambers and Maboungou wind it together. "Gazelle Suite," another Chambers' original, is rhythmically intense. His rifling, undulant kit work calls forth vibes, marimba, bombos legueros (an Argentine hand drum made from a tree trunk), and Ngoma drums. Vial also plays piano and joins with Power to channel those beats, even as dynamics, tempos, keys, and harmonics shift toward a striking, resonant conclusion. Joe Henderson's "Power to the People" is delivered by a quintet that includes Chambers on drums and vibes and Marvin Carter on tenor. The open modal lyric is accented and pushed to the fore by the intersected rhythms of guaguancó, rumba, son, and guaracha. The bookend is a trio reading of Karl Ratzer's "Moon Dancer" with Germanson and Lewandowski, with Chambers doubling on vibes; his rhythm imaginatively combines guaguancó and rumba over the rhythm section's swinging post-bop. The holistic, evolutionary approach and stellar performances on Dance Kobina make it Chambers' finest as a leader for Blue Note. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi
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