Manafonistas

A definite highlight of Jazzfest Berlin 2022, memorable and steeped in history: the concert of PETER BRÖTZMANN w HAMID DRAKE (dr) and MAJID BEKKAS (guimbri). Brötzmann’s playing was highly economic and expressive at its best (he played all his instruments). With the capacities that are left to him as an octogenarian it became an extraordinary strong statement, a truly master set and strong legacy with an emphatic imperative for passionate, uncompromising, impacting expression: very personal but reaching much much further than that – a testimony that has not lost its thorns!

It was a gift that both sides found together, the festival and Brötzmann, met each other IN the festival and reinforced each other. What made it special and outstanding: the three main lines of the festival, (historical) Freejazz, Folk Traditions and Chicago, came together here in such a strong way. The basis of that musical meeting was deep spiritual trust and the result here was – to use a Dutch expression – bloedmooi, bloody beautiful and wild. You have the future when you have the past.

It is food for thought, how these three energy poles, African, European and Afro-American fused. Hamid Drake, the epic-rhythmic narrator, brightened up the deeper ground of that bond and made clear the deep trace and glowing fire Brötz left in the field.

KOMПOUSSULĂ, a commission of Berlin Jazzfest 2022: preparatory meeting in Amsterdam (September 2022)
 

The title means compass or, in the languages of the members of the musician crew: Kompass, compas, pusula, kompas, busola, boussole …

The line-up from left to right: Sebastien Beliah (b), Olga Koziel (voc/perc), Pierre Borel (sax), Louis Laurain (tr), Maryana Golovchenko (voc), Kateryna Ziabliuk (p, voc), Samuel Hall (dr), Sanem Kalfa (voc, electr, vcl), Joachim Badenhorst (sax/cl, voc, electr), George Dumitriu (viola, vln, g, electr)

The four female vocalists from left to right: Maryana Golovchenko, Olga Koziel, Kateryna Ziabliuk, Sanem Kalfa.

This unique crew contain or are connected to a couple of groups that all play the Jazzfest during the four days (November 3-6): Black Sea Songs, Lumpeks, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestor, Die Hochstapler and members of French Umlaut Big Band.

And a still wider spectrum is closely connected to these sound worlds and approaches in more concerts: there is the eminent trio of Lucian Ban, Mat Maneri and John Surman with its Bartók program Transylvanian Folk Songs, there is French drummer Camille Emaille with her Bulgarian-tinged group OTTO, the Italian duo Tarozzi/Walker will perform and the large Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble from Yerevan.

Jazzfest Berlin is on soon … ! Find the program HERE and background with short musician interviews and essay in the festival’s digital guide (English and German) HERE

“In its artistic treatment of Bartók’s Transylvanian field recordings, Ban and Maneri’s trio, completed by John Surman, is one example of how elements of Eastern European folk traditions continue to resonate within contemporary music and how these are registered, probed and reimagined against the background of personal and contemporary jazz influences. This is not about something sounding “folky”. It is about finding enrichment as the playing flows, whether it comes from a folk source or from the opposite direction, being incorporated within that folk source as a result of improvisation, where the dialectical process itself becomes audible. Variations of this can also be found in a younger and the very youngest generation, whose tracks in this year’s Jazzfest programme lead towards the lands around the Black Sea, to Ukraine and Poland. They are characterised by an intensifying playful approach, based on rawness, individuality, the marks of suffering and the hidden magic of the traditional – capturing and transforming the energies of their sound in a passionate, communal atmosphere of the now.”(from “A Dynamic Process of Continual Interactions: on traces, techniques and tensions in the encounter of jazz and folk”)