Dama Bëgga Ñibi (I Want To Go Home)
By Aron and the Jeri Jeri Band
Globe-trotting, expat keyboard player Aron Ottignon – London, Paris and most recently Berlin – made his reputation in Auckland in the late 1990s in the wake of Nathan Haines’ breakthrough melding of jazz, hip-hop and funk.
Alongside fellow keyboard player Mark de Clive-Lowe, Ottignon was of a new generation of innovative jazz musicians, and they took their sounds to dance parties and clubs across the planet.
Ottignon recorded for the prestigious Blue Note label but this latest project on his own Urban Trout label came when he and Senegalese percussionist Bakane Seck met in Berlin, where Seck was confined during Covid.
With other Senegalese musicians – including the great singer/guitarist Baaba Maal on the extraordinarily emotional Teddoungal – they’ve blended West African styles (notably the Afropop fusion style of mbalax) with discrete and rhythm-driven jazz.
The result is emotional synth-funk (the longing in the title track, the Weather Report-influenced Mama Djuma), mesmerising passages of Afro-ambient soul (Ngaldoore with vocalist Boy Aka) and hints of Afro-Cuban rhythms.
There are tracks of dance with driving percussion (Kaolack), that distinctively high and quavering vocal style from the region (here by Samuel Dubois, Sidy Diop, Horatio Luna and others) and, on The Return of the Golden Egg, a kind of prog-rock jazz-funk. However, it’s not a dance party album, though some material will pump up live or sit well with remixers.
Rather, it’s a more measured collection, which has already received high praise in Mojo (“post-modern mbalax mash-ups”), Uncut (“electronically adventurous Senegalese blues”) and Britain’s Financial Times (“shape-shifting electronic haze” and “firecracker percussion”).
US website The Quietus picked it among its January albums of the month: “Elements of jazz, afrobeats, afrofunk, reggae and electronic music, a mix of sounds that is archetypal of the influence of the African diaspora.”
Ottignon and this band – which has already played in Dakar, the capital of the political powder keg that is Senegal – have tapped a rich source of music, culture and traditions, and this sounds like the start of something more than an end point.
In Green EP
By Taylor Griffin
Auckland drummer Taylor Griffin is an equally well-travelled musician, with New Orleans, New York, London and Italy on his CV. He’s of a younger generation but also has a connection with Nathan Haines, who co-produced the six pieces on this, Griffin’s debut. Haines also guests on flute for the Latin jazz-funk of the groove-riding title track, and on soprano sax for the swirling rhythms of Magnetic.
It’s a measure of the regard in which Griffin is held that among the other players are guitarists Geoff Ong (pop and rock in his grasp) and Robert Picot, a music teacher and honours graduate from the jazz school at the University of Auckland.
Others across this simmering debut include the gifted vocalist Rachel Clarke (also a jazz graduate who has led her own groups) and the soulful Saia Folau. Polish-born keyboardist Michal Martyniuk’s Resonate album was a finalist in the jazz category at the 2020 music awards.
With trumpet from Guy Harrison (of the acclaimed collective Circling Sun) and sax by Charlie Isdale – a member of tabla player Manjeet Singh’s Indo-jazz crossover outfit Takadimi – In Green is accomplished music of considerable breadth, ranging from the ballad Let’s Just Talk, featuring Martyniuk, to diving headlong into jazz-rock for the aggressive Pot Shot, with Picot unleashing the kind of firepower guitarist Al Di Meola deployed in his fusion days.
And that reference point in the jazz-rock crossover of the 1980s is also evident on the slippery Catch, which rides on popping bass and horns with Ong’s fluid but restrained guitar solo. Here, Clarke – who is a subtle binding feature of the album – leans towards the entrancing, wordless style of a soaring Flora Purim.
The final, 75-second Fly Away – snippets of studio chatter before a short drum part – is unnecessary and, although none of these pieces breaks new ground, as a sophisticated calling card for all the players, notably Griffin for his writing and playing, In Green certainly grabs and rewards attention.
These albums are available digitally (In Green is released on February 29 on vinyl).
