The Jewel In The Lotus

構成数 : 1枚
合計収録時間 : 00:00:00
Jazz -funk fans must have been taken aback when multi-instrumentalist and composer Bennie Maupin's Jewel in the Lotus was released by Manfred Eicher's ECM imprint in 1974. For starters, it sounded nothing like Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters recording, which had been released the year before to massive sales and of which Maupin had been such an integral part. Head Hunters has remained one of the most reliable sales entries in Columbia's jazz catalog into the 21st century. By contrast, Jewel in the Lotus sounded like an avant-garde jazz record, but it stood outside that hard-line camp, too, because of its open and purposeful melodies that favored composition and structured improvising over free blowing. Jazz after 1970 began to move in so many directions simultaneously it must have felt like it was tearing itself apart rather than giving birth to so many new and exciting musics. Considered carefully, however, Jewel in the Lotus was the perfect realization of the skills acquired by Maupin from the mid-'60s on, when he had played in bands led by Marion Brown, McCoy Tyner, and Pharoah Sanders. He'd even recorded an album under his own name in 1967 entitled Almanac. Maupin was first heard by the masses, however, when he played bass clarinet on the landmark Bitches Brew session by Miles Davis, and as a member of Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi and Sextant groups. He was the lone holdover when Hancock formed the Headhunters, who blasted their way onto FM radio and into the ears of fans who also dug Earth, Wind & Fire and P-Funk. Maupin's band for this set contained close friends and musical allies encountered over the years. For starters, fellow Headhunter Bill Summers and Hancock himself are on this date, with drummer Billy Hart and versatile electric and acoustic bassist Buster Williams, who were both members of the earlier Hancock group. The other drummer on the set (there was one in the right and one in the left channel), the criminally under-recorded Frederick Waits, was a former skin man for Motown and John Lee Hooker who Maupin knew from his hometown in Detroit. Charles Sullivan, who plays trumpet on two cuts, was someone Maupin encountered in his travels in New York and jammed with. Jewel in the Lotus is not exactly a "lost" jazz classic. ECM kept it in print for many years on vinyl, but 2007 saw its first official CD release. That said, it has been traded widely on the Internet and vinyl copies of any edition command major dollars in record stores and in online auctions. There is good reason for this: it is a classic of 1970s spiritual jazz, and as much as any recording on Strata East or Black Jazz, Maupin's ECM offering is a wonder of arrangement and composition with gorgeous ensemble play, long yet sparse passages, space, and genuine strangeness. Maupin plays all of his reeds and flute in addition to glockenspiel here; Summers' percussion effects include a water-filled garbage can. The two drummers swirling around in different channels don't ever play the same thing, but counter and complement one another. And Hancock plays some of the most truly Spartan and lyrically modal piano in his career here. From the six seconds of silence that introduce the percussive beginnings of "Ensenada," with Williams' acoustic bass on a pulse line, Waits' marimba inside a tight scale, Summers' bells, and Hancock's ghostly piano, you know you are on a journey. It doesn't matter whether that music is jazz, classical, or avant-garde. It's a journey into sound and silence. When Maupin on flute fronts the rest of the group as they enter with long-held notes and Hart begins flitting around the top with sticks playing the rims of his tom-toms, the magic is already transpiring. The music is somewhere in the twilight, perhaps better yet in the first emerging pink of a new day, where everything seems transparent because it is partially hidden from view. The ringing ostinato Hancock introduces about halfway through in the middle register is rhythmic, not
録音 : ステレオ (Studio)