No Joke!

フリージャズ界の重鎮、ウィリアム・パーカー。妻パトリシア・ニコルソンを作詞・朗読に迎え、メッセージ性の強い内容に!

ベテランフリージャズコントラバス奏者、ウィリアム・パーカーの新作は妻のパトリシア・ニコルソンとのコラボレーション作。

ウィリアム・パーカーはニューヨークのブロンクスに生まれ、ジミー・ギャリソン、リチャード・デイビス、ウィルバー・ウェアらに師事。1970年代初頭から活動を始め、1980年代にピアニストのセシル・テイラーとの演奏で世間の注目を浴びる。

とりわけ2000 年代にリリースされた「O'Neal's Porch」「Raining on the Moon」「Sound Unity」「Double Sunrise Over Neptune」はいずれも各メディアにより高い評価を受けていて、2006年にはNameless Sound からResounding Vision Awardを受賞。

本作では妻であるパトリシア・ニコルソンを作詞・朗読に迎え、不公平や不平等などに芸術的誠実さと音楽で立ち向かう、堂々とした政治的作品となった。

パトリシア・ニコルソンの朗読が非常に独特で、何とも言えないアンニュイな雰囲気を生み出している。

On No Joke, Patricia Nicholsons radical poetry accompanies shape-shifting improvisations led by her husband, bassist William Parker, along with saxophonists James Brandon Lewis and Devin Brahja Waldman. The two sessions featured either Gerald Cleaver or Francisco Mela on drums, and violist Melanie Dyer played on the first, which is when the bulk of the album was recorded. "Flare Up" opens the album, a 19-minute barrage of stunning interplay between sax and viola, gradually becoming more furious and sporadic as Nicholson speaks of lies, blazing guns, and "red hats bathing in the river of illusion." The music reflects confusion, anger, chaos, and momentary feelings of sorrow, but it gradually ends up returning to the calmer, more ordered rhythm as the lyrics become more hopeful. "Little Black Kid with the Swollen Stomach" is the records only vocal selection without Nicholson, focusing on clashing saxophone lines before Mela cries out a Spanish translation of a poem by Parker that seems to point to music as a mode of survival. "Struggle" is a more compact statement about being struck down, silenced, and forced to learn everything one knows on the streets. After the sorrowful instrumental "Wilted Light as Flower," "No Joke" is another turbulent marathon with lyrics that seem to ramble at times but hit hardest when Nicholson lands on lines like "replacing humanity with righteous hatred." Like "Flare Up," it all concludes with a message of hope, except this time the music doesnt start to calm down before the end, bashing and scraping away until the final note. Truly powerful. ~ Paul Simpson