Dom Salvador JID024

至高!!JAZZ IS DEAD最新作はドン・サルヴァドールによる極上のジャズ・サンバ集!!

アジムスやマルコス・ヴァーリ、さらにはイルドンやジョアン・ドナートなどブラジルの名だたる名プレイヤーを招いてきた、エイドリアン・ヤングとアリ・シャヒード・ムハンマドによるJAZZ IS DEADシリーズ。本作でフィーチャーされたのは、60年代よりジャズ・ボッサ/サンバを支えるピアニストとしてシーンに貢献し、70年代にはブラック・リオ・ムーブメントの歴史的名盤となる『SOM, SANGUE E RACA』を残した伝説のプレイヤー、ドン・サルヴァドール。根強い人気を誇り、過去にもJAZZ IS DEAD作品に参加していた彼をメインに据えた本作は、上品ながらも粘り気のある極上のジャズ・サンバに仕上がっています。全ブラジル音楽ファン必聴、至高の一枚です!!!

Pianist and composer Dom Salvadors impact on Brazilian music is incalculable. He is the architect of the influential 1971 album Som, Sangue e Raca with his group Abolicao; for that album he combined Black American funk and soul with Afro-Brazilian samba and bossa. This work set the stage for bands like Banda Black Rio and Tim Maia. Salvador has been living in the U.S. since 1973 and, for more than 40 years, plays a steady gig with his trio at the River Cafe in Brooklyn. Jazz Is Dead label bosses Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad focused on Brazilian music in 2025. Their collaboration with the pianist is a cross-cultural conversation and an homage to Salvadors achievement. He plays piano and electric piano here; his collaborators hired a band of North American and Brazilian musicians, an orchestra, and a choir to record at Younges Linear Labs studio. At the pianists insistence, JID024 was recorded in analog without edits, to deliver an accurate record of the spontaneous, exploratory celebration. The principals jointly composed these eight pieces -- sometimes on the spot. Opener "Os Ancestrais" weds a simple samba groove with East Indian-sounding guitars, an insistent Leo Costa tom-tom/hi-hat beat, whistles, strings, and Salvadors celebratory, syncopated, wordless scat singing. By contrast "Nao Podermos o Amar Para" sounds like a funkier Sergio Mendes & Brasil 77 with chorus vocals in Portuguese flowing over polyrhythms, Salvadors Afro-Brazilian funk vamps with interlaced guitars, rumbling bass, hand percussion, and modal horns, all gradually increasing dynamics and drama. "Debaixo da Ponte" is a highlight with its mantra-like piano vamp laying a foundation for dueling hand drums, trap kit, and swinging horns as funk, samba, and driving post-bop deliver a hard, danceable groove as piano, baritone, and alto saxophones, bleating trombone, swirling flutes, and a circular bassline delve deep into the Afro-Brazilian jazz-funk maelstrom. While the gorgeous "Musica Faz Parte de Mim" is a lush, sultry bossa-jazz love song carried by the choir, flutes, trap kit, and basslines lie under Salvadors brightly illustrative pianism (as an alto saxophone quotes from Marvin Gayes "Whats Goin On") while Younge delivers telegraph-key pulses via electric harpsichord. "Minha Melanina" offers elegant, swinging, samba funk with a swelling horn section entwined with the choir. Salvador digs montunos and Afro-Caribbean grooves out of his instrument, adding color, texture, and depth. The driving, jittery "Eletricidade," is a harmonically advanced rhythm orgy involving hand drums, a trap kit, marimba, and organ crisscrossing deep funk, samba, soul, and post-bop with mid-register Fender Rhodes harmonies from Salvador amid kinetic drum breaks and horns channeling Fela Kuti. Closer "Safira" reflects Stevie Wonders "Higher Ground" and Bob Marleys "Jammin" in a humid collision of hypnotic polyrhythms, reeds, and brass. The Jazz Is Dead crew outdid themselves here. JID024 reveals that Salvador, at age 87 in 2025, is still capable of breaking new ground while continuing to connect the harmonic and rhythmic cultures of Black American jazz-funk and Afro-Brazilian samba with abundant skill, creative vision, and melodic intensity. ~ Thom Jurek