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ROIO of the Week [Recordings
of Indeterminate Origin]
When
Jazz Was Free
Why did America
turn its back on free jazz? Fortunately, Europe offered refuge. In fact,
post-World War II Europe was enlightened, perhaps forced by circumstances
to accept a non-leadership role in the new world but prepared to listen
to new sounds from all over the world.
Click on the panels to download artwork
Irene
Schweizer Trio With Dewan Motihar Trio & Friends
Jazz Meets
India Live [no label, 1CD]
Live in
Germany, 1967. Tk 1 in Donaueschingen Musiktage für zeitgenössische
Tonkunst, Oct 21, Tk 2 & 3 in Berlin Philharmonie, Nov 2.
Irene Schweizer was
26 when she performed with the Dewan Motihar Trio. While her contemporaries
like The Beatles had formed earlier in England and played Hamburg, Schweizer,
a Swiss, probably influenced by Cecil Taylor and Archie Shepp, had formed
a free jazz trio in Germany with Uli Trepte and Mani Neumeler.
Prog rock and avant
garde fans will recognise the duo as the founders of Guru Guru. Less than
a year later, the duo would form the Krautrock band with Jim Kennedy.
Guru Guru had one foot in jazz and the other in rock. They gave to the
Irene Schweizer Trio a heaviness only drummer Mani Neumeier could invent.
Schweizer
was part of the Feminist Improvising Group, whose members include Lindsay
Cooper, Maggie Nichols, Georgie Born and Sally Potter. At the time, this
was radical stuff. Women in jazz were relishing their role as players
and not just being the diva in front of the band. Schweizer has been compared
to Cecil Taylor in The Penguin Guide To Jazz.
This concert was
part of a series of shows recorded by Germany's SWF (Südwestfunk
Baden-Baden) station. The tour was in support of artists from around the
world and had the name Jazz Meets The World and included Americans like
The Archie Shepp Quartet, Germany's Globe Unity big band, France's Barney
Wilen, from India the Dewan Motihar Trio, flamenco jazz with the Pedro
Itturalde Sextet with Paco de Lucia and the Indonesian All-stars led by
Tony Scott. There was also a segment called Jazz meets Africa with Olatunji
and American Philly Joe Jones.
This show offered
covers only the Irene Schweizer Trio and is a merge of two excerpts recorded
from German radio that contains two versions of the long Manfred Schoof
composition, Brigach And Ganges, which features Indian classical music.
In turns, the jazz trio weighs in with the melody led by Schweizer's piano
then gives way to the sitar and tabla of the Dewan Motihar Trio. It is
a duel between free jazz and Indian raga. Neumeier's drumming thunders
while the Dewan Motihar Trio offer an intriguing Asian variant to heavy
drumming.
The tune comes to
live when Manfred Schoof and Barney Wilen bring on the horns. Then it
becomes a contest of Eastern and Western modalities as Motihar solos fiercely,
then Keshav Sathe's tabla and Kusum Thakur's tambura and again the maniacal
horns of Schoof and Wilen. Out of the storm, Motihar remains to render
a final pluck of the sitar and calmness returns.
The second version
of Brigach And Ganges is about six minutes shorter and seems a heavier
version or perhaps it was recorded differently with more emphasis on the
bass.
This
is not Keshav Sathe's first encounter with jazz. In 1961, he played together
with the harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler. Sathe moved to the UK in 1956
and was part of the Asian Music Circle. Even as Empire crumbled, all its
parts were in a fusion that created something new.
Listening to this
may suggest why America turned its back on free jazz. Was the rhythm too
alien to jazz's African roots? Inward looking America has been described
as conservative and parochial, by contrast a landlocked Europe has had
to look elsewhere to expand. Strangeness and strangers were to be co-opted
or conquered.
This fantastic music
(a very good recording, taken off radio but with some static) was shared
by Sammler KK on the Dime site. All thanks to him. It's quite a discovery
and revelation. Side by side and growing with popular music was this remarkable
development of east and west, world music before the term was coined.
At the time all things were possible. Unlike pop, this fusion was about
art and culture. These days everything is given a label with a sell-by
date. Even the sharing of music is no longer free but stealing. How can
ideas prosper and spread if not shared for free?
- Professor Red 
Click
on the highlighted tracks to download the MP3s (these are high quality,
stereo MP3s - sample rate of 192 kibit/s). As far as we can ascertain,
this recording has never been officially released.
These tracks are no longer available for download. Kindly email us at
mybigo@bigozine.com if you want
to download these tracks at a later time.
| |
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| Track
01 |
Brigach
And Ganges (Manfres Schoof) - 22:26
part 1a (14.2MB)
part 1b (6.0MB)
part 1c (4.1MB)
part 1d (6.7MB) |
| Track
02 |
Sun
Love (Mani Neumeier) - 20:49
part 2a (11.3MB)
part 2b (8.2MB)
part 2c (10.0MB) |
| Track
03 |
Brigach
And Ganges (Manfres Schoof) - 16:17
part 3a (10.6MB)
part 3b (11.7MB) |
Both shows rebroadcast
on WDR FM. Producer Joachim-Ernst Behrendt.
Lineup:
Irene Schweizer
Trio [Irene Schweizer p; Uli Trepte b; Mani Neumeier d]
Dewan Motihar
Trio [Dewan Motihar sitar/voc; Keshav Sathe tabla, Kusum Thakur tambura]
Manfred Schoof
cnt/tp,
Barney Wilen
ss/t
The original LP Jazz Meets India is long out-of-print. It appeared originally
on the SABA label Dec 23 1967. That first edition contained two tracks
Sun Love and Yaad. This LP was reissued by Polydor for wider distribution
in 1969 and included an extra track, Brigach And Ganges. It remains a
hard-to-find item. But Irene Schweizer continues to record as a soloist
and with guests. You can buy her album with drummer Han Bennink from 1997
here.
The rest of the Irene
Schweizer Trio returned as Guru Guru, and a nice sample of their work
remains the first album, UFO, which thankfully was reissued on CD in 2003
and remains in print on the Pilz label. It contains two extraordinary
songs Girl Call and Stone In. It also includes their notorious Der LSD
Marsch [The LSD March]. Order here.
The Dewan Motihar Trio can be heard on the Jazz Meets India recording.
One track, Yaad, was included on the 4CD box set Jazz Meets Asia that
was released by MPS/Universal in 1997. It is out-of-print.
Barney Wilen remained prolific till his death in 1996 but for a taste
of his early works, try Jazz sur Seine [Jazz In Paris], a work in collaboration
with three members of the Modern Jazz Quartet, playing French jazz tunes
and a nod to Monk with Epistrophy. Order here.
Manfred Schoof's European Echoes recorded in 1969 with Irene Schweizer,
Han Bennink and others can still be found as a used CD. It was reissued
in 2002. Order a brand new disc here.
For more... email mybigo@bigozine.com
with the message, "Put me on your mailing list."
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January
25, 2008
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