Y'Y

Description

With his new album Y'Y (pronounced "eey-eh, eey-eh"), Brazilian composer and pianist Amaro Freitas takes a step forward in his musical creation. Originally from the coastal city of Recife in northeastern Brazil, Amaro was drawn to the Manaus region, located in the Amazon basin, about 4,600 kilometers to the west, in 2020. It is his exploration that inspired this album. Side A explores the connection to the land and ancestors, paying tribute to the forests and rivers of northern Brazil, both through the music and the album title, Y'Y, a word written in the indigenous Sateré Mawé dialect that means water or river. On Side B, Y'Y showcases the ties that bind the global community of afro-avant-jazz. Bringing together multi-instrumentalist Shabaka Hutchings from the London scene, New York harpist Brandee Younger, Cuban bassist Aniel Someillan, guitarist Jeff Parker, and drummer Hamid Drake, the music creates an artistic conversation by weaving together jazz traditions from around the world while remaining rooted in the unique sounds and rituals of Afro-Brazilian and indigenous cultures. On Y'Y, Freitas continues to integrate ancestral knowledge into music by offering his fresh and decolonized interpretation of Brazilian jazz and sharing music that could very well shatter our preconceived notions of what jazz can be.