AN INDIAN'S LIFE (vinyl)

Description

The Indian from Batignolles By explicitly titling his new album 'An Indian's Life', double bassist and composer Henri Texier beautifully concludes an informal phonographic triptych – begun in 1993 with 'An Indian's Week' and continued in 2016 with 'Sky Dancers' – making the Native American cause and, beyond that, the almost mythological figure of the 'Indian', both the imaginary matrix and the poetic driver of his artistic endeavor. A MODEL FOR IDENTIFICATION It is no mystery to anyone who has followed his career even a little that Henri Texier has a profoundly serious and significant interest in the world of Native Americans. 'It's a passion that goes back to childhood,' he explains, 'A very intimate but rather unreflected thing that reconnects me to the little Parisian kid from Batignolles I was in the 50s, who loved playing cowboys and Indians and invariably chose the Indian side when others were drawn to the plastic revolver and the cowboy outfit... In a very confused way, the working-class Paris of my childhood, the Indians, elegance, freedom – all that is intimately linked in my imagination... Afterwards, of course, I introduced jazz into the mix... I made the connection between the genocide of Native Americans and the oppression suffered by African Americans, and I identified with this cursed part of America through jazz... It's a rather complex process actually, much more intimate than aesthetic, and which has no other link than imaginary with music.' - - THE VOICE OF THE 'OTHERS' For if Henri Texier ultimately succeeds once again in this new album in resonating with the Native American psyche, it is undoubtedly in this living relationship with memory, ancestors, and tradition that his music so sensitively re-engages each time. From his friends Carla Bley and Steve Swallow to the tutelary figure of Charles Mingus, each honored with a composition, as well as Don Cherry or Paul Motian, whose oft-reaffirmed influences surface here and there like marks of love and respect, Henri Texier never forgets to remind us of where he comes from, making his fundamentally welcoming music a space for dialogue between traditions and generations and for the 'recognition' of the other in all its differences. Henri Texier will never be an Indian, he knows it, just as he will never be Charles Mingus – but both meet in his music, and it is his genius to make his most intimate voice heard through this imaginary dialogue.