MAHAKALI (vinyl)

Description

For Gary Gritness, there is no in-between, no lukewarm, no 50-50. A tribute is either a perfect copy: 'like Jesse Davis with Charlie Parker or symphony orchestras with the grand repertoire.' Or it's a proposition that has nothing to do with the original. From the first seconds of Mahakali, his frankly house reinterpretation of Don Cherry's late seventies and early eighties compositions, it's easy to understand which side he falls on. Especially since he isn't revisiting the American trumpeter's most iconic period. At that time, the former collaborator of Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane was exploring traditional world music on Brown Rice (1975) and Hear & Now (1977) or pop and new wave formats on Home Boy, Sister Out (1985). Something not so far from Jon Hassell and Brian Eno's early electronic-ethnic experiments around the same time. - - What the French producer and multi-instrumentalist admires in the American trumpeter is his deep and sincere curiosity. 'When he drew inspiration from African sounds and music, it wasn't to show that he was mixed-race. It wasn't cultural reappropriation or disguise; no, he was himself.' And as is sometimes the case with a sonic biopic, one can see more of the author's self-portrait than the hero's portrait. 'Perhaps there was a transfer, it's true, I recognized myself in him,' confesses Gary Gritness. And when he laments that some have pigeonholed Don Cherry as 'free jazz,' one might wonder if the French producer and musician isn't implicitly talking about himself, he who cut his teeth in electro-funk as well as jazz, rap, and house. He who worked with the father of ancestral soul Boddhi Satva as well as with the Zimbabwean mbira master Jacob Mafuleni. He who gives the impression of also being a true jack-of-all-trades... even if the term 'annoys' him: 'you don't call Belmondo a jack-of-all-trades because he made comedies and Godard films...' On the other hand, if there's one term that suits him when talking about Mahakali, it's 'fusion.' 'For me, it's not a dirty word: I like Weather Report or Steve Khan's albums with Anthony Jackson, Steve Jordan, and Manolo Badrena.' And a small detail that means a lot: throughout the album, Gary Gritness paid particular attention to the timpani, perfect percussion to bridge the gap between acoustic and electronic. 'When Antoine [Rajon, the founder of the Komos label] suggested I make this album, it was a period when I particularly wanted to use extremely limited, basic equipment, perfect for tearing up clubs at 3 AM,' when people want it to hit hard. In Blue Note's heyday, they made hundreds of albums with just a piano, double bass, and drums. In electronic music, it's the same thing: with a reduced setup, you have millions of possibilities.' The same goes for the team around him, kept to a minimum: Vincent Thekal on saxophones, Olivier Portal on bass, and Ballaké Sissoko on kora for 'Universal Mother.' And certainly no trumpet, of course, to remain faithful to his radical conception of 'tribute.' Tense, aggressive, provocative, his vision of Don Cherry will surprise, annoy, explode, bluff, disorient, shake up, and impress. It will make people dance, dream, think, vibrate, and talk. In short, it will not leave anyone indifferent. That's good, because it's exactly a character trait of Don Cherry that Gary Gritness wants to embody: 'when he made his 80s records, he didn't care what people thought. I especially tried to maintain that un-cautious state of mind.' --- Mathieu Durand ---