Organic Music Theatre

I’ve become increasingly fond of Easter over the years, not so much for the religious significance (although there have been times…) or for the over-indulgence in chocolate (but again, who am I to break with tradition?). It’s just a lovely time of the year – relaxing, lighter, warmer and above all less hysterical, less feverish than Christmas.

It’s also two weeks (if you’re a teacher) with few commitments, other than to loaf about idly, oodles of time to spaff away in the knowledge there’s plenty more where that came from.

In short, we have time to squander… (I love a bit of squandering, me). Time to watch a 40-minute clip of hopeless jazz-hippies in a state of many-stringed rapture? I think so…

Don Cherry

(I’d originally sat down to watch “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” (I’m also partial to a bit of Ray Harryhausen) but on a whim I thought I’ll just look something up on YouTube.)

My peregrinations around Bandcamp took me about a month ago to this fabulous, splendidly avant-garde record by trumpeter Don Cherry and French composer Jean Schwarz which comes from a live recording made in Paris in 1977. Give this a listen:

I’ve referred to Cherry as a trumpeter, but he was a genuine multi-instrumentalist and here plays an Ngoni (sp?) which (as any fule know) is a traditional West African stringed instrument (but which the liner notes call a Doussn’ Gouni). The contrast between an old-as-time instrument such as the ngoni with the stubbornly opaque, abrasively modern electronics that Schwarz provides is fascinating. (And more than a little funky…). I’m very much enjoying the incomprehensible vocals and brassy yelps that punctuate the earthiness the African strings.

You love to hear it. In fact, so much so that here’s a bit more…

This concert has only recently been released by the worthy folk at Transversales Disques, who rescued it from some (possibly metaphorical) dusty vault of recordings made by Schwarz, and all I can say is that the world is a noticeably better place for it. Good work…

There’s no record of any live performances of the pair on YouTube, but there is this wonderful (aforementioned) 40-minute live performance from the previous year of Cherry’s Organic Music Theatre ensemble in Rome. It features Nana Vasconcelos on percussion, a previously unknown to me Italian guitarist (Giampiero Pramaggiore) and Cherry’s wife Moki Cherry playing some other exotic stringed instrument and at one point leading the dancing. Moki was an internationally renowned artist (she designed the set here) but does look a little unsure of herself at times (in a Linda McCartney sort of way).

I’ve said before how much I admire unswaying confidence in the barking mad and (Moki apart) there’s some real gimp-mask, Sun Ra energy on display here.

The whole performance is choc-full of delightful moments. Highlights include the berimbau solo by Vasconcelos at 16:29; the series of “Am I doing it right?” glances left and right from Moki that start at 21:25; Cherry on the ngoni at 23:30 followed by a beautifully delicate guitar solo by Pramaggiore; Cherry’s sublimely crisp trumpet solo at 15:30, preceded by a ridiculous Beefhartian piece on what I think is his “pocket trumpet” at 14:29.

By 33:30, Moki’s 12-year-old daughter, Neneh is on stage singing along and joining in the dancing (and one of the comments claims that the lad banging away on some other percussive instrument is Eagle-Eye Cherry – not sure about this…)

C’mon… it’s Easter, who hasn’t got 40 minutes to piss away?

It’s more a question of whether you prefer to do so watching Sinbad crossing swords with a six-armed Kali or dreaming away the time in the company of the Don Cherry and his wondrous, mystical chums at the Organic Music Theatre.

Sometimes life spoils us…