Kip Hanrahan | Desire develops an edge | American Clavé

The center of gravity of this record was formed by the labor of Kip Hanrahan, Jack Bruce, Steve Swallow, Puntilla Orlando Rios, Arto Lindsay, Elysee Pyronneau, Scott Marcus, Jon Fausty and David Rodriguez. Among others who sold or contributed their work, time and talent to the project were Ricky Ford, Ignacio Berroa, Jerry Gonzalez, Alberto Bengolea, Ti’Plume Ricardo Franck, Olufemi Claudette Mitchell, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Milton Cardona, John Stubblefield, Tico Harry Sylvain, Daniel Frieberg, Nancy Weiss, Yale Evelev, Paul Haines, Frisner Augustin, Molly Parley, Anton Fier, Sergio Brandao, Marlene Freeman-Semels, Jean Claude Jean, John Scofield, Jody Harris, Yoram Vazan, Edwin Ayala, Frank Rodriguez and Ralf Ridao. It was recorded during July, August and September 1982 and April and June 1983. The editing, overdubbing and mixing were done during October 1982 and January, March, April, May, June and July 1983. All the work was done at Latin/Eurosound Studios, New York City. Continue reading

American Clavé | Anthology 1980 – 1992

HOW TO CREATE AN AMERICAN CLAVE: PRAISE/SONGS FOR A RECORDING PROJECT Begin with two measures of music: three rhythmic strokes in the first measure, two in the second, sounded by wood on wood. You have then the Clave, the basic building/block of salsa, of Afro-Cuban jazz. But what magic transformation occurs when you think of musics under the umbrella of a label like “American Clave?” A rashly superficial assumption runs: salsified jazz, perhaps improvised Tin Pan Alley standards bongoed-up, Sten Kentonized-up, blaring brass choruses meeting a small battalion of percussion. That would be an easy enough music to create and sell, the “how to” established in recording studios and recording company executive suites for a half century. Thank the gods that Kip Hanrahan is one of those who the poet Rilke would have identified as a “lover of the difficult.” This recording project refused that easy way out, that casual slide Latinizing American standard tunes would have represented. This is a story of a musical visionary embracing an American spirit of radical invention, taking on the alchemy of how to make an American Clave. Listen to the beats of different drummers under the enchantment of gods who still ponder what kind of experiment America is…–Norman Weinstein Continue reading

Kip Hanrahan | Conjure | Music for the texts of Ishmael Reed | American Clavé

Ishmael Reed is a writer, poet, and speaker adept at the vernacular of black America, its sources, influences, imitators and condemnors. He’s a historian of sorts, and like the itinerant blues musician or the West African griot he’s a collector and chronicler of cultural icons that were stolen, spirited, and transplanted from Africa to the Carib and the U.S. Like all effective history, Reed’s is more than a mere presentation of sequential events. It’s a selective offering of significant relationships for black America and, by miscegenation and assimilation, all of America. Reed’s history is unabashedly mythical, strikingly imagistic, and disarmingly humorous while transfering the lyrical immediacy of oral literature to the written page. It’s been over five years since Kip Hanrahan initiated a project to put Reed’s words to film and music. The film project is still an idea, but in your hands is one of the best collaborations of music and poetry I’ve ever heard. Hanrahan has accumulated some of this generation’s most resourceful musicians from the Carib, from neo-gutbucket, from free-bop and from innovative elasto-funk to produce an aural backdrop as perspicacious and lyrical as the poems are musical. Each player is skilled in a particular vernacular American form and several are strong, evocative soloists. Hanrahan ably facilitated the recording by requesting that David Murray, Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, Lester Bowie, Carman Moore, Taj Mahal. and Alien Toussaint provide compositions to poems or texts of their choice, which resulted in the melange of songs. For Hanrahan’s daring conception, the collective efforts of the musicians, and the words of Ishmael Reed, I’d like to move, that the church say amen. — Don Palmer Continue reading