Wadada Leo Smith's "Heart's Reflections:" Electric Music That Isn't According to Formula

Put Wadada Leo Smith's Organic group's Heart's Reflections (Cuneiform Records Rune 330/331) on and listen. From the beginning you know that this isn't some warmed over fusion from yesterday. Pheeroan Aklaf's bass drum rings out like a barrel. None of the muffled "kick" sound. He plays rock-funk with all the complexity of his swing and freetime playing. Complex, varied, yet pushing the feel ahead. Wadada sounds not like a Miles clone, but like someone who is furthering his own playing after coming out of the experience of playing Miles's electric music (with Yo Miles). There's a large band at play here: two people manipulating electric sounds on the laptop. The distinct one-two punch of Brandon Ross and Michael Gregory on electric guitar, who weave in and out of the music in their own way, as themselves. Then there's the two-bass hit of John Lundberg and Skuli Sverrisson, plus two more electric guitarists, violin. alto and tenor and, oh yes, Angelica Sanchez on keyboards and piano, a great addition because she goes far beyond the funk licks some players would expect to play. Like Jarrett in Miles's "Live-Evil" band, she takes her own playing style and adjusts it to the context. She enriches the music in a very good way by so doing.

This is no rote funk thing. Rhythms are loosely jazzesque, sometimes even free, and the Wadada compositions go way beyond a few ostinatos and running lines.

This is electric music that dares to be art music. It's miles beyond a Miles tribute band. It's a Wadada's music band. Free electric post-funk? That's one label to put on it. The point is that there is an evolved group sound that brings fascination. Wadada has gotten a bead on where to take the music and he is taking it there.

Probably the most important electric band working in the music today and this is one of their very finest (double) albums. You have to check it out!

Another Goodie From Wadada Leo Smith and Henry Kaiser's Yo Miles: Lightning

Today a quick look at the second recent reissue/newbie from Wadada Leo Smith & Henry Kaiser's Yo Miles! It's called Lightning (There Records) and you can get it for a good price at your favorite (legitimate) downloadery. It's a good hour of music with interesting tracks that were originally on the albums Upriver: Thunder and Lightning, Macero, and Sky Garden. Three cuts have not been previously released. One in particular, "Tsapiky Freelimo," has good contributions from the Rova Quartet. The band builds on the Miles electric sounds with jams outside of the usual riffs and heads that Miles and his various bands set down. So it is music in the spirit of this part of the illustrious Davis canon.

As I said a while back in my coverage of the companion album Shinjuku, this was & is the premier electric-Miles-influenced band. More than a tribute outfit, they expand on the free-rock-funk premises and make an original contribution. Wadada and Henry are in good form and the rhythm team gives it all the smoke.

Yo Miles Presents Shinjuku: Miles' Electric Legacy Extended and Evolved

Of all the electric Miles Davis tribute outfits, Henry Kaiser and Wadada Leo Smith's Yo Miles went the furthest in taking the innovative (and in some avenues still controversial) style of Miles' principal electric period (1969-1975) and growing it with the implications of how those bands made music.

The recently issued, download-only album Shinjutsu makes for a great example of this. Working around the nucleus of Henry's guitar and Wadada's trumpet, the band builds their own edifice of psychedelic rock-funk and sound color that both remains true to the many aspects of Miles' music as it takes them further along in ways that allow the soloists to bring their own personal takes on the Milesian mode and gives the collective band a chance to create additional colors and group presence.

Four tracks were previously issued on Sky Garden and Up River and there is one weighty unreleased track, "Muhammad Ali (Live)", which is especially notable for the interaction of Wadada Leo Smith and tabla master Zakir Hussein.

Most readers will be aware of the reaction against this music, well organized and consistently put forward by certain famous and infamous individuals. They claimed that the style was illegitimate, against jazz, and ultimately uninfluential. I believe strongly that that is not the case. Shinjuku shows as well as any the lasting legacy, the continued vibrancy, and the open plasticity of Miles' concept. It brought--and continues to bring--the music into the contemporary world we live in. Of course there have been other stylistic trends that have done that and continue to do that as well. In order to benchmark the importance of what Miles accomplished in light of later developments, one cannot look entirely at the acoustic jazz groups that have operated in its wake. For color, for rhythm, for freedom within a set of form parameters, the influence is everywhere you find electric bands working in the long form. And you find it too in acoustic bands looking for a way around head melodies, changes, straight modal, and hard-bop group routinings, as well as in free-playing groups seeking to find additional ways to extend improvisational form.

All in all Shinjuku is a great example of Yo Miles in its evolved stage, an entity unto itself. And at the same time it's an example of what Miles's electric legacy has given us.

Much recommended. Find out more details and download the album at the usual download hot spots: i tunes, Amazon, etc.