![the souljazz orchestra rising sun the souljazz orchestra rising sun](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HB9Yxb6OCOY/hqdefault.jpg)
No matter how high they set the bar here, the Souljazz Orchestra execute. While horns assert themselves at the start, it’s the keys, layers of manic percussion, and M’Baye and a chorus that send this one over as the set’s strongest cut. “Serve & Protect” is a furious rhythm collision of Afro-beat and Latin rhythms. Auteur du classique des DJs « Mista President » en 2006, la machine groove colore ses albums Manifesto (2008) et Rising Sun (2010) dambiances afro, soul et jazz très prisées. The other reggae-inflected jam here, “Conquering Lion,” is hard on the jazz-funk tip with killer front-line horns on all burners. La formation canadienne The Souljazz Orchestra sest forgée une grande réputation en concert et sur disque depuis sa création en 2002. “Jericho” is on the roots reggae tip with baritone saxophonist Ray Murray on vocals, while the more streetwise “Kingpin” goes at reggae with guest Gary “Slim” Moore leading the swaggering bubbler. Immediately following, M’Baye leads the band in the funk number “Kelen Ati Leen.” “Ya Basta” showcases the band’s horn section as it employs incendiary salsa in a strutter par excellence, with a vocal from the Souljazz Orchestra’s resident conguero and drummer, Philippe Lafrenière, leading the furious dance chant. The layers of guitars and distorted keyboards (Pierre Chrétien) meet layers of percussion, horns, and a call-and-response chorus. Here, Afro-beat and Afro-jazz meet slippery funk grooves from the modern West. Set opener “Bibinay” features El Hadji “Élage” M’Baye, a Senegalese native who now resides in Quebec.
![the souljazz orchestra rising sun the souljazz orchestra rising sun](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/02/23/souljazz_wide-7c9cc757d50be4f47080392241286a0f731fbab6.jpg)
The band employs its usual meld of Afro-beat, Caribbean, tropical, Latin, and Brazilian styles with jazz, funk, and soul, but the interaction with singers brings the mix to a whole different level. Solidarity furthers the band’s reach as it employs vocal talents from a wide range of singers from Canada’s vast underground music scene. Meeting with nearly universal acclaim, it spread the sextet’s well-deserved reputation for creating a musically adventurous meld of global styles, accurately reflecting roots cultures as they dialogue with one another in the 21st century - without watering them down. But the group's impulse to dismantle and globalize their sound (or their refusal to settle on one) is admirable, and their efforts to do so result in some inventive moments.Canada’s Souljazz Orchestra were well-known to audiences in Europe before their 2010 Strut debut, Rising Sun it was the sextet’s first all-acoustic effort. The band’s recent interest in more introspective and less tightly structured music doesn’t always play to their strengths, namely, their ability to devise and deliver taut and constantly mutating arrangements.
![the souljazz orchestra rising sun the souljazz orchestra rising sun](https://i3.ytimg.com/vi/K6qeEEr1jIM/0.jpg)
Inner Fire's biggest problem is a sporadic lack of energy. “Celestial Blues”, a cover of a Roland Kirk-styled piece of 70s avant-soul by Gary Bartz NTU Troop makes one curious about the original record, but the SJO’s version itself ultimately comes off as inert. The spare, blues-inflected dirge “East Flows the River” lacks some much-needed disruptive element or event to keep it from sounding like a jazzy piece of boom-bap rap production without an MC.
THE SOULJAZZ ORCHESTRA RISING SUN FULL
Inner Fire falters when the ensemble attempts full pieces in the “spiritual” mold, as on “Black Orchid", a slick piece of lite-funk. Steve Patterson and Ray Murray, the SJO’s tenor and baritone players, often channel the legendary saxophonist in their solos, and Chrétien frequently emulates the keyboard flourishes of McCoy Tyner and Alice Coltrane. The band has always claimed the style as a source of inspiration-their 2007 album Freedom No Go Die features a rendition of Pharoah Sanders’ hypnotic half-hour opus “The Creator Has a Master Plan”. “As the Crow Flies”, the single finest track, unites an unsettled horn theme and modal chord changes that would be at home on a pre-electric Herbie Hancock record with a bossa nova backbeat.Įqually fundamental to the ethos of Inner Fire is the school of spiritual jazz that blossomed in the wake of John Coltrane’s Eastern-influenced explorations of the mid–1960s. The album’s highlights are its most culturally ambiguous selections, like “One Life to Live”, which mixes rhumba and reggaeton rhythms, and “Sommet En Sommet”, a dense, three-against-four shuffle influenced partially by Guinean music. The driving polyrhythms of Nigerian folk music that marked their earlier work are set aside in favor of more laid-back percussion indigenous to the Americas. Much of Inner Fire consists of intricately arranged, harmonically adventurous Afro-Latin jazz this sound, when paired with the lush piano and vibraphone backgrounds Chrétien favors, creates resonances with Mulatu Astatke’s Ethio-jazz.