WING WALKER MUSIC

Hunter Long is founder of the Black House Collective-A new music organization based in Kansas City, MO. We talk about the KC creative music scene and how he wrote an opera. Hunter is doing important work that you should check out.

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PART 2-Check out the second part of our interview with saxophonist Michael Blake. We get deep into the saxophone on this one. Specifically- Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins and how they influenced his new works. CHECK THIS OUT, please!

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This podcast features one of my favorite saxophonists and composers Michael Blake. We talked so much that I decided to split it up into two different episodes. For part one, we talked about a few of his early records that he worked on with Teo Macero, playing with John Lurie and Ben Allison, and about sound. This is an incredible episode. Stick around for Part two next week. Thank you for listening!

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This is a good one! Of course, the episode featuring two drummers is the first one to go WAY over an hour. Steve helps me co-host as we talk to Deric about his incredible new record Oh Lovely Appearance…….of DEATH. Also, we get into drum line and small towns. 

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Wildcard is a weekly series where artists talk about music that has inspired them recently--some of which you might not expect. This is a place to emphasize the diverse and interesting listening habits of almost every musician. This is not intended to be any kind of “best of” list. Instead, think of this like a snapshot in time.

My selections can all be considered World Music - which seems to be what we call anything that does not have its roots in North America or Europe.  I chose albums that strongly represent a traditional cultural identity, but have also stepped into the fusion category - adding elements like the drumset, electric bass, guitar, horns, etc.  They are an easy transition into the unknown for the Western ear - World Music that is not difficult to listen to.

1. Oumou - Oumou Sangare

Oumou Sangare is known as the “Songbird of Mali”.  She is famous for her gorgeous voice and for having a sensational international career, yet choosing to live in her homeland with her people.  She sings about tough issues facing traditional African cultures - women’s rights, government corruption, etc.  The language is Bamana.  It is spoken in the city of Bamako.  The band utilizes many traditional instruments, including the djembe drum and the Ngoni - a 6-stringed harp made from a gourd.   Much of the music rides the line between 12/8 time and 4/4 time.  There are no odd meters on this record, but it’s easy to get turned around in the funky ostenatos.  

This album was on the radio a lot when I was in Bamako.  In my neighborhood, there was one guy with a huge sound system in the middle of the block that played the radio all day every day.. a soundtrack for daily life.  As heavy as this album is, it scratches the surface of the deep musical traditions found in Mali - traditions that have recently been outlawed and violently destroyed by extremists from the North imposing Sharia law.  

Oumou performed at “Celebrate Brooklyn” in 2012.

2. La Rumba Que No Termina - Clave y Guaguanco

Clave y Guaguanco is a group that takes traditional Cuban street music called Rumba to a new level (guagaunco is a type of rumba).  They have been at it since the 50s, when rumba was first recorded, and have stayed at the forefront ever since.  Their layered vocal harmonies and outrageous percussion ensembles have made them one of the best Afro-Cuban groups ever.  Rumba was the first non-Western music I learned about in college in Wisconsin.

Rumba is kind of like Hip-Hop in the U.S. - cultural, political, playful, and sexual.  It is the secular counterpart to sacred Afro-Cuban music of Santería.  Most Afro-Cuban music is influenced by the songs and rhythms of Santería - driving, African call and response sequences designed to spiral the listener’s energy upwards into a trance-like state.  Rhythmically, it is absolute insanity.  If you know the Rumba clave, you are on the same page as the performers, but be prepared to hang on for dear life.  Track 9, my favorite, is “Respuesta da Maria”, which I transcribed and performed with a full ensemble in Wisconsin in 2009.  

3. Tabla Beat Science - Zakir Hussain

This record was one of my first exposures to the Tabla drums from India.  Tabla player Zakir Hussain is one of India’s most successful musical exports, collaborating with all types of artists all around the world.  I don’t know how to play Tabla, and I don’t know enough about the music to truly appreciate the classical style.  That’s why this album was perfect for me - Drum n’ Bass meets Tabla drums..  give it a listen.

4. The Best of Bamboleo - Bamboleo

If you read about Rumba under my Clave y Guagaunco heading, Timba is like Salsa music with a Rumba attitude.  It incorporates funk.  It may be thought of as a more African, more “street” version of Salsa.  Bamboleo is one of the first bands I heard that played this kind of music.  My wife went to their concert in Havana and brought me their CD.  The soaring, virtuosic vocals and insanely tight horns that you would expect from Cuba sound effortless along with the congas and timbale-infused drumset.  Several of these tracks had me rhythmically stumped until I literally counted along.  Even with some prior knowledge of the clave patterns, I was blown away by the ensemble performance.  

From what I have heard: if you live in Cuba and you are an excellent musician, you can audition to place into one of the national groups which is sponsored by the government as a cultural investment.  You make your living rehearsing with your group.. EVERY DAY.  Think about that next time you hear music from Cuba...

5. Dengo - Soungalo Coulibaly  

From Djembefola.com - “Bouake (Ivory Coast) represents a cultural crossroads of music from Ivory Coast, Guinea and Burkina Faso. It was there that Soungalo invented "Flez" music - a fusion of djembe, dunun, tama, djidunun, balafon, kamelengoni, acoustic guitar, karinyan and song. Flez music draws on the repertoires of the Bambara, Malinke, Fulbe and Wasulunka traditions.” 

Flez is my favorite music, ever.  The first thing that stunned me about this album was the quality of the recording.  Then after I saw some videos I realized the guy’s technique on the drum is what makes it sound that way.  There are many traditional instruments used on this album, and they all sound amazingly rich and blend very well.  This is the one album on the list that has no Western stylistic influence or Western instruments, but it is so balanced that it is totally palatable.  

Soungalo is a djembe master.  I would compare his playing to a Flamenco guitar player.. playing at full speed at a pianissimo dynamic.  It is unreal.  As a hand percussionist, this album helped me to learn my place in the world.  Djembe is traditionally very loud and involves a lot of brawn and charisma.  There are only three sounds on the drum. Soungalo’s charisma is a different kind.  His understated phrases are hip, playful, and deep.  In this track (only thing I could find on YouTube), he doesn’t even play until the song is halfway over.  

This week I sit down with a modern “classical”composer and a jazz musician. They also happen to be roommates. Brooks Frederickson, Brad Mulholland, and I talk about our converging musical worlds, why classical saxophone is stupid, and how to rise above the literal and figurative noise of Brooklyn.

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This week I sit down with guitarist Jeff McLaughlin. We talk about why we both like weird music, why guitarists choose to play creative music, and about how he has finally emerged according to the Bar Next Door.

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Wildcard is a weekly series where artists talk about music that has inspired them recently--some of which you might not expect. This is a place to emphasize the diverse and interesting listening habits of almost every musician. This is not intended to be any kind of “best of” list. Instead, think of this like a snapshot in time.

Inspiration seems to come from weird places for me. It mostly comes from music I’ve listened to, but very often I won’t be able to pinpoint what song or composer it was exactly that inspired me to write a piece. Sometimes I will be writing, or just fooling around on the piano and I’ll have images or even a small story come to mind that make sense with the music I’m playing. So, Let's start off with some albums I used to listen to.

1. The Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

I listened to a lot of (punk) rock as a teenager. I love the vibe of this record. To me, it is the perfect teenager record, feeling misunderstood and being angry at the world and all that stuff you feel then. Maybe I still haven’t totally outgrown that phase. Haha. Anyway, the way songs on this record are constructed and the chords for most songs still make it a joy to listen to. (by the way, I also love the video for 'Tonight, Tonight' inspired by Georges Méliès – ‘Le voyage dans la lune’

2. Undeclinable Ambuscade-Their Greatest Adventures

When I was 15 I started playing in a punk/skate/ska core band. I played in the horn section (obviously) with a trumpet and trombone player. We as a band hung out all the time. Practicing once a week in our small town, writing songs and drinking lots of beer. Here’s one of the records we loved. It’s a dutch band called  Undeclinable Ambuscade. My favorite record was ‘Their Greatest Adventures’. This is happy skate-punk with lots of energy and lyrics about anything and everything. It still makes me happy listening to it.

3. Deviate- Thorn of the Living

Okay, so after the ska and punk music, I moved on to metal and hardcore. I loved going to those shows and just moshing in the pit. Haha, I bet you didn’t expect that.

So, here’s my favorite metalcore album. It is called 'Thorn of the living’ by a Belgian band called Deviate. Most of the lyrics are about how bad humans are for this planet and how we should all treat each other a little bit better. (well, I put it in a nice way now, the lyrics are pretty dark… again…angry teenager) but I love the chord progressions.

4. The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau

Now more about my composing and other influences.

I wrote a tune called Jean Jacques. When I was young I used to watch a lot of nature documentaries. One of the great nature documentary series I watched was ‘The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau’.  The music in these documentaries is often impressionist/contemporary classical. I did not realize that all the music I’ve listened to, be it in film or just on MTV, has influenced me in one way or another but this became apparent when I was writing Jean Jacques. I had been practicing triads in wide voicing on saxophone and started playing them on piano. I then started to sing the melody for the first 4 bars (the song is a waltz, the chords are all wide voicings of intervals and the first part of the melody is a descending whole tone scale). As I was playing/singing these bars, the images of Jacques Cousteau’s documentaries came to mind and gave me a direction as to where this song should go. I took this song to a composing session with my friend Daan Herweg. We developed the song, I took it home and changed some more things and there it was.

Watch an example of ‘The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau’ here.

5. The Beatles-She's Leave Home 

The last arrangement I wrote is an arrangement of the Beatles’ ‘She’s Leaving Home’. This arrangement is a combination of two influences. I’m not really a connaisseur when it comes to the great songs of the Beatles, but my father is a great fan and listened to their songs a lot when I was younger. I stumbled upon this particular song years ago when I was studying in Rotterdam at the conservatory. I was in an ensemble with a singer who made an arrangement for the song. After I listened to the original recording, the song stuck with me and seemed to surface every once and a while, touching me deeply every time I heard it. I love the way the strings in this song are in no way corny, a thing that often happens when strings are added to a pop song. The second influence for this arrangement is a song called ‘The Music of Life’ by John Hollenbeck’s Large Ensemble. It is a very slow piece with open contemporary harmonies and a poem recited on 1 pitch. I heard this song for the first time about a year ago at Roulette in Brooklyn. It was truly enchanting. At the time it felt like a big white canvas with colors coming out of it from time to time. I promised to myself that I would write a piece like that some day. I used that idea to write the arrangement for ‘She’s Leaving Home’. I didn’t want to destroy the beauty of the song and it could not in any way become a corny song. So I decided to mix the simple beauty of this song with contemporary harmonies, using a lot of space in the intro.

This week I sit down and talk with trombonist and composer Nick Grinder. He’s in the middle of release his debut record INDEPENDENTLY. We spend a lot of time talking about how that can be awesome and terrible. Also, We survive a zombie attack and I break out my bass clarinet.

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Wildcard is a weekly series where artists talk about music that has inspired them recently--some of which you might not expect. This is a place to emphasize the diverse and interesting listening habits of almost every musician. This is not intended to be any kind of “best of” list. Instead, think of this like a snapshot in time.

1. Henry Cowell-Piano Music

It is a classic, but I am still amazed by all of the different sounds and textures that he can get from a piano every time I listen to this recording. These compositions explore all of the different possibilities that this instrument can offer (sound, rhythm, textures, etc...) and all of them have an incredible forward motion and great structure.

2. Chris Cheek/Ethan Iverson/Ben Street/Jorge Rossy-Guilty

This recording was made in a spanish Jazz club, El Jamboree, when these guys were not as famous as they are now. They play standards in a really fresh way. The four of them are really personal and their interplay is incredible, really happening... 

3.Silvio Rodriguez-Al final de este viaje

This singer-songwriter and poet is one of the musicians from the Cuban Revolution. His lyrics and melodies are simple and beautiful. I used to listen to Silvio a lot when I was an undergraduate. I guess he is an idealist that believe in an utopic and wonderful world and that is in his music...

4. Silvia Perez Cruz-En la imaginacion

I can´t say that this recording is one of the most influential ones in my life, but I want to present it because she is a young spanish singer and every time i listen to her it thrills me. I guess that this section is a little bit for someone to discover music, and I wanted to recommend her. I chose this recording in which she sings boleros with some of the most important jazz musicians in Spain: Perico Sambeat, Javier Colina and Albert Sanz.

  5. Jeff Buckley-Grace

It is also a classic, but I am a really big fan of Jeff Buckley. His voice is amazing and he always sings with a lot of emotion. Every time I listen to this recording I get something from him. 

I sit down with Jonah Parzen-Johnson and talk about his upcoming tour  and his use of an analog synthesizer with his Baritone Saxophone.  Also, I announce the next Wing Walker Music Presents show on Dec.  10th.

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I sit down with two great musicians. We talk about Baltimore, Danny’s band Signal Problems, and we introduce a brand new segment-Jazz Club or Strip Club.

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