IMAGINARY HYBRIDITY
Wednesday 26 May – Ian Hanger Recital Hall
Drawing upon Cuban and Brazilian concepts, 'post-jazz' and chamber music, Imaginary Hybridities stages a counterhistory of musical interactions, a 'what could have been' that points to possible new futures. As we strive to weave together survival techniques in the face of ongoing global crises, we find value in re-narrating pasts and recuperating 'lost horizons'. This music is a small attempt to do so.
Hybridity no. 1 is an opening invocation that blends the harmonic soundscape of Brazil’s Clube de esquina with a toque—a ceremonial rhythm from the Cuban regla de ocha tradition—for the Yoruba orisha Eléggua, the trickster who guards the crossroads, deftly takes apart the false binaries through which we, too often, inadequately understand the world, and whose presence is key for getting the proceedings started.
We segue from here into Hybridity no. 5, which takes apart and reassembles a nagô rhythm from the Candomblé tradition in Bahia, Brazil, playing with some of the liminal possibilities its asymmetrical structure affords.
Hybridity no. 4 begins with the kind of multi-temporal soundscape I’ve been exploring for some years now, which abrubtly transforms into an intensely deconstructed samba, channeling Brazil’s ‘post-samba’ experimentalism.
Hybridity no. 3’s gentle post-jazz bolero is increasingly taken apart by interjections of Brazilian partido alto rhythms, gradually accumulating intensity until it erupts into a rollicking samba batucada. We segue again, using the bass surdo rhythm from the samba batucada as a hinge into a new time-space.
Hybridity no. 6 is built around a Yoruba bell pattern, around which different rhythm, harmonic threads, and melodic threads are woven.
Finally, Hybridity no. 2 begins with a traditional Afro-Cuban rumba and weaves its way through a range of hybrid temporal spaces to wrap everything up with a toque for Yemajá, the Yoruba orisha of the sea.
Artists:
Chris Stover – composition, trombone, percussion
David Allen – percussion
Erik Griswold – keyboard, melodica, percussion
Dominic Machen – drums
Sophie Min – piano
Helen Russell – bass
Kent Windress – percussion
