Containing parts two through six of his lengthy Immigrant Suite, Jon Jang’s music addresses the degrading detentions experienced by Chinese at the Bay Area’s Angel Island during 1910-1940, and most poignantly, the music and the singing and recitations by poet Genny Lim (including two originals) concern poems they etched into walls at the facility, and recall the Chinese rail-tie laborers written out of American history. Pianist Jang, like a George Russell, buoys and guides his ensemble vision rather than assuming soloing prominence. Like kindred artists he convincingly blends jazz and traditional Chinese musics and instruments, getting sensitive readings on soprano and English horn by Jim Norton. Yet, be alert to tenorist Francis Wong! With his gritty pungent sound, heard best on his own “Diaspora Tale No. 1” and Jang’s “Second Interlude/Appendix,” he delivers textures of a Frank Wright underpinned by old country melodies. Jang co-founded Asian Improv Records and has collaborated compositionally with James Newton. Definitely a figure for now and beyond!
Originally PublishedRelated Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading

Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading

Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro
Kurt Elling: Man in the Air
Nate Chinen makes the argument that Kurt Elling is the most influential jazz vocalist of our time