Story of Life (N-Coded Music/Warlock NC-4203-2; 44:18) finds Jonathan Butler in a welcome troubadour mode-a frame perfectly suited to his gently lyrical guitar work and warm, vibrant tenor vocal. The album is a window to the composer’s roots, swirling with African and Brazilian rhythms, and poetic, deeply personal lyrics. Carefully crafted pieces like “I Can’t Let Go,” with its bare-brushed shuffle drums and deep-wrought cello threads echo the bittersweet reflections in Butler’s lyrics (As I walk my old stomping ground/A flood of memories are unbound/Feel a guilt inside/Did I do things right?). Likewise, the lilting acoustic strum and lyrics about personal transformation on the album’s title track evoke a gentle, Tracy Chapman-like uplifting spirit. Equally affecting are instrumental pieces like the bright, seamless “Let’s Stand Together,” and doodling, spacious “Suite 830,” which finds Butler alternately trading licks and doubling melody lines with saxophonist Candy Dulfer. Butler breaks the meditative mode only occasionally to drift into more modern synthesizer-slick fare like “So in Love,” but his best stories here emerge from a gentler, simpler place.
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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.
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