Russell Gunn’s Ethnomusicology Vol. 4: Live in Atlanta (Justin Time) finds the trumpeter on his home turf, getting loose with the core lineup from Volume 3: Nick Rolfe on piano and keys, Carlos Henderson on electric bass, Carl Burnett on guitar, Kahlil Kwame Bell on percussion, Rocky Bryant on drums and DJ Neil Armstrong on turntables. This will be the last in Gunn’s jazz-hop/jazztronica series, and the live setting allows him to showcase the concept at its interactive best. From the outset in 1999, Ethnomusicology has touched on a wide (and at times uneasy) array of influences, from jazz and hip-hop to go-go, big-city blues and even flat-out rock. Most of it is present here. Highlights include Burnett’s guitar heroics on “More Sybil’s Blues,” Rolfe’s acoustic piano break on “Summertime,” Gunn’s processed trumpet on the neosoul ballad “Lyne’s Joint,” Bryant’s unfaltering pocket on “Shiva the Destroyer,” the opening drum-n-bass-tinged “Blue in Green” and everything in between. At its best, Gunn’s electrified horn is not just an au courant move, but a new instrument with its own expressive character.
Originally PublishedRelated Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
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
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Harry Connick, Jr.: Direct Hits
Two decades after his commercial breakthrough, Harry Connick Jr. taps legendary producer Clive Davis for an album of crooner roots and beloved tunes
Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro