The oral tradition, as much as the instrumental one, marks this recording selected from a 2015 concert by the Gathering. The occasion was already historic -- a reunion of South L.A. jazzfolk who had assembled in 2005 to celebrate the four-decade Horace Tapscott legacy. Young and old, the more recent incarnation spoke up behind a mission of message and purpose, and Wayne Peet's microphones were present to document.
Maia scream-sang without straying from a keen melodic sensibility, even while reminding us to remember the dark 400 years. Dwight Trible searched the limits of range and intonation as he referenced a couple of great mothers -- his own, and the mother of modern jazz singing, Billie Holiday, whose "Strange Fruit" provided a vehicle for unrestrained exorcism. Kamau Daáood roared his poetry, making his people visualize the barbed wire wrapped around their hearts but insisting that their prayers could cut through the air like a virus.
Even the instruments seemed to speak: the rapping traps and chanting congas of Fritz Wise and Derf Reklaw; the eloquent bass solo of Roberto Miranda; the pillow-talk trombone of Phil Ranelin; the declamatory bass clarinet of bandleader Jesse Sharps.
Since every conversation requires an atmosphere, the 15-member Gathering arrayed the room with musical drapes and chandeliers fit for a state banquet. Theo Saunders' flowing piano kept providing fresh options for harmony and melody, while the dissonant Tapscottian horn charts on the three-part "Freedom's Sweet" lent vibrant color to the late maestro's memorable waltz riffs and Caribbean rhythms.
The whole thing was impressive at the time, and it remains so now. History isn't all old, y'know.
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"Healing Suite" released on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Jan. 17. Listen/preorder here. The Gathering streams live from the World Stage the same evening, here.
Read MetalJazz's review of the 2015 concert here.