Back in the 1960s when the first famous Indo-Jazz LP
was issued John Mayer joined forces with a stellar gathering of musician.
The Jazz players were Joe Harriott, Eddie Blair, Pat Smythe, Rick
Laird and Allan Ganley and the Indian musicians were Diwan Motihar
(sitar), Chris Taylor (flute), Keshav Sathe (tabla) and Chandrahas
Paigankar (tambura). After altoist Harriott’s death in 1973 John Mayer
disbanded the group. Back in the 1960s Mayer was still playing violin
in the RPO – which is where he recruited Chris Taylor - as well as
following an after hours life with Indo-Jazz. After a very long silence
Indo-Jazz reappeared in 1995 with an all-new line up, still led by
the Calcutta-born Mayer and the following year it recorded this album
for Nimbus. He felt the new band integrated and understood the ragas
more than the original line up – of whom it was only pianist Pat Smythe
who tried to dig deeper into the musical processes going on.
Mayer took ragas and made harmonic structures out of
them and tended to dismiss the idea of counterpoint in his compositions.
What the untutored ear hears, for example in the opening piece, Chakkar,
is the emergence from the raga of a ‘Blue Note’ front-line ensemble
from trumpet and saxophone. In Megha Jonathan Mayer’s sitar
is more to the fore whilst James McDowall’s flute is also a strong
aural presence; Dave Smith’s trumpet cleaves more to the modal Milesian
side of things. Freely swinging Yaman enshrines some complex
percussive patterns whilst John Mayer lends his solo violin playing
to several tracks – prominently Song Before Sunrise (Lalit)
with its classical cadential introduction (Mayer had been a pupil
of Mehli Mehta, the violin playing father of Zubin). There’s a pliant
and fluent saxophone solo from Anna Brooks on Pilu and an infectious
drive is maintained and sustained on The Bear. There is, lest
this seems all too earnest, a Scherzo track, Jhaptal, with
witty baroque and raga breaks. Without myself getting too frivolous,
I should add that my favourite title is Mela, a kind of Indo
boogie or indeed a Boogie raga. But the longest track is the last,
full of rolling drive and interesting colours and patterns.
There aren’t many smiles in the band photo. Maybe Mayer
was a hard taskmaster and they were pretty much his musical grandchildren
in any case. And though individually the musicians are very different
from the giants of the first Indo-Jazz band, they acquit themselves
well, and cohesively well, more to the point. A question of integration
and ensemble.
Jonathan Woolf
CD Reviews
NIMBUS
NI 5499 [57:58]
