Clifford Thornton playing shenai. Image from album cover
Clifford Thornton, multi-instrumentalist, composer, radical intellectual, led the final release credited to the co-operative Jazz Composers’ Orchestra, and it’s a great one. The multiple African percussion that features prominently in the early pieces here energises the music wonderfully. And as the notes made clear, that collection of sounds arises because the whole work explores West African music and how it has travelled “from West to North Africa, the Caribbean, the South Eastern United States, to Harlem”.
He evoked that history by selecting vocal melodies from the territories in question, and orchestrating them. There’s a chant from Recife, a song from Jamaica, a social dance from Dahomey via Ghana, a street vendor’s cry heard in South Carolina – you get the idea. They are fine tunes, orchestrated with great skill, and evocative in their own right. Add some great jazz soloing, and it’s a heady brew.