Guillermo Klein – Domador de Huellas (Sunnyside Records – 2010)

Guillermo Klein’s third album for Sunnyside Records is also one of his most beguiling and very possibly one of the most memorable tribute albums of the year. Klein’s album, Domador de Huellas – Music of “Cuchi” Leguizamon, literally “the tamer of the footprints” has a deeply significant meaning. The “footprints” in question are a visceral element of a history that is close to disappearing. In this instance the footprint is also one that Gustavo “Cuchi” Leguizamon left on the proverbial sands of Argentinean time in his incarnation of one of that country’s leading composers of folk songs. In fact it is a credible assumption to suggest that Cuchi Leguizamon’s music defined one of the most pivotal periods in Argentina’s progress, from feudal-to-democratic-totalitarian-to democrat periods, one that left a mark on the city and the pampas.

Leguizamon’s record of that history left behind in the proverbial footprint beckoned Klein for several years until he could no longer resist it. In choosing to re-imagine the music Gustavo “Cuchi” Leguizamon, Klein also chose to inhabit that footprint, but here on this album, that of the elder musician dissolves and melts into Klein’s remarkably creative one. Leguizamon’s music, for instance, contained such high emotion that the songs’ suggested narratives had the consummate power of operatic arias. In Klein’s hands—and with his astute manipulation—they become emotional bombs, as in the chart “La Pomeña” that is rendered with devastating swagger and chilling mesmerism by the modern diva, Liliana Herraro.

Gustavo “Cuchi” Leguizamon was known for constantly pushing the melody and harmonic boundaries of formal music. His “zambas” and “tangos” posited the dusty, but rhythmic swagger of the pampas. “Zamba Para la Viuda,” “Zamba de Lozano” and “Zamba del Carnaval” are possessed with the kind of shuffle that makes them living breathing pantomimes that come alive as the characters and their emotions devour the listener’s inner mind. Songs such as “Carnavalito del Duende” swell with the dark magic that arises from deep within the soul and over power the senses.

However make no mistake there is much more of Klein in these works than he would be happy to let go. Guillermo Klein appears to have gone into a trance and let the songs speak to him at an elemental level, tabula rasa so to speak. For it is more than the songs of Leguizamon that have come to life here. There are characters, some of whom only became real after being sung with elemental sadness or hearty historicity. And this is where Klein scores perfect hits where no one else seems to have in a resurrection project of this kind. Not only are there his own elastic pieces in homage to Leguizamon—“Domador De Huellas,” to be precise, but there is his uncanny sense of getting to the tonal center of Leguizamon’s palette of sound. This is the hypnotic element of the music that strikes at the heart. Then there is that molten heat from Klein’s backtracking footsteps as he plants them deep in the groove of Gustavo “Cuchi” Leguizamon’s own footprints, so to speak.

Tracks: Domador de Huellas; Zamba Para La Vuida; Chacarera del Zorro; Coplas de Regreso; La Pomeña; Zamba de Lozano; De Solo Estar; Me Voy Quedando; Cartas de Amor que se Queman; Maturana; Seranata del 900; Carnavalito del Duende; Zamba del Carnaval; La Mulánima.

Personnel: Liliana Herraro: vocals (5, 11); Carme Canela: vocals (9); Ben Monder: guitar (9); Román Giudice: vocals and percussion (14); Richard Nant: trumpet and percussion; Juan Cruz de Urquiza: trumpet; Gustavo Musso: tenor saxophone; Martín Pantyrer: clarinet and bass clarinet; Esteban Sehinkman: Rhodes; Mat&#as Mèndez: electric bass; Daniel “Pipi” Piazzolla: drums; Guillermo Klein: vocals and piano.

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Guillermo Klein on the web: www.myspace.com/guillermoklein

Review written by: Raul da Gama

Antonio Arnedo – Colombia – (Adventure Music 2005)

If Lucia Pulido is the doyen of the poetic vocal tradition of Colombian music, Antonio Arnedo is its instrumental ambassador. His cultural collision with the jazz tradition on this remarkable record, Colombia, throws a bright spotlight on his ability to bend, twirl and bubble his breath through saxophone and flute, mixing jazz with classical music and also with the vibrant Afro-Colombian folk music from the Caribbean coast of that country.

Arnedo is a first rate instrumentalist with an unbridled talent for expressing himself in an expansive way on instruments that require a sublime technique and an awesome degree of control. On saxophone and flute – which obviously require large volumes of air and breath control to play his long, loping lines and phrases – Arnedo negotiates complex musical notations with the delicate skill of a fencer. He is El Duende himself as he flits and twists through the melodies and harmonies magically and majestically. To reach this deepest level of the essence of “the song”, Arnedo must strip it of all frills and capture its purest tones and colors of its melodies and harmonies, and the rippling textures of its outer, more obvious rhythms and its inner, more secret ones that speak to the tablet of the heart. This he does, time and time again, by journeying through the universe of the music into the very core of its being – to unleash the spirit of its soul.

This is his viaje and it takes many twists and turns. Visually in “The Drawing” and in a flowing, narrative on ” Blanqueño River” and its confraternal twin, “Variation”. The music is somber on “Slow Pasillo” and dark and elementally mournful on “Sad Allegory”. Throughout, the record inspires a myriad ideas and notions of a cultural tradition that is beautiful and full of human richness. The record also features a group of musicians who have a symbiotic relationship with the music on this record. Ben Monder is exquisitely sympathetic on guitar, almost drone-like in an ascetic, Indian way on “Variation” and “Suspense”. And, of course percussionist, Satoshi Takeshi is deeply mystical as he conjures primeval rhythms that propel Arnedo onward, inward and outward with the fierce power of a vortex. This is jazz at its best, when it is music that surprises, and is in a state of constant evolution from phrase to glorious phrase and from story to epic story.

Tracks Listing: Alegre; The Goblin (El Duende); Drawing (Dibujo); Blanqueño River (Rio Blanqueño); Salu; The Journey (El Viaje); Sad Allegory (Triste Alegoria – {piano}); Slow Pasillo (Pasillo Lento); Variation (Variacion del rio Blanqueño); Cumbia Cienaguera; Suspense (Suspendido); The Journey (El Viaje); Drawing (Dibujo).

Personnel:
Antonio Arnedo: saxophone, gaita, Wooden flute and piano; Ben Monder: guitar; Jairo Moreno: double bass (except on “El Viaje” and La Cumbia Cienaguera”); Satoshi Takeishi: percussion and “chonta” xylophone; Chris Dalhgren: double bass on “El Viaje” and “La Cumbia Cienaguera”; Bruce Saunders: tiple on “Pasillo Lento”.

Review written by: Raul da Gama

Note from the Editor: Originally released independently in 2001, and then re-released in 2005 by Adventure Music, “Colombia” is a rare gem that shouldn’t be overlooked.