The melting pot. One of the focal points of the late twentieth century Jazzpop musical melting pot was conceived by Mr. Roy Hargrove who in 1997, after a series of Cuban concerts with Chucho Valdez and others, assembled a large group with which he published “Habana” for Verve, a work that had considerable resonance, so much so that it won the Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Performance.
The group then indulged in a series of concerts and returned to the recording studio, again for Verve, a few months later for a sort of volume 2, this “Grande-Terre” precisely, recorded in Guadeloupe and mysteriously remained at the bottom of the drawer…for 26 years!
The underlying reasons that led the record company not to publish this recording at the time are not known precisely, the fact is that none of the musicians involved, except perhaps the late leader, had ever listened to this session and Verve decided to line them up on a chair to let them listen to the album for the first time, as a preview, then publishing the video of the “first reaction” that you see reproduced below.
Roy Hargrove, a formidable trumpet player who combined hard bop, Latin and groove with a high-class instrumental skill, left this earth before he even turned 50, the victim of kidney failure and a life of excess that did not prevent him from signing great records, both on his own and as a sideman, becoming over time a point of reference and source of inspiration for a long series of musicians, inside and outside the jazz scene.
The melting pot, as they say. “Habana” and “Grande-Terre” are similar albums, the sound remains that of the first album even if the band, between the two recordings, changes profoundly, only the trombonist Frank Lacy and the two explosive Cuban percussionists Miguel “Angá” Díaz and José Luis “Changuito” Quintana remain in these Crisol on the road in the Caribbean archipelago.
They are joined, among others, by two excellent names, namely the guitarist Ed Cherry, already alongside Dizzy Gillespie in his fundamental Latin excursions, certainly much loved and also listened to by Roy Hargove, and the sophisticated contralto of Sherman Irby, a leading name in Wynton Marsalis’ JLCO.
When the band starts to get going, the aforementioned Gillespie recordings with the United Nations Orchestra come to mind, as well as certain pages by Arturo Sandoval, as well as obviously the fundamental Irakere by Chucho Valdez and who knows how many others.
After all, Roy Hargrove confirms himself as a wise leader, doses the spices at his disposal and from the Caribbean melting pot filters a modern and scorching Latin-hard-bop, streaked and metropolitan, capable of making inroads on large audiences.
Among the originals, all of notable level and composed largely by the leader with the contribution of the whole band, we point out “Rumba Roy” which opens the album and is the classic piece that makes you jump from your armchair and ignite the senses, “Priorities”, a powerful manifesto with free ancestry, and “Ethiopia” an enchanting duet with pianist Larry Willis.
The only song not written by the group comes from a record by Lee Morgan, another master of ceremonies of melting pots who left us too soon, from “The Sixth Sense” is in fact reinterpreted, or it would be appropriate to say celebrated, with devoted mystical inspiration, “Afreaka”, written by Cedar Walton in the mid-60s, a modal piece with an Afrocentric groove that involves the whole band and that can be considered the aesthetic and spiritual summa of the entire work.
The arrangements are always elaborate and pungent, capable of maintaining high attention in every passage, the record exudes vitality, not disjoined from a certain melancholy, the same that assails us thinking about the fate of a musician impossible to forget. Roy Lives!
