Vancouver Jazz Festival: African roots influences these musicians in myriad ways

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Jazz is an African-American musical form. But the genre forged in New Orleans and other key cities has become a global genre.

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Different streams and styles crop up everywhere from Brazil and Norway to Cuba and beyond.

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But underneath all of the variations, a direct connection to the complex polyrhythmic and improvised musical traditions of Africa’s myriad cultures is assumed. Entire academic programs are devoted to the study of the African roots of jazz.

But the subject can sometimes become so cerebral that it dissociates from the music being made by jazz musicians of African heritage. These players are the ones who truly carry on the legacy of the genre’s past, present and future, and their music reflects, in varying degrees, what it means to them. This year’s Vancouver International Jazz Festival features a number of artists of African descent.

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Three of them discuss the continent’s influences in their art.

Tickets and information is all available at coastaljazz.ca.

Nduduzo Makhathini

When: July 2, 6:30 p.m.

Where: Performance Works, 1218 Cartwright St., Granville Island

Blue Note Recording artist Nduduzo Makhathini was born and raised in umGungundlovu, South Africa, and grew up surrounded by the ritual and musical traditions of the Zulu and sees these as intrinsic to understanding his music.

His brilliant new album is titled In the Spirit of Ntu, a Mande philosophy he came across in a research project pursuing his doctorate.

He thinks that musicians who are African may have direct access to the original source material, but jazz is a different sound coming from a different experience and teaching. In other words, the communication goes both ways.

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“The project was trying to argue that jazz practices were directly influence by African cosmology and how music plugs into the whole concept of what it is to ‘be in the world,’ ” he said.

“Ntu is an idea of existing only relative to the existence of another. How that transposed to bandstand theory and musical expression that became jazz is more a reflection of the memory of home, the refusal to forget identity and culture in the face of the horror of the slave trade, and how it manifested in music.”

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Farida Amadou with White People Killed Them

When: June 29, 8 p.m.

NOW with Farida Amadou

When: July 1, 11 p.m.

Where: Both performances at Revue Stage, 1601 Johnston St., Granville Island.

Belgian bassist Farida Amadou is a dynamic player with a wide-ranging resumé.

On recordings with artists such as Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore to avant-garde composer Jonáš Gruska and sax titan Peter Brötzmann, the Brussells’-based musician has showcased invention in improvised and free music.

For her performances in Vancouver, she will appear with musicians she hasn’t played with before, ranging from Vancouver’s New Orchestra Workshop (NOW) to Washington state’s noize rockers White People Killed Them.

Coming to the bass after someone left one behind at her apartment one summer, Amadou was a pop guitarist at first. After learning some jazz standards, she dove right into full-on free improvisation after seeing a group with “no rules” perform. Trained as a speech therapist, pursuing music full-time came later.

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“Meeting and improvising with different people from different backgrounds to explore creative ideas is pure joy,” said Amadou. “My mother is from Niger and always played a lot of West African music at home, but I never really connected with it.

“But when I’m playing, I hear rhythms and approaches that are directly influenced by African music which … must be directly influenced by that heritage.”

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ebonEmpress

When: July 1, 8:30 p.m.

Where: Ocean Artworks, 1531 Johnston St., Granville Island.

Vancouver-based Dae Shields performs under the name ebonEmpress.

A dedicated activist, Shields founded the Afro Van Connect Society in 2019 to provide opportunities to people of African descent to come together and express their creativity.

Blending hip hop, jazz and R&B into a distinct style, ebonEmpress has collaborated with Indigenous rappers Snotty Nose Rez Kids, as well as making original solo work.

Named one of the Vancouver Economic Commission’s Black leaders in Vancouver, her work is dedicated to spreading awareness of “the impact of people of African descent have on Canadian and global cultures.” The singer sees jazz music as a spiritual experience that connects directly with the Black innovators that came before.

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“When I learned about the erasure of the Black spaces in Vancouver such as Hogan’s Alley, I felt like I was able to reconnect that space back to us by founding Afro Van Connect,” said Shields.

“I grew up in the church, in the choir, and my grandfather was a guitar player, so music was always there. I can’t even express what it means to be performing at the festival this year, it’s incredible.”

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sderdeyn@postmedia.com

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