This Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz oratorio, premiered in 1994 and recorded in 1995 but not released on CD until this year, is Marsalis' most grandiose work to date. A sprawling epic about slavery featuring vocalists Jon Hendricks, Cassandra Wilson and Miles Griffith, it fills three discs, clocking in at nearly three hours. But for all its lofty intentions, it succeeds mainly as a showcase for Marsalis' masterly arranging skills. As a composer, Marsalis is remarkably tuneless, with one of his idol Duke Ellington's gift for catchy melody; as a librettist, he's ludicrously pompous and preachy ("O brown doom," indeed), seldom stooping to mere entertainment.
Besides Ellington, Marsalis draws on Charles Mingus, Igor Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein, plus blues, spirituals and New Orleans funk and brass-band music, to produce richly sonorous, carefully nuanced, finely detailed orchestral textures that hold the listener's attention through even the driest thematic stretches. To underscore the travails of slavery, he makes much greater use of dissonance than usual, but keeps it under tight control; on "Move Over," for example, he hooks Ellingtonian hoots and whinnies to Stravinsky's "Rite Of Spring," avoiding the freedom of free-jazz. But the music is oddly out of sync with its subject matter, evoking railroads rather than slave ships, the Cotton Club instead of the cotton fields.
Griffith and Wilson, in the roles of the rebellious slave Jesse and his stoic woman Leona, make the best of a bad situation, struggling to invest their stilled, hookless songs with bluesy dignity, most successfully on "Work Song." Unfortunately, they share the same range, creating a certain gender confusion. Hendricks has a smaller but juicer part, playing both the slave buyer on the jaunty "Soul For Sale," and the slave sage Juba, who dispenses advice over a second-line parade beat on Juba And A O'Brown Squaw."
Only after feeling the master's lash does Jesse accept Juba's counsel to adopt soul, humility and love of country as his credo; then, following Michel Ward's fiddle hoedown on "Calling The Indians Out," Jesse and Leona escape to the North and freedom. It's a curious moral and one that Marsalis himself ought to consider, especially the part about soul and humility. Here, he keeps his emotions so closely under control, and his ego so prominently on display, that music scarcely swings. And that, if you accept the gospel according to Wynton, is jazz's cardinal sin.
Blood On The Fields -- Calling The Indians Out; move Over; You Don't Hear No Drums; The Market Place; Soul For Sale; Plantation Coffle March; Work Song (Blood On The Fields); Lady's Lament; Flying High; Oh We Have A Friend In Jesus; God Don't Like Ugly; Juba And A O'Brown Squaw; Follow The Drinking Gourd; My Soul Fell Down; Forty Lashes; What A Fool I've Been; Back To Basics; I HOld Out My Hand; Look And See; The Sun Is Going To Shine; Will The Sun Come Out?; Calling The Indians Out; Follow The Drinking Gourd; Freedom Is In The Trying; Due North.
Personnel -- Marsalis, conductor, trumpet; Jon Hendricks, Cassandra Wilson, Miles Griffith, vocals; Wess Anderson, alto saxophone; James Carter, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, clarinet Victor Goines, tenor and soprano saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet; Robert Stewart, tenor saxophone; Walter Blanding, soprano saxophone (7); Russell Gunn, Roger Ingram, Marcus Printup, trumpet; Wayne Goodman, Ron Westray, trombone; Wycliffe Gordon, trombone, tuba; Michael Ward, violin, Eric Reed, piano; Reginald Veal, bass; Herlin Riley, drums, tambourine.
COPYRIGHT 1997 Maher Publications
Author: Larry Birnbaum
Source: Down Beat, Sep 1997 v64 n9 p45(1)
