Blue, Blue, Eclectic Blue

How about something relaxing and beautiful this Sunday evening? I have been basking in the joy of Abdullah Ibrahim Ekaya (Home), an absolutely sublime recording from 1983.

Cut in New Jersey with the legendary Rudy Van Gelder engineering, Ibrahim had assembled a wonderful American* band around himself. The music they produced was suffused with warmth and a very palpable generosity of spirit. Ibrahim was a musician in exile from his beloved South Africa** and from the title onwards every track, recorded in the USA with American musicians, is gloriously southern African. The rhythms, the cadences and the song titles^ all wriggle to the beat of that Ibrahim’s homeland.

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Abdullah Ibrahim plays quite a lot on Ekaya, which may seem like a given but on a number of his band recordings, is not. He is still my favourite jazz pianist, helped by being only the second one I knew*^ and I think is utterly unmistakable, there’s something so rhythmic and rolling in the way he plays that just does not sound like anybody else I know.

Just listen to ‘Sotho Blue’, a beautiful track that he has rerecorded since, the opening piano phrase is like a gentle kiss and when the brass rolls in later everything just feels right. There are three saxophonists on Ekaya Carlos Ward (alto), Ricky Ford (tenor) and Charles Davis (baritone) as well as Dick Griffin on trombone and when they all play so sweetly together, it just makes my heart sing; bottle this and you would never need another medicine. ‘Sotho Blue’, dedicated to the Sotho people of Lesotho, is by far the most conventional sounding jazz track on the LP too.

Jumping backwards ‘Ekaya’, meaning you guessed it ‘home’ in several southern African languages, is a great jumping off point for the album. The skittering frenetic rhythm is utterly irresistible and Ward gives us a brilliant extended solo, but the ensemble playing is best of all. It is a warm (that word again!), nostalgic look at the happiness and teeming life of an exile’s homeland.

The only track I am undecided on here is a working of Mackay Davashe’s ‘Ntyilo, Ntyilo’, which although beautifully played uncharacteristically errs on the side of the cheesy. To the point where I could imagine it being played to soundtrack the mating scene in an 80’s cop movie^^.

Infinitely better and well-titled in this context is ‘Bra Timing From Phomolong’ (a brother with perfect timing; Phomolong is part of Soweto). It’s a gorgeous, low-swinging five minutes, led in again by Ibrahim in a very low-key manner this one is all about McBee’s beautiful spare bassline and Griffin’s muted trombone. You can hear the whole laid-back character of this particular brother here.

The longest track on Ekaya is ‘Ek Se Ou Windhoek Toe Nou’ (literally, ‘I say, man, to Windhoek now’) which is a great rambling, rumbling exposition. The bass underpins everything here, driving it forwards urgently. The band take solos and then reconvene to drive home the theme and there is some wonderful alto work from Ward. Everything is kept nice and melodic throughout although it does threaten to break out into something a little more free-form at one point.

Which leaves us with ‘Cape Town’ to finish. Carlos Ward plays flute on this track and there is something very bitter-sweet in this tune. The city is musically invoked as a kinetic, lively place balanced out with a certain melancholy, although it ends on a decidedly upbeat tone.

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Ekaya is a wonderfully restful way to spend 40 minutes of your allotted span. It is a gentle hug of an LP and something I could never imagine not wanting to spend time with on a slow Sunday evening.

Dig it.

1066 Down.

PS: Because you’re worth it:

PPS: Ekaya is definitely the best jazz LP I have heard from the 80’s. No contest.

*okay, okay, Carlos Ward is Panamanian but grew up in the US from age 12, don’t be picky!

**Mandela referred to him as ‘our Mozart’.

^which we are given little explanations of.

*^my mum started me on Bud Powell quite young.

^^he would be no ordinary cop, she would end up being iced by the bad guys and it would probably be called Due Process, or something similar. There may even be an annoyingly by-the-book sidekick, or a dog involved, but hopefully not during the scene ‘Ntyilo, Ntyilo’ would soundtrack.