In 1987, Chilean conceptual artist Alfredo Jaar baffled and angered passerby in Time Square with an installation that showed a map of the United Sates with the words “This is not America.” The computer-animated image then changed to show the word “America” and a map of the whole continent. The point, for Latin Americans at least, was rather obvious, but it had to be made. Similarly, in the 1980s, the late, great Cuban trumpeter and band leader Mario Bauza, who knew a thing of two about jazz, Afro-Cuban and Latin American music, used to baffle and anger many of his lesser every time he said that, with the exception of Paquito D’Rivera, no one was playing Latin jazz. What everybody called Latin jazz, he used to declare with a shrug, as if chagrined for having to state the obvious, was Afro-Cuban jazz. He wasn’t being just a proud Cubano, which of course he was, but calling attention o an overlooked, extraordinary world of rhythms and styles. In the decade since, a new generation of Latin American jazz musicians has emerged with an open, pan-Latin approach to Latin Jazz. Musicians such as Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez, Puerto Rican saxophonist David Sanchez and Venezuelan pianist Ed Simon have been drawing from the roots as well as their experiences in the United States and as a result, in the their music, mejoranas meet Monk, blues take a bomba y plena groove and Venezuelan tonadas take on hard swing. Argentine drummer and composer Guillermo Nojechowicz has been there all along, a practicioner and creator, as well, of this new pan-Latin sound. In compositions that range on this debut CD from the dark Chacarera de Paloma to the lyrical bounce of Samba de Maya, Nojechowicz, who has lived in Boston since 1980, reworks rhythms and styles such as Argentine chacareras, Braziian baiãos and Uruguayan candombes with the vocabulary of blues and bop. If the results sound organic, lived-in, it is because they reflect a life experience that is not just bilingual but bicultural. That’s what’s at the heart of Two Worlds. This is music from a place with blurred boundaries, a place of memories, echoes indeed, and startling newness. Café Opinião, for example, is a glimpse at, and a tribute to, a place in Rio de Janeiro, “a sort of Buena Vista Social Club” where musicians used to hang out and play, says Nojechowicz. Chacarera de Paloma is for a friend of his who became one of the “desaparecidos,” the vanished ones, during the Dirty War in Argentina in the late 70s. Time Lost, an easy-on-the ear ballad, was written after a trip to Buenos Aires to visit to his ill father, painter Noe Nojechowiz, who passed away in 1998. It is a meditation on lost chances, about time passed and things not shared. But this is followed by the bright, hopeful Samba de Maya, dedicatied to his seven-year-old daughter. Musically, Two Worlds stretches from a gentle mocking European tango in the title track and the irresistible groove of candombe, an African-rooted rhythm from the Rio de la Plata to a sober version of Sting’s Fragile and the joyful Afro-Brazilian rhythm of partido alto in Partido Final. This may be music that has its roots a continent away, but Nojechowicz’ writing resonates deeply, not just for the culturally curious. Ricky Ricardo yesterday, Ricky Martin today, the names change but every ten years or so mainstream culture in the United States discovers America – the other America that is. And as it turns out, at this turn of the century, it lives next door. Discover it yourself, here.
Fernando Gonzalez
1. Two Worlds (feat. Claudio Roditi & Helio Alves) 6:09
2. Partido Final (feat. Dino Govoni) 4:38
3. Time Lost (feat. Romero Lubambo) 5:34
4. Samba de Maya (feat. Kim Nazarian) 4:42
5. Uruguay (feat. Cafe & Helio Alves) 4:32
6. La Bossa Nova de Claudio (feat. Claudio Roditi) 5:21
7. Cafe Opiniao (feat. Romero Lubambo) 5:29
8. Fragile (feat. Kim Nazarian) 4:09
9. Chacarera de Paloma (feat. Donny McCaslin) 5:50
10. Boa Viagem Baiao 4:46
Guillermo Nojechowicz, drums
Kim Nazarian, vocal
Helio Alves, piano
Dino Govoni, saxes
Fernando Huergo, bass
John Allmark, trumpet
Claudio Roditi, trumpet and flugelhorn
Romero Lumbambo, guitar
Cafe, percussion
Nestor Sanchez, background vocals
Donny McCaslin, tenor sax
Brad Hatfield, keyboards
Amaro Laria, congas
Mark Greel, trumpet
