Often when something is unexpected, it ends up being that much more rewarding. You know: surprises! I remember back in 1994 when Brandford Marsalis put together his jazz/funk/hip-hop group Buckshot LeFonque. The debut album was a giant pile of unexpected. So much so that some folks didn't seem to know what to make of it. Something so loose coming from the Marsalis camp?! Yeah well, the shows they put on were even better. When I saw them quite a bit of the crowd was dressed up in their "Going to see a jazz show" best. The stage was jammed full of percussion, turntables, scratchy guitars, horns and rappers. They opened with a blistering version of Miles Davis' "Spanish Key." Surprise! It just got better from there, with wicked (and nearly impossible to understand) Jamaican rappers, combustible funk, and the craziest turntable/saxophone battle I'd ever seen. (OK, the only such battle, but still...)
Such genre-busting appears to be second nature to some people. Consider the main instigators in Abraham, Inc. Socalled is a hip-hop artist who specializes in fashioning beats from klezmer samples. Trombonist/composer Fred Wesley has played with everybody from Count Basie to Ike and Tina Turner to James Brown. He was the music director and primary writer for Brown from 1968 to 1975. He also played with and arranged for both Parliament-Funkadelic and Booty's Rubber Band. Clarinetist David Krakauer was a part of the early years of the Klezmatics before forming Klezmer Madness! This classically-trained musician might love klezmer and other musics, but he really seems to love running them headlong into each other.
And so Abraham, Inc. was born. If you assume that the combined resumés of the major players here make a high butt-shake quotient likely, then you have your thinking cap in the right place. Hinted at by the 2002 Klezmer Madness! release The Twelve Tribes, Tweet Tweet presents a full-on dance party that takes the best elements from each genre, whipping it all into a frothy mess of funk goodness.
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