John Coltrane is a jazz household name. Ornette Coleman is a jazz household name, as is Sonny Rollins, David Murray, Branford Marsalis, and Joe Lovano. Howard Wiley is not on that list but my ears are telling me that he will be. At the very least, he should be.
The Angola Project takes as inspiration the music born in Louisiana's Angola Penitentiary and recorded in the 1950's by Alan Lomax and Harry Oster. Wiley was introduced to the music by way of friend and ethnomusicologist Danial Atkinson, and the result was the construction of the Angola Project ensemble.
"Wow!" That was my inner response upon first listening to this album. It's not that the spirit of this material hasn't been visited before (Duke Ellington's Sacred Music, David Murray's Speaking In Tongues being fine examples), it's that Wiley has put together a band that is able to amplify this powerful theme while respecting the past. The key here is that the ensemble's sound relies on both the human voice and instruments with human vocal qualities: two vocalists, saxophone, trombone, two trumpets, two violins, and two basses: what Wiley refers to as a "soul chamber ensemble." Yes, there is soul in abundance.
Staying with and leveraging the tradition of field hollers and church rave-ups, the ensemble makes many powerful statements. "Angola," which features saxophonist David Murray, is Wiley's musical take on what it must feel like for the new prisoner heading toward Angola. As the mournful vocals dig into their ostinato, Murray's horn lines slowly morph from merely sad to outright anguished. Nearing the end of the piece, the horns drop away to give the violins and singers the spotlight. It's very moving stuff.
The tradition of call & response is used to great effect on nearly every selection: from the explosive "The Conversation" (sax to vocals to sax to trumpet), to the abject blues of "Trouble of the World," to "No More My Lawd." With each song, you can feel this group of musicians pulling in the same direction. The emotion seems to boil over on the intense reading of John Newman's "Amazing Grace," where Wiley plays the most impassioned solo of the entire album: "chilling" is the word.
Article comments
1 - Pico
i'm finally allowing myself to read this, now that I wrote my own Wiley review. I see I've still got some catching up to do ;&)
2 - Michael J. West
Confound you, Mark and Pico! I was going to review this...then I saw not one, but two reviews on it just this week! And two excellent reviews to boot!
Confound you both!
3 - Pico
I hear ya', Michael, I was already mostly done writing mine when Mark's appeared yesterday. I had to send him a real nasty e-mail to bitch and moan about it ;&)
That said, there's always room for your take on a record, no matter how many times it's been covered before. I hope we get to see it.