Recording of the Week, Kenny Garrett, 'Sounds from the Ancestors'

Photo credit: Jimmy Katz

An active working musician since the 1970s, American saxophonist Kenny Garrett made an early debut at the age of 18 as a member of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, then under the leadership of Mercer Ellington. Before making his bandleading debut in the mid-80s, Garrett spent his time building an impressive portfolio of collaborations, playing in the bands of Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw to name a handful. Although Michigan-based record label Mack Avenue has built something of a reputation recently for championing the younger generation of American jazz talent, they’ve always had plenty of veteran artists on their roster. With early releases from artists including British pianist George Shearing to contemporary American players like Kevin Eubanks, Stanley Jordan and Christian McBride, this is where Garrett has made his home for the past few years since 2008’s Sketches of MD: Live at the Iridium with Pharaoh Sanders. Now on his fifth release with the label, Sounds from the Ancestors pays homage to the sounds of past American jazz greats, much like how Sketches of MD acted as a tribute to his old bandleader Miles Davis, with the added flavours from the music of the African diaspora. In a similar vein to some of the new London sounds, Garrett manages to subtly weave Afro-Cuban rhythms into his modern jazz sound.

As the record’s title suggests, Sounds from the Ancestors is awash with references to jazz greats of the past, some of whom Garrett’s even shared a stage with. The fact that ‘For Art’s Sake’ opens with an isolated drum kit playing a killer off-kilter beat reveals it as a tribute to Garrett’s former bandmate Art Blakey, rather than the medium of art itself, while the track ‘Hargrove’ simultaneously immortalises the late trumpeter Roy Hargrove while also including the vocal refrain from Coltrane’s A Love Supreme - no doubt the two would have happily shared a stage together, too, had the saxophonist not passed when Garrett was only 7 years of age.

Garrett bookends the album with two versions of the tune ‘It’s Time to Come Home’, the only difference being that the first track features Dreiser Durruthy’s vocal performances towards the end. The tune itself has a great shuffling groove, and besides Garrett’s slightly overlong improvisation it makes for a great first impression of Sounds from the Ancestors, though its inclusion at the end is one of the more perplexing things about the album, especially given the very minor difference between the two versions. Perhaps an homage in itself to the structure of Davis’s In a Silent Way? Or perhaps Garrett and co. were split on the inclusion of Durrthy’s vocals? Nonetheless, it hardly spoils an otherwise excellent record.

Twenty studio albums in, Garrett manages the careful balance of embracing outer influences whilst condensing them into his now-refined style without it feeling like an awkward clashing of sounds. Marrying the rhythmic sounds of pan-African music isn’t a novel concept, but it injects much of Sounds from the Ancestors with an undeniable groove that would otherwise be missed on another moody, modal contemporary jazz record. The music Garrett composed for Sounds from the Ancestors is densely harmonic, in the vein of modern jazz sounds. From the subdued, nu jazz chord-work of ‘Soldiers of the Fields / Soldats de Champs’, to the more bluesy gospel-infused ‘When the Days Were Different’, there’s both an impressive range of styles explored and dynamicness to the works themselves. ‘Soldiers of the Fields’ kicks into its midsection with a sudden burst of energy after the otherwise sombre opening act, while the album’s title track does just the opposite and mellows out towards its ending. With tasteful use of vocal features - that don’t take away from this otherwise ostensibly instrumental-focussed music, mind - as well as progressive song structures, Sounds from the Ancestors is consistently pleasing from start to finish.