Classic Recordings,
Ahmad Jamal Trio, 'The Awakening'
As a jazz fan, there is no doubt when discovering classic and archive material that the musicians blessing your ears are not always long for this world by the time you get around to discovering them. This year, we have already lost some greats in the form of Wayne Shorter, Ivan Conti and Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, to name but three. But the departure of Ahmad Jamal, the most recent member to join that legendary jam session in the sky, felt rather different. I have always felt a deep affinity with Jamal's playing, and after discovering his album, The Awakening, I learned that jazz could be dramatic as well as reflective. I find that all kind of moods co-exist in Jamal's work, so, having recently joined the Presto Music team, I decided to show my appreciation of the late pianist's legacy in light of his recent passing.
Recorded in early February, 1970, this was one of Jamal’s last truly acoustic studio efforts before the electric haze of the following decade took over. By now a seasoned bandleader, he had already begun to make a name for himself over the last dozen years following the bestselling release of At The Pershing (1958), which remains perhaps his best known work to this day. And yet, this is not just some lounge-friendly soundtrack to delight friends at social gatherings. Having recorded and toured with bassist Jamil Nasser and drummer Frank Gant since the mid-sixties, the group had developed a more rhythmically ambitious style following an extensive residency at The Village Gate, Manhattan. This, paired with the uninhibited impressionism of Jamal’s musical flow, was more than enough of an evolution before the group could enter the studio and lay down something truly mystical. Coming to fruition in light of the Ramadan that had fallen the winter just gone, the vibrancy of this group’s spiritual connection is immediately evident. Here is a disciplined trio, working hard to provide ample support for each other in the hope of transcendental goals.
Communication is key, and The Awakening plays out like a theological debate between the inventiveness of Jamal’s melodic variations and the precision of his fellow musicians' rhythmic foundations. The title track that opens Side One allows the group to state their intentions from the very first instant. An invocation of spiritual proportions, this musical sermon remains cool, calm and collected, but one can already sense a deeper meaning bubbling away under the surface. Subtle vamps allow for moments of quiet reflection, except Jamal doesn’t allow for the energy to drop at all, nor at any point does the group take its collective foot off the pedal. He immediately returns with another flourish of wild lyrical spontaneity that always maintains a spoken fluency. The pianist's melodic ideas never feel rushed, whereas his harmonic ones always possess a delicate intricacy. Once again, it is the solid underpinning of Gant and Nasser that ultimately solidifies and liberates this trio in their sonic pursuit.
I Love Music is an ecstatic rhapsody, which, prefaced by an almost four-minute long piano solo, features some of Jamal’s most adventurous playing of his career. Patterns is a thrilling roller-coaster ride consisting of a thunderous minor theme, interspersed with exquisitely heavy modal passages. Herbie Hancock’s Dolphin Dance skips along, with none of the original composition’s magic lost to the spritely bounce the ensemble applies herein. Amidst this buoyant groove comes one of the album’s finest rug-pulling moments, a tense polyrhythmic displacement that will make your head bop and your jaw drop. Stolen Moments, a minor blues penned by the prolific all-rounder Oliver Nelson, is equally as cool as it is ominous and foreboding, making for a real album highlight. Jobim's Wave rounds off the record, once again proving repetition to be the fundamental device that underlines the bandleader's knack for interweaving form and content. So fruitful is Jamal’s creativity on this record that hip-hop producers down the line have returned time and time again to sample even the slimmest cuts of his musical offerings. You can hear snippets of this record echoed throughout the pantheon of nineties hip-hop, from Nas to Common and all the way to J Dilla himself.
This is not just an essential recording in the trio format but of any jazz lineup. The interplay of ideas between lead and rhythm are so finely balanced, it’s no wonder that with each new listen comes new rewards over half a century later. With The Awakening, Jamal would go onto become hip-hop’s best kept secret. Scores of contemporary listeners have since expressed a revived interest in his talents, turning on in their droves so that they too might finally experience the chance to be awakened.
Barney Whittaker
