![]() ![]() There's too much sincerity here to not take it seriously a lot of virtuosos - particularly the many keyboard players - have fully committed to the one-nation-under-a-groove family. To be clear, the vagaries aren't intended pejoratively, unless you want them to be they're just signifying suggestions, elements to build upon. "Grown Folks" is anchored by a vaguely New Orleans parade beat, and so on. ![]() An anguine, vaguely Brazilian melody defines the next tune, "Semente." "Gemini" feels vaguely Motown but slower, and with extra synth. The adverb "vaguely" arises often, really. League recently explained to Jazz Night In America that one of his most famous tunes, "Shofukan," was written in a Japanese cultural center in the Netherlands during Christmas, based on a misheard groove from Lebanon.Ī more timely example: The record starts off with "Tarova," where South Asian percussion meets Southern amplitude the effect comes off vaguely like go-go. ![]() Its finishing school was the gospel-church gigs and R&B production of nearby Dallas, where a deeper idiomatic negritude set in. Snarky Puppy's very DNA is recombinant, first barking when League was a Led Zeppelin-obsessed bass student in the University of North Texas jazz program. This record happens to be called Culcha Vulcha read approvingly, it acts as a general modus operandi. A second Grammy Award arrived earlier this year. Yet League and the band have grown a rabid fan base of depth and diversity: young and old, jazz people and laypeople, black, white, neither. Few might have predicted that such a maximalist, stylistically unbound ensemble - an instrumental funk band on the precipice between intricate and noodly - could sustain itself beyond personal passion. It gathers ideas openly and avidly from all over the world and throughout the Afro-American popular music continuum, blending freely. To the extent that Snarky Puppy has a core sonic idea, it's an intricate melody over a multifaceted groove, as generated by multiple horn players, multiple guitarists, multiple keyboardists and multiple percussionists. Remarkably, he's herded such quantity from a many-humaned band, one whose general largeness is also an aesthetic one. ![]() Snarky Puppy is on its hustle.Īt the center of this churn is bassist, chief composer and ringleader Michael League. Then there are the familial side projects (more of those to come this year, too), the international touring schedule of an improbably successful band, and the many other gigs to which any given member commits. Count back and you arrive at seven full-length releases in the last five years, 11 in total. This new music heard here isn't even the first Snarky record to come out this year - that would be the live album and concert film of collaborations called Family Dinner Vol. High among the variously outstanding qualities of the band Snarky Puppy is its fecundity. Jazzers might still balk at the high-concept planning, but it’s remarkable how much polish has been applied without cramping the band’s irrepressible creative energy.Jazz Night In America Snarky Puppy: 'Music For The Brain And Booty' Classic big-band horn riffs and jazz-funk synth licks seamlessly mix Hermeto Pascoalian flutes flow into squelching bass guitar Weather Report atmospherics and 80s-Miles grooves seamlessly segue, and the coolly Crusaders-like, guitar-choppy GØ ought to be a single. The group have grasped a different improvising opportunity, juggling audaciously with the styles of jazz, world and popular music of the past half-century as if their typical riffs and themes were phrases in a shapely but ever-changing solo. However, their fans worldwide need not fear that a first studio project in eight years might be a self-conscious affair: it’s a delightful surprise to be handing five stars to a jazz-influenced venture with little explicit improv. A s Snarky Puppy, the open-minded American jazz and funk collective, have evolved a riproaring live show from endless road life, they’ve specialised in live albums. ![]()
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