For your uber hip musician, whether the discipline is jazz, experimental, rock, or all of the above, it’s almost become a right of passage, traveling to Morocco to jam with with the desert musicians. The Master Musicians of Joujouka have hosted everyone from Brian Jones to Ornette Coleman and Talvin Singh in their time to mixed success, though a few people have also left the mountains behind and headed down the coast in search of the incredible Gnawa trance musicians.
Perhaps it was a previous tussle with Ornette that planted the seed for Kuhn to decide in his 60’s to seek out the Saharan Berber musicians. He’s accompanied on the trip by Spanish percussionist Ramon Lopez and Moroccan singer and Guembri player Majid Bekkas, the trio whom had previously recorded the 2006 album Kalimba together.
Out of the Desert was recorded in the capital Rabat, in a studio, though one piece, Seawalk, was recorded in the Hotel Palms in Erfoud, which is right on the edge of the massive dunes of the Sahara. In Rabat they brought in some of those incredible Gnawa musicians and you can hear their hypnotic metronomic castanets rattling through the majority of the pieces here. There is a real fusion here. Kuhn doesn’t alter his playing, or get all avant garde plink plonking along to the rickety percussion. Rather he builds these themes, a few note runs and expands, dancing around them, improvising, before returning to them triumphantly later. It’s very much a recipe he has used repeatedly in various jazz ensembles in the past and it is incredibly effective. He also makes way for Bekkas’ throaty vocals, which again are used sparingly yet to great effect. Curiously Lopez’s percussion which includes tabla and kit, often together manages to merge seamlessly with the Moroccan accompaniment.
Ultimately though despite thumb piano, hand drums, incredible vocals (from Bekkas and some of the guest musicians) , all manner of shakers and rattles and the various Moroccan instrumentation, Out of the Desert is a jazz album. It’s best exemplified by the seven and a half minute Sandia where for the first three minutes Kuhn isn’t sighted, instead it sounds like traditional Gnawa music, call and response chanting over the castanets and this amazing traditional sounding bass instrument. But then the piano comes in, with Kuhn improvising and we’ve returned to this curious netherworld in between both worlds, and we’re left with some of the most evocative and interesting jazz you will hear in a long time.
Bob Baker Fish
