Batagraf: Statements
Statements
CD
CD (Compact Disc)
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- Label: ECM, 2004
- Erscheinungstermin: 6.9.2005
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Jon Blake, Frode Nymo, Kenneth Ekornes u.a.
Jon Balke, seit nunmehr vier Alben etablierter ECM-Künstler, stö›t mit seinem jüngsten Projekt Batagraf in neue musikalische Gefilde vor. Waren seine bisherigen Veröffentlichung meist im Bereich zwischen Avantgarde, Neuer Musik und minimalistischen Large Ensemble Arrangements (wie z. B. das Magnetic North Orchestra) angesiedelt, so ist Statements auf neuem Land gebaut. Mit Batagraf erforscht Balke die avantgardistische Seite der modernen Elektronika. Dabei bleibt er genau so fokussiert, experimentierfreudig und minimalistisch wie zuvor.
“Drumming, drumming... just for the joy of it” – and much more besides.
Batagraf was launched in Oslo in 2002 as a “private research forum” rather than “a band”, with four drummers plus Jon Balke – on percussion – exploring a more flexible approach to rhythm playing which might “bypass the metric, rigid grooves of the computer age”. Just a group of friends working on musical problems in rehearsal rooms and around coffee tables: “No gigs booked and no plans or ambitions other than to understand more,” as Jon Balke explains. With the introduction of bata drums – from Cuba via the Nigerian Yoruba tradition – Balke and friends began thinking about the question of how a message can be encapsulated in sound: West African tradition holds that bata drummers were able to recite poems, prayers and sermons literally, sharing syllables between the group of drums used for this devotional practice. Balke: “The idea triggered the project in two directions: the inclusion of literal meaning in the sound itself and focus on the rhythm and musicality of spoken language.”
“All this happened against the backdrop of the Iraq War and the use and abuse of language in media and propaganda added to the understanding that language is a huge and ever-changing landscape. On its borders, music begins.”
The priority, then, is to reintroduce meaning, poetry and fluency into rhythmic ideas. On “Statements”, some well-known associate Batagrafers – Sidsel Endresen, Miki N’Doye, Arve Henriksen – all make colourful contributions, but the core is the ensemble comprising the four drummers plus Balke plus young Norwegian saxophonist Frode Nymo.
“Batagraf takes its name from the Latin verb battere – beat and graph, meaning, writer or writing. Thus, one may deduce a will to strike the wordless poetry of the sound-waves, to hammer phonetics in the open air, to write the sound waves in beating” – Jon Balke.
Out of a “deep respect” for the bata tradition and its practitioners, Balke and company make no attempt to duplicate “this noble form of music”: “The only link is the setting, people gathering in a circle to explore the universe of sound”.
The drummers “drumming for the joy of it” are from different backgrounds. Helge Andreas Norbakken and Kenneth Ekornes have both been associated with Sami singer Mari Boine. Ingar Zach is recognized as one of the important young drummers on the free improvised music scene (his discography includes recordings with Derek Bailey, Philipp Wachsmann, Jim O’Rourke, Barry Guy) – and he and Norbakken are both members of Balke’s Magnetic North Orchestra (refer to the riveting “Diverted Travels”). Harald Skullerud plays with Niko Valkepaa and Solo Cissokho, and has a long and proven affinity with African music.
Jon Balke made his ECM debut in 1975, as pianist with Arild Andersen’s group. He was a founder member of Masqualero and the leader / composer / arranger of Oslo 13 before founding Magnetic North. He has long been recognized as one of Scandinavia’s most original musical thinkers. He emphasizes that Batagraf is not “his” band but a real collective. “The ‘Statements’ CD is definitely my production, but Batagraf remains more a forum than my personal art music project. It will continue to be a flexible, constantly changing constellation that might work with a poet one day, a children’s choir the next, in the theatre the next day and so on. It will also work without my participation.”
On Statements “Batagraf” often feels like an environment to be entered. The listener is invited into a world of sound inside the circle of drums. Miki N’Doye’s text recital – in Wolof – is a call for peace in a language that seems “musical” to uncomprehending Western ears – especially when interlaced with Nymo’s sax. Noises of the street, the forest and the media overlap. Birds call, frogs croak, a baby gurgles contentedly. Balke: “A Brazilian woman shouts everyday phrases, but her words are processed in mid-sentence.” Is there a message in the intonation of the spoken phrases? Is the intent behind spoken phrases, a message that speaks by itself? Vocal percussion becomes news-broadcasts. News clips, newspeak from the media in context with bata drums beating, citations of politicians’ speeches, time-stretched into abstraction, becoming percussion, figures that develop into a song...”
This is international, border-crossing jazz in full effect. … Statements has a distinctly elemental tonality, a graphic sense of ancestral cry. Adding greatly to this is the vocal / recitation of Miki N’Doye, Sidsel Endresen and Solveig Slettahjel whose minimal musings on the closing ambient invocation “Unknown” are arresting to say the least. Kevin Le Gendre, Echoes
The current Batagraf project … finds Balke taking yet another fresh look at the potentiality of jazz-inflected music making today. Alto saxophonist Nymo blows both strongly and reflectively at various moments … but the main thrust of this music concerns the mysterious interplay of spoken text, or speech fragment, and staggered, propulsive rhythms. A variety of effective reflective moments enhance the sense of a search for human(e) contact and meaning beyond today’s 24 / 7 world of political propaganda and media manipulation. Michael Tucker, Jazz Journal International
Die soeben erschienene erste CD von Batagraf, Statements, trägt ... deutlich die Handschrift Balkes, der an den Keyboards für die attraktive melodische Grundierung einer mitreißenden und komplex gewobenen Collage aus Musik und Sprache sorgt. ... Balkes Kammerjazz fluktuiert zwischen fassbarer Melodik und poetischer Abstraktion und besticht durch Klangkombinationen, wie man sie bisher noch nie zu hören bekam. Die bevorzugten Aggregatszustände dieser zugleich organischen und rätselhaften Musik sind flüssig und gasförmig, die Energie, die in ihr schlummert, bricht sich in überraschenden Eruptionen Bahn. Tom Gsteiger, Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag
Trommeln und Schreiben, Beat und Wort, Rhythmus und Dichtung – aus diesen Elementen leitet das Projekt Batagraf seinen Namen ab. ... Auf Statements gesellen sich zu den Perkussionisten zwei Sprecher, die poetische Texte in der westafrikanischen Sprache Wolof sowie auf Englisch rezitieren, zwei Bläser ... und mehrere Vokalistinnen. Balke steuert außer Percussion auch Keyboardsounds bei, reichert das Ganze mit Naturgeräuschen, zusätzlichen Stimmen sowie Fragmenten aus Radionachrichten an. So entstehen faszinierende Wort-Klang-Rhythmus-Collagen, die von der Ausgangsidee der Batá-Tradition allmählich immer weiter abstrahieren. Statements voller Poesie. Berthold Klostermann, Fono Forum
“Drumming, drumming... just for the joy of it” – and much more besides.
Batagraf was launched in Oslo in 2002 as a “private research forum” rather than “a band”, with four drummers plus Jon Balke – on percussion – exploring a more flexible approach to rhythm playing which might “bypass the metric, rigid grooves of the computer age”. Just a group of friends working on musical problems in rehearsal rooms and around coffee tables: “No gigs booked and no plans or ambitions other than to understand more,” as Jon Balke explains. With the introduction of bata drums – from Cuba via the Nigerian Yoruba tradition – Balke and friends began thinking about the question of how a message can be encapsulated in sound: West African tradition holds that bata drummers were able to recite poems, prayers and sermons literally, sharing syllables between the group of drums used for this devotional practice. Balke: “The idea triggered the project in two directions: the inclusion of literal meaning in the sound itself and focus on the rhythm and musicality of spoken language.”
“All this happened against the backdrop of the Iraq War and the use and abuse of language in media and propaganda added to the understanding that language is a huge and ever-changing landscape. On its borders, music begins.”
The priority, then, is to reintroduce meaning, poetry and fluency into rhythmic ideas. On “Statements”, some well-known associate Batagrafers – Sidsel Endresen, Miki N’Doye, Arve Henriksen – all make colourful contributions, but the core is the ensemble comprising the four drummers plus Balke plus young Norwegian saxophonist Frode Nymo.
“Batagraf takes its name from the Latin verb battere – beat and graph, meaning, writer or writing. Thus, one may deduce a will to strike the wordless poetry of the sound-waves, to hammer phonetics in the open air, to write the sound waves in beating” – Jon Balke.
Out of a “deep respect” for the bata tradition and its practitioners, Balke and company make no attempt to duplicate “this noble form of music”: “The only link is the setting, people gathering in a circle to explore the universe of sound”.
The drummers “drumming for the joy of it” are from different backgrounds. Helge Andreas Norbakken and Kenneth Ekornes have both been associated with Sami singer Mari Boine. Ingar Zach is recognized as one of the important young drummers on the free improvised music scene (his discography includes recordings with Derek Bailey, Philipp Wachsmann, Jim O’Rourke, Barry Guy) – and he and Norbakken are both members of Balke’s Magnetic North Orchestra (refer to the riveting “Diverted Travels”). Harald Skullerud plays with Niko Valkepaa and Solo Cissokho, and has a long and proven affinity with African music.
Jon Balke made his ECM debut in 1975, as pianist with Arild Andersen’s group. He was a founder member of Masqualero and the leader / composer / arranger of Oslo 13 before founding Magnetic North. He has long been recognized as one of Scandinavia’s most original musical thinkers. He emphasizes that Batagraf is not “his” band but a real collective. “The ‘Statements’ CD is definitely my production, but Batagraf remains more a forum than my personal art music project. It will continue to be a flexible, constantly changing constellation that might work with a poet one day, a children’s choir the next, in the theatre the next day and so on. It will also work without my participation.”
On Statements “Batagraf” often feels like an environment to be entered. The listener is invited into a world of sound inside the circle of drums. Miki N’Doye’s text recital – in Wolof – is a call for peace in a language that seems “musical” to uncomprehending Western ears – especially when interlaced with Nymo’s sax. Noises of the street, the forest and the media overlap. Birds call, frogs croak, a baby gurgles contentedly. Balke: “A Brazilian woman shouts everyday phrases, but her words are processed in mid-sentence.” Is there a message in the intonation of the spoken phrases? Is the intent behind spoken phrases, a message that speaks by itself? Vocal percussion becomes news-broadcasts. News clips, newspeak from the media in context with bata drums beating, citations of politicians’ speeches, time-stretched into abstraction, becoming percussion, figures that develop into a song...”
Pressestimmen:
This is international, border-crossing jazz in full effect. … Statements has a distinctly elemental tonality, a graphic sense of ancestral cry. Adding greatly to this is the vocal / recitation of Miki N’Doye, Sidsel Endresen and Solveig Slettahjel whose minimal musings on the closing ambient invocation “Unknown” are arresting to say the least. Kevin Le Gendre, Echoes
The current Batagraf project … finds Balke taking yet another fresh look at the potentiality of jazz-inflected music making today. Alto saxophonist Nymo blows both strongly and reflectively at various moments … but the main thrust of this music concerns the mysterious interplay of spoken text, or speech fragment, and staggered, propulsive rhythms. A variety of effective reflective moments enhance the sense of a search for human(e) contact and meaning beyond today’s 24 / 7 world of political propaganda and media manipulation. Michael Tucker, Jazz Journal International
Die soeben erschienene erste CD von Batagraf, Statements, trägt ... deutlich die Handschrift Balkes, der an den Keyboards für die attraktive melodische Grundierung einer mitreißenden und komplex gewobenen Collage aus Musik und Sprache sorgt. ... Balkes Kammerjazz fluktuiert zwischen fassbarer Melodik und poetischer Abstraktion und besticht durch Klangkombinationen, wie man sie bisher noch nie zu hören bekam. Die bevorzugten Aggregatszustände dieser zugleich organischen und rätselhaften Musik sind flüssig und gasförmig, die Energie, die in ihr schlummert, bricht sich in überraschenden Eruptionen Bahn. Tom Gsteiger, Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag
Trommeln und Schreiben, Beat und Wort, Rhythmus und Dichtung – aus diesen Elementen leitet das Projekt Batagraf seinen Namen ab. ... Auf Statements gesellen sich zu den Perkussionisten zwei Sprecher, die poetische Texte in der westafrikanischen Sprache Wolof sowie auf Englisch rezitieren, zwei Bläser ... und mehrere Vokalistinnen. Balke steuert außer Percussion auch Keyboardsounds bei, reichert das Ganze mit Naturgeräuschen, zusätzlichen Stimmen sowie Fragmenten aus Radionachrichten an. So entstehen faszinierende Wort-Klang-Rhythmus-Collagen, die von der Ausgangsidee der Batá-Tradition allmählich immer weiter abstrahieren. Statements voller Poesie. Berthold Klostermann, Fono Forum
- Tracklisting
- Mitwirkende
Disk 1 von 1 (CD)
- 1 Haomanna
- 2 Butano
- 3 Rraka
- 4 Doublespeak
- 5 Pregoneras Del Bosque
- 6 Betong
- 7 Altiett
- 8 En Vuelo
- 9 Pajaro
- 10 Whistleblower
- 11 Karagong
- 12 Unknown
