Los Hombres Calientes: V.4--Vodou Dance

LOS HOMBRES CALIENTES
Vol. 4: Vodou Dance

Basin Street Records

Once again the musical collective known as Los Hombres Calientes, anchored by percussionist/musicologist Bill Summers and trumpeter Irvin Mayfield has explored the living vestiges of the Afro-Carribean influences that coalesced in New Orleans and managed to become what we call jazz. This time out, the guys hit Trinidad, Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, and bring it all home to New Orleans. Though they’ve visited some of these countries while preparing their previous three recordings, they manage to find new sounds and deeper mysteries to explore on this trip.

Things get started with “Vodou Hoodoo Babalu,” a Summers composition that features Cyril Neville on lead vocals. Anytime you can bring George Porter into the studio merely to help sing backup vocals, you know you must be hosting a first rate party (Porter does contribute some of his outrageously funky bass work to “Wild Tchoupitoulas”). The track’s lyrics rescue Orisha Babalu Aye from his Lucy & Desi references and explain his role as healer of deadly diseases and guardian of the disabled. Trumpeter Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown and trombonist Stephen Walker’s tight Cuban big band arrangements accent the song, and Mayfield lets loose with his first hot solo. The interlude “Obini Baila Oshun,” featuring Obini Abericula, a group of female dancers, singers, and drummers. Mayfield’s composition “The Latin Tinge” follows. Based on Jelly Roll Morton’s assertion that it was impossible to play jazz properly without the “latin tinge,” it features Mayfield playing stoptime solo cadenzas with as much panache and confidence as some of Louis Armstrong’s best Hot Fives recordings before erupting into a full-fledged mambo. Drummer Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez, who figured prominently on Los Hombres’ third recording returns here and, together with Summers, provides nonstop percussive pyrotechnics. The piece is all Mayfield, allowing him a lot of room to improvise and demonstrate his fantastic technique and powerful upper register playing.

After a brief interlude recorded in Rio de Janeiro, we get George Duke’s composition “Brazilian Sugar,” a beautiful samba accented by the soprano sax work of Aaron Fletcher, a member of Mayfield’s band who has also worked with Terence Blanchard. It’s followed by “Wepa,” a percussion and chant by Summers, Hernandez, and pianist Victor Atkins, who is featured for the first time. Once again the horn section of Brown and Walker keeps things lively throughout. “Haitian Bamboo,” a very brief clip documenting ceremonial voo-doo drumming, is followed by “Creole Grove” with its unmistakable second line rhythms and its front line horn section of Mayfield, Walker, and Fletcher. The three trade four-bar solos in what quickly becomes an enthusiastic street parade. This white hot center of the CD continues with a variety of Latin-based rhythms, including the sublime “Trinidad Nocturne,” an achingly gorgeous melody accompanied by forty or so steel pan musicians, until we arrive back in New Orleans, preparing for Mardi Gras day with the Mardi Gras Indians. “Old Time Indians (Meeting of Big Chiefs, Mardi Gras Morning, New Orleans)” features Big Chief Bo Dollis, Big Chief Walter “Dooky” Harris, and Big Chief Donald Harrison as well as Cyril Neville on bass drum and Irvin Mayfield singing in there somewhere. This is followed by “Wild Tchoupitoulas” with the Meters’ George Porter on bass, Ronald Markham supplying some tasty Wurlitzer organ work, and Bo Dollis back for solo vocals.

At this point the CD is only just about half over. Most bands would be happy to be able to provide this much exciting material on a recording, but Los Hombres are just getting warmed up. After a brief interlude featuring a group of Haitian cornet players and drummers comes Mayfield’s “Vodou Love Call,” a sultry, R&B-influenced number that features a core jazz ensemble of Mayfield, Markham, bassist Ed Livingston, Fletcher, drummer Ricky Sebastian, and Summers, all underlined by the wordless vocals of baritone singer Philip Manuel. Cuba is next on our itinerary, with “Negro, Pancho Quinto Y Bill” featuring vocals by “El Negro” Guillermo Triana Crespo and bongos by Pancho Quinto. “Yo Soy El Malo Te” features Bill Summers and Gumbi Ortiz handling vocals and layers of polyrhythmic percussion, and sounds like a Havana jam session.

“Ghetto Get Up” is a reggae-based number, with Cyril Neville handling the vocal duties. As on previous Los Hombres outings, the link between reggae and jazz is easier to hear when it has been preceded by the many different blends of African and Caribbean sources heard earlier on Vodou Dance. And, lest you forget that this is a spiritual as well as musical quest, there is a glorious rendition of the traditional “I’ll Fly Away” sung by Reverend Eddie Payne with everyone contributing to the choir. “Jocimo” is the Hombres’ rendition of the New Orleans favorite that was later retooled as “Iko Iko” featuring vocalist Davell Crawford singing the song written by his grandfather, James “Sugar Boy” Crawford. It’s a wonderful, celebratory note to end on, with three brief interludes presented afterward—the first featuring Cuban drumming, the second the Reverend Eddie Payne singing at the Greater Providence Baptist Church in New Orleans, and the last the ceremonial voo-doo drums recorded in Port Au Prince, Haiti. A reminder, perhaps, that the Vodou Dance is spiritual, is celebration, is about the flesh and the spirit.

Though Vodou Dance contains 27 tracks (including the brief interludes) and around 80 minutes of music, it is over far too soon. As always, the listener is grateful to Los Hombres for stamping his or her musical passport and to New Orleans for opening its doors to us to sample from the culture it shares with so many other parts of the world, and for presenting that culture to the United States, which is certainly richer for the experience.