The course that Bill Frisell has taken since his 1997 album
Nashville has proven vexing to many who were originally
pulled in by the guitarist’s more straightforward jazz
work with Paul Motian or his avant-squonk work with John Zorn’s
Naked City. There’s no question that Frisell trained
as a jazz guitarist and that he can play in the idiom, but
his more recent music has veered into an area that truly defies
genre, even though many try to pin him to one or another.
The phrase that rears its head most frequently is “Americana.”
While Frisell is working with such American genres as folk,
country, blues, and jazz, he also creates music of great space
and meditativeness that sometimes recalls the music of other
places as well. Some maintain that Frisell isn’t doing
anything very interesting or even original, citing the idiomatic
folk period of Pat Metheny captured on albums such as New
Chautauqua and As Falls Wichita So Falls Wichita
Falls or the entire oeuvre of John Fahey.
On the surface Frisell’s recent recordings do bear
a certain resemblance to the two Metheny albums mentioned.
Both artists seem to create a music that is wide open, evoking
the big sky and open road of rural America. But for Metheny
it was enough to simply evoke such sounds; Frisell has immersed
himself in them. Since Nashville he has often surrounded
himself with musicians steeped in the genres that he sought
to incorporate into his music, from Jim Keltner, Jerry Douglas,
and members of Alison Krause’s Union Station group to
Dave Holland and Elvin Jones. Frisell’s unique, singing
guitar sound, augmented by tape loops, has remained a shimmering
constant, tying his experiments in musical mixology together.
And whereas Fahey labored under a certain conception of authenticity,
Frisell makes no such attempt, preferring to allow the depth
of musical feeling that the musicians put into the music create
its own level of authenticity. This is one reason that Frisell
maddens jazz fans or indeed anyone seeking to put a label
on him.
On The Intercontinentals, Frisell has surrounded
himself with an international coterie of excellent musicians
in an attempt to incorporate sounds and musics from around
the world into his grab bag. The result is pure Frisell, yet
it is tinged with an international flavor. What makes it a
great album and one of Frisell’s most successful statements
is that at no time does it sound like he said ‘hey,
let’s graft some exotic international instruments onto
what I’m doing.’ The entire project sounds as
though it grew very organically, as did such previous Frisell
releases as Nashville, Blues Dream, and Bill
Frisell with Dave Holland and Elvin Jones.
Frisell has assembled an impressive crew of guests for this
recording. Vinicius Cantuaria, with whom Frisell has previously
recorded, provides some gorgeous guitar work (listen to the
stunning interplay between Frisell and Cantuaria, topped by
Greg Leisz’s pedal steel guitar). The sound is similar
to that found on Cantuaria’s 2001 album Vinicius. On
many other tracks, Cantuaria plays snare and bass drum. Also
included are Malian percussionist Sidiki Camara, master of
the oud and bouzouki Christos Govetas, pedal steel guitarist
Greg Leisz, and violinist Jenny Scheinman.
Malian guitarist Boubacar Traore’s spirit hangs over
the proceedings, as the disc opens with a Frisell composition
in his honor (“Boubacar”) and the group takes
on Boubacar’s Malian blues “Baba Drame.”
It’s amazing how much this composition has in common
with American blues, and Frisell and his associates certainly
emphasize these common elements. Camara employs calabsh, djembe,
shaker, and cymbals, but you could easily think, if you heard
this on a scratchy vinyl recording, that it was an old Appalachian
folk song accompanied by tin cans and washboards.
Another standout track is the group’s interpretation
of Gilberto Gil’s “Procissao” which opens
with deeply foreboding, sustained bass notes, followed by
rhythmic interplay between violin and guitar before Frisell
begins to play bluesy fills, at which point Govetas bursts
in with the Portuguese lyrics. The whole thing continues to
build throughout its six plus minute length, climaxing in
some energetic, psuedo-bottleneck antics. The very next track,
the traditional “The Young Monk” finds Frisell’s
nylon string guitar and Govetas’ oud melding perfectly.
It’s Frisell’s secret formula—a group sound
where various instruments rise and fall in the listener’s
attention, with little regard for traditional notions of “solo”
and “ensemble.” In this respect, Frisell is continuing
to work with one of the great ideas brought forth in modern
jazz: “no one solos/everyone solos.” Miles Davis
used it on recordings such as In A Silent Way and
Bitches Brew, and it was the reason that Weather
Report never sounded much like any other so-called “fusion”
band.
Frisell may not be playing what many jazz fans consider jazz,
nor is he playing “world” music with any claims
to authentically reproducing the music of a specific region.
The whole point of Frisell’s exercise is that he is
capable of combining the sounds and textures of other musical
forms into something new and yet is able to stamp it with
the unmistakable Bill Frisell “brand.” And he
is able to do all of that while creating music that is simultaneously
adventurous, beautiful, and full of depth. That, kids, is
exactly what being a musician is all about.
