Just
what is so special about the vocalastics of Venissa Santi - just what is so
singularly unique - is so eminently clear on Big Stuff: Afro-Cuban Holiday, the
brilliantly innovative follow-up to her 2009 Sunnyside Records debut,
Bienvenida. If at first blush this record appears to be a mere tribute to the
great Billie Holiday, it is clear that first impressions can be somewhat
deceptive. True, this is Santi's homage to the legendary singer. However the
music on this record comes from the very depth of her soul that this is so much
more than a tribute: it is more like an anguished cry, rich in the metaphor of
Afro-Cuban-Blues, cry of sisterhood that is lifted up in elevation to the
celebrated ghost of Ms. Holiday.
Just as
she was on her first album, Santi has once again channeled her ideas through
percussion-colourist and long-time band mate François Zayas, who is responsible
for the majestic arrangements of 12 songs with which Santi, in turn,
re-imagines the heartfelt repertoire of Billie Holiday in an idiom that melds
the heartbeat of bata and offbeat of clave with African-American deep song.
Also joining the vocalist on this musical odyssey are trumpet and flugelhorn
players Tim Thompson and Chris Aschman, the late guitarist Jef Lee Johnson,
pianist John Stenger and bassist Jason Fraticelli. Special appearances are also
made by bassists Paul Klinefelter and Madison Rast, clarinetist Jon Thompson
and percussionist Cuco Castellanos.
The
origins of this music are vividly recalled by Santi, who remembers how Danilo
Pérez invited her to share the stage in Philadelphia's Kimmel Center with such
luminaries as Kurt Elling, Sheila Jordan, Lizz Wright and Claudia Acuña among
others on a gig that was designed to present a series of homages to Billie
Holiday in May of 2010. For Santi to be included in a playbill that comprised
of such stellar artists was both a privilege as well as a chance to do
something truly special. She and Zayas, went to work on selecting an
appropriate Billie Holiday repertoire; then transferring it to the landscape of
danzón, guaguancó and bolero. All this happened about a year from May 2010.
Next
came learning the challenging arrangements that Zayas came up with, swirling
from out of the fiery cauldron of Afro-Cuban music. This took the musicians
close to six months to master; a memorable effort that, together with the fact
that this homage was written in Afro-Cuban idioms, made the project so
distinctive. The memory of a show that played in Billie Holiday's birthplace,
and was later broadcast on WRTI radio on Mother's Day a couple of weeks later,
lingered long and hard with Santi and Zayas. They concluded this was music
worthy of a longer life vis-a-vis a record that would preserve both the beauty
and authenticity of this Afro-Cuban odyssey into the heart and soul of Billie
Holiday.
Santi
acknowledges that following the 2010 performance, it was not easy getting into
character for the next stage of the project - the recording of Big Stuff: Afro
Cuban Holiday. "Life happened and we had great odds keeping our crew from
finishing the record," says the vocalist, "and in the journey of
putting these songs together, while I was delving into the lyrics and
repertoire that I had started checking out when I was fourteen years old, I
realized I had grown up into the songs," explains Santi. "The journey
has been long and at times dark. By daring to interpret the tunes as
uninhibited as possible it enabled me to come face-to-face with something
bordering on danger and I experienced great gratitude. What emerged was
an-almost four-year labor of love that overflowed onto this record," she
concludes.
Nothing
can really prepare the listener for the transcendental melancholy of Billie
Holiday's music like "On the Sunny Side of the Street," which is
deliberately set as the gateway to the album, in a prelude to dimming the
lights and before entering the world of Lady Day, who virtually changed the way
a song ought to be interpreted. "I started to sit with the tune daily,
doing just what the lyrics require, taking the sunny side with my son on cold
morning walks to school to stay warm," says Santi. "It was an extreme honor to record with
Jef Lee Johnson as well. I miss him dearly."
Santi's
musical intellect that combined with the erudite delicacy of manipulating
phrasing and tempo is brilliantly on display in the breathtaking complexity of
"Big Stuff," a song that Santi turns into a musical equivalent of a
darkish expressionist film. The footage of a damaged life unravels in the
elemental sadness of "What's New" as Santi dialogues with the
eminently soft, almost vocal work of John Stenger's piano and so begins the descent into the nourish
life of Billie Holiday. The stark portrait of "My Man" appears on a
ghostly canvas daubed as if by the magic of a brush dipped in the
"makuta" rhythm of drums and bass. The shock and awe of "Stormy
Weather" is propelled by the rhythmic sweep of Central-African
"palo" highlighted by a burbling ostinato that churns the melody and
harmony into a veritable twister's vortex before Santi enters the narrative,
breaking the verses of the song with a pirouetting "coro."
"You're
My Thrill" is perhaps the most sensuous song on the album and
"Travelin' Light" is a cross-hatching collision between the Cuban
"guajira" and the second line rhythm so characteristic of New
Orleans. "You get a sense of the interpreter (of the song) travelling
light because I am only accompanied by the bass at one time; then by the piano;
later the trumpet," Santi explains. The stately, shimmering rhythm of the
Cuban "danzón" bathes "Involved Again," with Jon Thompson's
sweet clarinet and the singer who is yearning for a new love in her life, yet
realizes that she is a fool for love. This is a chart that Billie Holiday
wanted dearly to record, but died before she could do so. Dick LaPalm, Nat
"King" Cole's promoter suggested that Santi record this song.
"It was extremely special to be mailed the lead sheet personally by the
composer, Jack Reardon," Santi reveals somewhat in awe of being considered
as an interpreter of a song that Ms. Holiday herself yearned to do.
"That
Old Devil Called Love" sashays with the voluptuous ecstasy of
"son-Abakuá" and is resplendent in the rich imagery of Afro-Cuban
music. "There are codes here which only those who listen carefully will
hear," Santi says, "including a quote from a famous Cuban song called
"El Diablo Tun, Tun," she reveals, almost as a gentle challenge to
anyone ready for it. "I Cover the Waterfront /Monk's Dream" is
another song worked into the cracked rhythm of a Monk-like idiom and "You'd
Better Go Now" is set to a deliciously sexy "yambú" rhythm that
is beguiling despite its sad and lonesome lyric.
Perhaps
the darkest part of the album is "Strange Fruit" a song that Billie
Holiday's infused with the searing imagery of an ugly part of America's tainted
history. Performed as a swaying "bolero" this chart infuses the
horror of lynching in the deep south of the United States with a prayer to the
Yoruba deity, "Oya." "She is the keeper of the cemetery gates
and the fierce winds," Ms. Santi warns about a torch song that she sings
with breathtaking power. "Strange Fruit is a political and graphic song. I
am drawn to repertoire like that. "Strange Fruit," "My
Man," "Good Bye Pork Pie Hat" - I have sung these for years,"
says Santi. "In this performance on the record I very much wanted to sing
in a way where there is room for the audience to sing along to it again and I
recall performing it in a way where I literally don't breathe." In many
respects "Strange Fruit" is the crowning glory of Big Stuff. It is a song that Ms. Holiday never took
lightly and neither does Santi.
As for
the absence of one of Holiday's more popular songs, Santi says, "I haven't
gotten to 'God Bless the Child' because I have so many thematic ideas regarding
that tune, which leads me to believe that I might do a 'God Bless the Child'
suite."
A
musician of rare and unbridled genius, Venissa Santi was born to parents who
filled her life equally with the music of Celia Cruz, Maurice Ravel and Michael
Jackson, and numerous other musicians. Her musical heritage goes further back:
to a grandfather, Jacobo Ros Capablanca, a Cuban composer. She honored his
memory by playing one of his songs on Bienvenida. Santi was born in Ithaca, New
York, but moved to Philadelphia after she graduated high school. There, through
the study of her grandfather`s compositions, she re-connected with her Cuban
roots and majored in Jazz Vocal Performance at the University of the Arts. She
was a vocal instructor at the Asociación de Músicos Latino Americanos. In 2008,
Ms. Santi won the Pew Fellowship for Folk and Traditional Arts. In 2009 she was
signed to Sunnyside Records. She went to Cuba specifically to study Afro-Cuban
song, dance and percussion as well as to prepare for this project.
Reflecting
on the past three years, Santi reflects, "It's sort of intense to think how
close I've been to this repertoire and Billie's story. It's been an extremely
existential experience."
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