Picture yourself strolling through the doors of an art
gallery or into the marble halls of an art museum. The walls are lined with
bold, colorful images, some vivid abstracts, many assertively figurative. As
you take in the striking landscapes and strong faces, a story emerges -- no
less a story than the history of humankind, but also a story that resonates
with today's headlines, a story still unfolding. Now what would that sound
like?
Saxophonist/composer Darry Yokley has created the soundtrack
to just such a gallery of images on his new album, Pictures at an African
Exhibition. The album, due out April 20 via Truth Revolution Records, was
created in collaboration with British-born artist David Emmanuel Noel, who
painted pieces to accompany each of Yokley's 13 new compositions. The music
supplements Yokley's band Sound Reformation -- pianist Zaccai Curtis, bassist
Luques Curtis, and drummer Wayne Smith Jr. -- alongside special guest drummer
Nasheet Waits and a 12-piece wind ensemble, assembling a group with a sound
palette vast enough to match Noel's visual one.
The album's title points to its clear inspiration, Modest
Mussorgsky's famed "Pictures at an Exhibition." But where Mussorgsky
penned music inspired by the artwork of his friend Viktor Hartmann, Yokley
decided to write his suite first and ask his friend Noel to create the
exhibition to match. The ambitious suite begins with the dawn of the human
species and traces an alternately triumphant and tragic tale of migration and
enslavement, celebration and warfare, ending on a cautiously optimistic hope
for the future.
"I wanted to explore themes that were universal,"
Yokley explains. "I based the story on Africa, because as far as we know
that's where the human species was born, but I wanted to explore themes that
everyone in every culture worldwide could relate to."
The album thus opens with the joyous melody of "First
Sunrise," which shows the influence of African song and American gospel.
Noel's accompanying painting collages bright colors to depict a pregnant woman
and her partner looking to the sun on the horizon and its accompanying promise.
Still celebratory but built on a more tumultuous rhythm, "Migration"
is an anthem for the ancestors who braved the unknown to venture out to new
lands, with Noel's illustration of a stark but troubling black and white image
of a black man, his head bowed, bounded by an Egyptian pyramid and a Manhattan
skyscraper.
"Ubuntu," paralleled by Noel's swirling abstract
painting, takes its name from an African philosophy that means "I am who I
am because of who we are," an emphasis on group identity that Yokley
grasps in his stunning arrangements for this ensemble. He's led Sound
Reformation since 2010, but the addition of a wind ensemble, inspired by his
classical studies at Duquesne and Michigan State Universities, provides the
opportunity for sweeping drama and surging power, reflective of his
arrangements for Orrin Evans' Captain Black Big Band. Waits, the inventive
drummer known for his work with Jason Moran and Fred Hersch among many others,
adds rhythmic complexity in tandem with Smith's muscular swing.
"I've always wanted to work with Nasheet Waits, but
Wayne is such a great drummer for the group," Yokley says. "Then it
dawned on me that I could use two drummers because the drum is the predominant
instrument in Africa. It ended up working out wonderfully because the rhythms
they produced together provide a plethora of inspiration for the musicians to
improvise to as well as being a representation of African culture."
The influence of African percussion is at its most emphatic
on the gentle "Stories from the Village Elder," which honors the
tradition of oral history before things begin to take a darker turn with
"Ominous Nightfall." Reprising the theme from "First Sunrise"
with foreboding harmonies, the piece begins a series of reflections on
tribulations that continues with the ambiguously titled "Hunting
Natives," whose tense rhythms suggest both the search for food and the
danger of life in the jungle -- both literal and figurative.
Smith marks time with a set of chains on "The Birth of
Swing," which traces the roots of jazz back to the clanking of slaves'
irons on ships' decks. "Echoes of Ancient Sahara" is a ghost story of
lost civilizations that reveals John Coltrane's imprint on Yokley's sound,
while "Genocide March" is a martial ode to atrocities in Rwanda and
Sierra Leone in particular, though acknowledging the fact of many more such
tragedies across the globe. The blood diamond trade is referenced in the
mournful "Mines of Diamonds, Crimson and Gold."
Things begin to take a turn with "Cry, the Beloved
Country," which borrows the title of Alan Paton's 1948 title for a
stirring ballad of revolution and resistance. "Blessings From the
Bennu" refers to an Egyptian deity, a bird used as a symbol of rebirth
that was the likely inspiration for the Greek myth of the phoenix. The
"First Sunrise" theme emerges again to segue into "New
Sunrise," which finds the composer finding hope despite the echoes of
these past troubles in our current divisive times.
"The last two tracks are a vision for the future,"
Yokley concludes. "They express my hope that we can get past all the
turmoil and inner conflict that we bring upon each other and unite. That's the
arc of the story."
Darryl Yokley · Pictures at an African Exhibition
Truth Revolution Records · Release Date: April 20, 2018
