Molly Tigre set out from Brooklyn to answer one tough
question: What if the 70s vibes of the cult Ethiopiques series collided with
Saharan desert rock and West African blues, but with no guitar to lead the
melodic way?
Molly Tigre’s answer is audible in the quintet’s studio
debut Molly Tigre (Very Special Recordings; digital and cassette release date:
May 14, 2018). The sound is dark and slinky and mysteriously funky, brazenly
open to the peculiar global sonic influences that wash over musicians on the
streets of the outer boroughs. The premise sounds like some quirky and academic
composition challenge, but the mashup has led to some seriously good music,
tracks that explore and question without losing sight of the groove.
“I wanted to bring together some of the music and styles
from Northern Mali and certain regions in Ethiopia, like Tigray,” the genesis
of the band’s name, notes bassist and co-founder Ezra Gale. “I hear a lot of
commonalities between them, like the pentatonic scales that are similar
sounding. The fact that the rhythms they are using are based around groups of
six. They subdivide that differently but there’s a thread that ties them
together. When I started playing the music side by side, I thought it was
fascinating and I wanted to mash them together.”
He tossed the idea around with sax player Mitch Marcus,
longtime friend who has toured with the likes of Donovan and who was former
bandmate in the West Coast Afrobeat/-pop group Aphrodesia. “We both realized we
were big fans of that music, and not many musicians were doing anything with
that at the time,” says Marcus. “That was what we wanted to try originally.”
Mixing two different sets of styles, timbres, and rhythms
from opposite ends of a large continent wasn’t enough, however. Gale and Marcus
wanted to shake up the approach to the instrumentation often found in many
Afro-inspired, groove-oriented bands. “When we started thinking about these
very different styles from two different regions, something else came up. I
love the sound of no chords, when sax and bass are the only melody instruments,”
Gale explains. “There’s a tradition of this in jazz, as people have done
piano-less quartets. You get to imply harmonies without a guitar or piano
spelling it out, which makes it open and free. It’s hard to do well and make it
sound full.”
Molly Tigre went for it, nonetheless. Marcus and Gale
recruited sax and flute player Chris Hiatt (Japonize Elephants), drummer Joey
Abba (The Ramones), and percussionist Ibrahima Kolipe Camara (National Dance
Company of Guinea, Kakande), with occasional blurts of Farfisa provided by a
battered old organ one of their recording engineers dragged out of the trash.
“We’ve had chordal players sit in with us live,” remarks Marcus, “but not
having the chords spelled out adds this space to the songs that’s really nice.”
Instead of the guitar-guided sound common to both Mali and
some Ethiopian groups, Gale and Marcus often look to percussion sounds and
ideas for inspiration. “From the start, percussion was a really vital element
in our writing,” muses Gale. “We’re not just writing a horn melody and a bass
line and, okay, whatever the percussion wants to do over that is fine. I think
of it as another line in the composition that’s integral to the performance and
has a lot of the range of a piano or guitar.”
Percussion lines and rhythmic hooks sparked tracks like
“Hello Bolly,” Marcus’s rollicking, rolling tribute to Bollywood soundtracks
but with an Afro-diasporic twist. Gale was also moved by the groove to craft
“Slush Fund,” a song he swore was a copycat of a Kenyan James Brown-esque track
he would spin at a regular DJ gig. “When I went and listened again,” he laughs,
“it was nothing like it, except it was in 6/8.”
Though the pieces on the album were inspired by a somewhat
abstract premise, once they get down and dirty, it’s all about the music. The
film-noir funk of “Lebanese Blond” pits two melodies against one another,
leaving plenty of room for improvisation as they weave in and out.
“Ethiofreaks” adds vibes to the mix, a tip of the hat to Ethiopian jazz master
and vibe player Mulatu Astatke, for an original take on the Ethiopiques sound.
Some tributes are even more direct: Astatke’s 70s gem “Yekermo Sew” keeps its
serpentine, modal feel, but winds up with new harmonies. “We ended up
accidently reharmonizing it,” says Marcus. “I handed out a chart to the band in
a particular key; the alto and tenor sax are in different keys. Chris was
playing the wrong thing, for lack of a better word, as he was supposed to
transpose his line. But it sounded really good in fourths, so we ran with it.”
Running with that open space left where guitars might be,
with that room to stretch out and improvise, means combining untold numbers of
influences, the kind of thing New York musicians absorb just from walking down
the block, past the bodega, the stoop or car stereo speakers, the singing
neighbor, the subway violinist.
“Even if we wanted to make this a tribute to these styles,
it would never come out that way. We live here, with so much swirling around,”
says Gale. “We’re playing Africa-influenced music, but filtered through these
lenses,” he adds, “and we love it because it’s original.”
“When you add improvisation into the mix,” Marcus adds,
“you’re going to get something different out. “
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