In 1978, Danish percussion
master Marilyn Mazur founded the bold, innovative Primi Band, an all-female
music-theater ensemble that drew from a deep well of primal energy and
experimental audacity. Four decades later, Mazur reinvents the core concepts in
an adventurous new fashion with Shamania, a gathering of ten of Scandinavia's
most inventive and respected female musicians.
Whereas Primi Band culled its members from risk-taking but
non-professional musicians, Shamania comprises ten highly respected (but
equally daring) artists from the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian avant-jazz
scenes. Their stunning debut album is a vivid combination of primeval forces
and virtuosic musicianship, fiercely original imaginings and deeply organic
emotions, communal energies and singular voices.
The core tenet of Shamania, as with Primi Band before it, is
the Danish term urkraft - which translates roughly as "primeval
power" or "primitive force." As Mazur interprets it, urkraft
represents "getting back to instinctive ways of expressing yourself. I had
the vision of some kind of tribal female gathering from the past. This ritual
feeling was the main idea of Primi Band and the starting vision for
Shamania."
The distinctive atmosphere that arises in both bands, Mazur
explains, stems in part from the unique opportunity they provide. Most of these
musicians are used to being the minority in male-dominated ensembles - Mazur
herself has the distinction of being the only woman ever to have been a member
of a Miles Davis group. While she's hesitant to differentiate musicians by
gender, Mazur does stress that Shamania thus tips the scale back to a more
equitable position.
"It feels good to have this group to help balance out
things in the world," she says. "In the jazz world, it's very much
been men that have created the language. It's nice to be able to be a part of
creating the modern sound of jazz. I don't think you can really hear a difference
-- you can hear each individual contributing their qualities to the music - but
it provides a very special feeling to everyone in the band, and allows us to
bring some fresh energy to the music."
Regardless of any categorization, the ten musicians that make
up Shamania are a remarkable gathering of artists, with a decades-spanning age
range from 28-year-old drummer Anna Lund to Mazur, taking on elder stateswoman
status at 64. Danish saxophonist Lotte Anker was an original member of Primi
Band, and has since gone on to perform with such esteemed improvisers as Craig
Taborn, Sylvie Courvoisier, Fred Frith, Gerald Cleaver, Ikue Mori, Marilyn
Crispell, Tim Berne, and countless others.
Award-winning Swedish vocalist Josefine Cronholm and Danish
percussionist Lisbeth Diers are both frequent collaborators of Mazur's,
including as part of the now-defunct quintet Percussion Paradise.
Japanese-Danish keyboardist Makiko Hirabayashi has also enlisted Mazur for her
own trio as well as working in several of Mazur's other ensembles.
The remaining members of Shamania are largely new
acquaintances for the veteran percussionist. Norwegian vocalist and saxophonist
Sissel Vera Pettersen has brought her experimental approach to the music of
composers like John Hollenbeck, Theo Bleckmann, and Chick Corea, while
trumpeter Hildegunn Øiseth (also from Norway) offers the unfamiliar sound of
her hand-made goat horn to Shamania's already wide-ranging palette. Lis
Wessberg is one of the leading trombonists in Denmark, where she's played with
such world-renowned artists as Randy Brecker, Ray Charles, and Kid Creole and
the Coconuts.
Norwegian bassist and singer Ellen Andrea Wang blends genres
in new and unprecedented ways, merging jazz and pop elements with a unique
balance of the lyrical and the rough, the acoustic and the electric, creating a
unique sound with her own trio as well as the critically acclaimed indie-jazz
band Pixel. Swedish drummer Anna Lund is the founder of the uncategorizable
indie-jazz band Hurrakel.
Live, Shamania also features the improvising dancer Tine
Erica Aspaas, reinvigorating the ancient bond between music, percussion and
dancing while joining the ensemble in forging new paths forward. "I've
always been very much into dancing when I play music," Mazur stresses.
"It's not even a conscious thing; my approach to playing is just naturally
very physical and also very visual -- at least that's what I hear from people.
When people go to hear concerts they're looking at all these musicians playing,
so it really adds a lot to the music to have someone concentrate on visualizing
the music with their movement."
"New Secret" opens the album with the insistent,
rhythmic chanting of an invocation. The cyclic piece is built on one of the
core elements that Mazur has carried forward from Primi Band, which she calls
"Primi ostinatos." These small, repeated sonic units were inspired by
the minimalist composers of the 1970s, game-changing pioneers like Philip
Glass, Mike Oldfield and Steve Reich. Mazur put her own spin on that lineage,
however, imbuing these repetitions with a more vigorous momentum, her rhythmic
impulses in conflict with the minimalists' inherently static compositions.
"Rytmeritual" and the later
"Kalimbaprimis" are also made up of these ostinatos, in this case two
variations on the same melody and repeated figures. Both pieces reveal Mazur's
deeply personal absorption and reinterpretation of diverse musical cultures and
traditions, emerging with hints of Indonesian gamelan and African folk
traditions. Mazur insists that these globe-spanning accents are unintentional,
arising organically from her expansive tastes rather than any attempt at some
kind of world music fusion.
"I listen to a lot of different music, and of course it
influences me and becomes part of my subconscious musical language," she
says. "But I write more by having visions and dreams and putting them into
the music. The tribal feeling of the music in Shamania might draw parallels to
gamelan music, to African music, to Indian music. But it's not a conscious
choice to use those musical languages."
"CHAAS" is one of several pieces drawn from the
Primi Band repertoire. This piece takes its name from the Danish notation for
the four notes of the basic melody - in English, these would be C, B natural,
A, and A flat. The origins of the self-explanatory "Old Melody" may
date even further back - Mazur says the tune has been around so long she can't
remember when she conceived it originally - but it has remained on the shelf
until now, unused but memorable enough to emerge decades later to find its
proper place in this group.
"Fragments" is a free improvisation ripple effect,
with each member of the ensemble contributing a brief exclamation, which is
responded to and carried forward by the next artist in line. It's something of
a functional piece on the bandstand, serving to introduce each member of the
band in turn through their own musical voice. "Space Entry Dance"
enjoys a similar position, its African-inspired melody used to usher the
musicians and dancer onstage during live performances; here, it closes the
album on a thrilling, upbeat note.
"Time Ritual" is another composition conceived for
the live stage, usually a showcase for Aspaas, with the musicians reacting in
real time to the dancer's improvised movements. In the studio, without the
dancer present, it's transformed into a sonic sculpture, built on the hypnotic
rhythms of human breath.
"Crawl Out & Shine," with its celebratory,
sinuous melody, is the sole piece on the album with lyrics. It was written
after Mazur won the prestigious JAZZPAR Prize in 2001, and entreats the
audience to join in the band's communal spirit, to enjoy life and music
together with the musicians. "Behind Clouds" is a landscape rendered
in percussion, a solo improvisation by Mazur that strives to illustrate the
diverse colors of light streaming through the clouds as the sun sets over the
ocean.
"Shabalasa" combines the name of Shamania with the
balafon from Mali, which Mazur plays with unbridled joy. "Heartshaped
Moon," like the majority of the album, was composed specifically for
Shamania, reflecting on the powers of the moon and its echo in the female
cycle. Vera's ferocious vocal improvisations, engaged in a back and forth with
Diers' tribal percussion, gives the feel of a frenzied primitive ceremony to
"Surrealistic Adventure." The two brief pieces titled
"Momamajobas" were written for Mazur's duet performance with pianist
Jon Balke at the 2008 Moldejazz Festival, its name a combination of MOlde,
MArilyn MAzur, and JOn BAlke. They bookend a dialogue between the percussionist
and Anker called "Talk for 2."
Shamania is the latest stunning venture in a consistently
intrepid career. Since she emerged on the Danish scene in the mid 1970s with
Primi Band and the fusion group Six Winds, Mazur has been an invariably
original percussionist and composer. She toured the world with Miles Davis as
well as the Gil Evans Orchestra and the Wayne Shorter Quintet in the 1980s,
before returning to her own visionary music with the 7-piece international
orchestra Future Song, then later with the Marilyn Mazur Group, Celestial
Circle and Mystic Family, among other ground-breaking ensembles. At the same time
she spent more than a decade touring and recording with Norwegian sax giant Jan
Garbarek.
Video (Jazzahead 2017):
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