Marilyn Mazur's Shamania | "Rerooting"

Her collaborations with Miles Davis, Gil Evans and Wayne Shorter established her worldwide reputation in the mid to late 1980s, as did her later career with Jan Garbarek. But even before that, drummer and composer Marilyn Mazur had realized significant projects of her own. Her Primi Band, an experimental music theater group that existed from 1978 to 1986, left such a lasting impression that the Copenhagen Jazz Festival wanted to revive the group four decades later. Unfortunately, that was not possible, but the evocative spirit of that band has been let out of the bottle again with a new project.

Shamania is the name of the band Marilyn formed in 2015. Their shamanic spirit is based on the idea of a modern tribal gathering of female musical forces, focused entirely on rhythm, body and voice in an experimental context and the challenge of finding common ground.

The ten women of Shamania are among the most independent musicians on the Scandinavian scene, living in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. When they come together, their tremendous energy brings original power and fascinating rhythms to the stage, enchanting the listener with atmospheric moods and moments of pure wonder. They have now captured these very qualities on their second album: REROOTING brings together 16 songs, a combination of Marilyn's brand new and older compositions, all but one of which were previously unreleased.

Each of these songs has its own story, such as "Drungudans", composed for Marilyn's son Fabian to entertain him when he was a baby, or "Solnedgangskanon", the sunset canon that illuminates the world situation. "The Birds Are Early Out" is an old poem by Marilyn about the long, Nordic nights and the birds that start singing even before you've gone to bed. "Virtual Towers" was written on April 1, 2021 (April Fool's Day), with the desire to finally make music together with friends again after a long separation. "Shadow Tune" was also written in the sign of the pandemic and the worries it brings. And so was "Rerooting", the title song, written during the first reunion of Shamania musicians after self-isolation due to the pandemic and many concert cancellations.

From the waterphone, which combines the principles of the Tibetan water drum, the African lamellophone and the 18th century nail fiddle to Udu clay pot drums, various bongos, congas, the kalimba, drums and tuned gongs from all over the world, to the Norwegian goat horn: the extraordinary richness of timbres, together with the other instruments, shapes the songs, shines and radiates from them, results in the unmistakable Shamania sound and, together with the brilliant rhythms, forms the trademark of Marilyn Mazur: music that often seems ritualistic, with an unerring sense for outstanding dialogues, solos and improvisations - as well as an energetic elemental power and the great musician's very personal musical language that reaches far beyond jazz.