Creole Project – David Murray, 1998

🎷🌴🥁🎶🎸 With his Creole Project, saxophonist David Murray plunged into a part of his roots 25 years ago. Since then, Murray has explored these roots at length with the Gwo-Ka Masters. This is here the first time he has explored the subject, surrounding himself first with his American entourage (Ray Drummond, Billy Hart, D.D. Jackson, James Newton), then inviting a host of Caribbean percussionists and musicians, particularly (but not exclusively) from Guadeloupe. Klod Kiavue, Fanswa Ladrezeau and Michel Cilla are the masters of rhythm, along with Max Cilla’s flute des mornes and Gérard Lockel himself on guitar. With musicians like these, the landscape is bound to be varied and rich. Exploratory pieces, often free, fused with Lockel’s burning gwoka and atonal inharmonies, alternate with a bossa by Teofilo Chantre, and we move from a ballad in the Martinique « mornes » to the delicate morna of Cape Verde, all nostalgic.