Articles by Derrick A. Smith

Michel Camilo: From Dominica to Spain and Back Again

by Derrick A. Smith
April 5, 2015

This interview was first published at All About Jazz in July 2000. After performing more than 40 concerts together, longtime friends Michel Camilo and Tomatito recorded Spain, an album that fuses their respective backgrounds of Latin Jazz and flamenco. Spain was released in the country of its title in 1999 to wide critical acclaim and strong sales. At its best, the disc incorporates both broad styles into a third stream that belongs solely to Camilo/Tomatito. Their backgrounds provide ...

Tony Allen: Black Voices

by Derrick A. Smith
June 1, 2000

Nigerian bandleader and Afro-Beat inventor Fela Kuti was legendarily self-assured. This ego manifested itself in his PR ploys, in his battles - sometimes physical - with the agents of the country’s military government, in his insistence on beginning a sax or keyboard solo seemingly unprepared, and in the fact that on most of his classic recordings he through-composed most of the interlocking segments of those monstrous compositions that liquidly combined traditional ideas of polyrhythm and layering with James Brown-ish funk ...

Ann Dyer & No Good Time Fairies: Revolver: A New Spin

by Derrick A. Smith
June 1, 2000

Revolver remains The Beatles’ definitive artistic moment, though the nostalgia-spiked histories tend to opt for its extravagant Summer of Love followup. But on no other Beatles album was there such a mix of experimentation and unsentimental songcraft, with economical but heady arrangements that deserve the description “definitive”.

Avoiding the nostalgic waxed glow of many jazz vocal interprations, Bay Area iconoclast Ann Dyer honed in on Revolver ’s Hindustani periphery and distant-but-unaffected air for her own “new spin.” With a string-and-percussion-heavy ...

Virginia Rodrigues: Nos

by Derrick A. Smith
June 1, 2000

Veloso-styled diva Virginia Rodrigues’ first album Sol Negro was over-earnest in its attempt to send the world a Bahian greeting. Despite fine performances and a classic repertoire, it sounded too skittish to be a true statement.

With the release of Nos, Rodrigues and her piece of the new baroque Latin style flower into full maturity. There is a confidence here that, assuredly, comes from a belief in her own integrity, but it’s strengthened and nourished by tradition - the music ...

Various: Latin Jazz

by Derrick A. Smith
June 1, 2000

Music Club have created some sterling compilations of a wide range of artists from throughout the world. With this release the label attempts a summation of the genre of Latin Jazz, with mixed results. Fred Dollar's notes are appropriately spirited and sell the artists well, but the lack of anything but incidental listing of ensemble musicians is frustrating, and the packaging itself plays on stereotypes of color and design (oranges and reds, with unsubtle line motifs.)

Although this purports to ...

Milton Cardona: Cambucha

by Derrick A. Smith
June 1, 2000

On numerous projects associated with American Clave, the label founded by New York Svengali and producer Kip Hanrahan, Milton Cardona can be heard maintaining the focus of the rhythm, at the heart of discourses conducted solely by percussion instruments. This paradigm expressed by free-as-wanted percussion communication was given an album-length exposition with the release of the Hanrahan/Cardona-led ensemble Rumba Profunda's Una Noche Se Vuelve Una Rumba more than a year ago. Cardona, onetime member of the Grupo Folklorico y Experimental ...

Tony Allen: Black Voices

by Derrick A. Smith
June 1, 2000

Nigerian bandleader and Afro-Beat inventor Fela Kuti was legendarily self-assured. This ego manifested itself in his PR ploys, in his battles - sometimes physical - with the agents of the country’s military government, in his insistence on beginning a sax or keyboard solo seemingly unprepared, and in the fact that on most of his classic recordings he through-composed most of the interlocking segments of those monstrous compositions that liquidly combined traditional ideas of polyrhythm and layering with James Brown-ish funk ...

Ponga: Ponga

by Derrick A. Smith
April 1, 2000

The comparison between Ponga and the early-70s groups of Miles and Herbie Hancock is obvious but not facile. Obvious points of comparison are the tension that exists between the unpredictability of the live sources and the postmodernist structuring achieved in-studio; the coexistence of groove and physicality with an amorphous, ambiguous improvisatory conceptualism; and the omnivorous aspect of the music which renders it both in- and outside of its contemporary milieau.

Ponga as an album and a group entity creates a ...

Dom Um Romao: The Complete Muse Recordings

by Derrick A. Smith
October 1, 1999

32 Records maintain their unique level of quality, and responsiveness, with this single-disc reissue of percussionist/composer Dom Um Romao’s complete Muse recordings, two albums from 1973 that determined the locus of bossa -tinged jazz, the nuyorican Latin movement, the Brazilian “corner club” sound, and Brazilian roots music, namely batucada.

Gene Paul’s customary naturalistic remastering allows full expression of the electronic and acoustic layered textures. Both albums, particularly the eponymous debut, move like a dream. The scant vocals provoke humorously from ...

World Saxophone Quartet: M'Bizo

by Derrick A. Smith
September 1, 1999

M’Bizo ’s reason for existence is twofold and intertwined. “The M’Bizo Suite” itself was written and choreographed specifically for a 1998 World Cup Carnavalcade held in northern France; this accounts for the theme of European-Asian-African unity, and may help explain the heartening robustness of the disc. As explained by David Murray in the liners, the album is also “for all those great musicians who had to leave their homeland, for those who were able to return and for those who ...