32nd Annual Detroit Jazz Festival
Detroit, MI
September 2-5, 2011

In its 32nd year, the Detroit Jazz Festival decided to drop "International" from its name, only to turn around and proclaim "We Bring You the World." An interesting distinction, but the festival's scope was covered, nonetheless. The celebration brought to Detroit not only artists and music from around the globe, but did so with an eye toward covering the full spectrum of jazz music as it exists today.

Thankfully, and unlike many other festivals, this didn't mean scheduling big-name pop and rock acts in order to boost ticket sales. For fortunately, the Detroit festival still needn't concern itself with ticket sales, because the whole thing's still remarkably free for the spectator. And yet, the breadth and level of talent that cycled on and off its stages over the Labor Day weekend seemed, if anything, to have grown, bringing heightened expectations and harder decisions: would you go see Jason Moran Jason Moran
b.1975
piano 's band on the Waterfront stage on Saturday night or catch the Sun Ra Arkestra on the Amphitheatre stage and then stick around for Dave Holland Dave Holland
b.1946
bass ? Would it be Vijay Iyer Vijay Iyer
b.1971
piano or Joe Lovano Joe Lovano
b.1952
saxophone on Sunday night?

Sadly, that Saturday night dilemma never materialized. On a weekend that began with temperatures pushing triple digits and ended on a chilly fall-like day, a nasty storm also caused organizers to cancel, for the first time in festival history, several of Saturday night's shows. But the weekend's fun never abated. And, in the end, music still ruled the skies.

Chapter Index

1. Sept. 2: Jeff "Tain" Watts and the Drum Club
2. Sept. 2: Angelique Kidjo, Dianne Reeves and Lizz Wright
3. Sept. 3: Curtis Fuller Sextet
4. Sept. 3: The Sun Ra Arkestra
5. Sept. 3: Dave Holland Octet
6. Sept. 4: Amina Figarova
7. Sept. 4: Regina Carter and Reverse Thread
8. Sept. 4: Vijay Iyer Trio
9. Sept. 5: The New Gary Burton Quartet
10. Sept. 5: Helen Sung

Sept 2: Jeff "Tain" Watts and the Drum Club

The festival kicked off with the world premiere performance by drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts' Drum Club, a gathering, as the name would indicate, of Watts' percussive compatriots. At a certain point—once "special guest drummer" Tony Allen Tony Allen
b.1938 , the Afrobeat pioneer, came onstage—there were four drum kits in play, with Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez center stage between Watts and Allen, and Susie Ibarra Susie Ibarra
b.1970
percussion up front.

Jeff "Tain" Watts

Ibarra began the set on kulintang gongs, clanging alongside vibraphonist Joe Locke Joe Locke
b.1959
vibraphone . She would return, at times, to the gongs, but stayed mostly behind the kit, adding to the beat-heavy, polyrhythmic layers. Whether intended or not, Locke, stationed downstage right, decked in cool, heat-deflecting white garments from head to toe, his purple mallet heads flying like large, happy insects, took on the role of featured artist. His vibrant, singing tones not only graced the music with much-needed high-end sparkle, but his prodigious soloing continually sliced a melodic trail through the dense, percussive forest. Stepping to and from his keys like a sculptor eyeing a work in progress, hips shuffling legs into an easy dance, Locke tapped out well-considered, well-place chordal vibrations that layered into flurries of melodic zip and wonder, most notably on the Watts composition "Coolie Blues" (a reworking of Charlie Parker Charlie Parker
1920 - 1955
sax, alto 's "Cool Blues"). Saxophonist Rafael Statin Rafael Statin
b.1990
saxophone likewise fleshed out the drumming, switching between tenor and soprano, and covering the R&B and soul ground of his native Detroit, along with extended detours into post-bop wailing.

Percussionist Pedro "Pedrito" Martinez Pedro "Pedrito" Martinez
stood center stage behind his congas, and traded regularly with those around him. Watts, this year's artist-in-residence at the festival, came forward in the early going and took up sticks over the timpani, turning in a mostly light-hearted trio rumble with Martinez and bassist Robert Hurst Robert Hurst
b.1964
bass . Back behind the kit, Watts pounded mightily, though, emerging here and there for solos amidst the clamor. But the focus remained always on the unit—and the music—as a whole. A percussion lover's dream, this shape-shifting, droning, kicking monster danced out the last heat of Detroit sunlight and took the festival into the darkness of its first night.

Sept 2: Angelique Kidjo, Dianne Reeves and Lizz Wright

Performing under the banner "Sing the Truth!" singers Dianne Reeves Dianne Reeves
b.1956
vocal , Angelique Kidjo Angelique Kidjo
b.1960
vocal and Lizz Wright Lizz Wright
b.1980
vocal reached back to the roots of spiritual music to not only pay tribute to their forebears—women such as Miriam Makeba Miriam Makeba
1932 - 2008
vocal , Abbey Lincoln Abbey Lincoln
1930 - 2010
vocal , Odetta Odetta
1930 - 2008
guitar, acoustic , Mahalia Jackson Mahalia Jackson
1911 - 1972
vocal , Aretha Franklin Aretha Franklin

vocal and Mick Jagger (more on this anon)—but to trace the path forward to the soul in works by contemporary female vocalists and composers like Tracy Chapman and Lauryn Hill Lauryn Hill
.

Lizz Wright

The trio brought a nice diversity of vocal styles to the stage: Reeves, a classicist favoring clean, melodic lines and scat improvisation; Kidjo, intoning the joy, skip and deep hollering pathos of her native Africa, laced with searing Franklin-like flights; Wright, releasing offerings from a smoldering soul that at times hummed with a startling communal purity. In fact, throughout the set of spiritual and secular soul music—a concert that lifted testifying arms and swaying bodies in the muggy Motor City night—it was these seemingly preternatural moments from Wright that were the most striking, when her vocal lines tapped into an essentially human chord, as if the singer had access to a valve that unlocked the common human voice.

Opening as a trio on Ike and Tina Turner's bombastic "Bold Soul Sister," the group spun through 14 additional songs, plus a three-song encore, a set that featured the women as soloists and brought them together again in twos and threes. As a soloist, Reeves sang a couple of her own songs, "Freedom Dance" and "Endangered Species," plus Tracy Chapman's "All That You Have Is Your Soul." Wright tackled spirituals and folk songs associated with Mahalia Jackson and Odetta. She also transitioned effortlessly from the God worship of "How I Got Over" to the romantic human love of "Heart and Soul," despite speaking to the difficulty of such a maneuver, leaving one to wonder how much difference really exists between the two emotions. Kidjo opted mostly for African songs, often accompanying her singing with swirling dance moves, while trying to entice the other two (usually unsuccessfully) into joining her.

The best of the trio numbers was an arresting reworking of The Rolling Stones Rolling Stones

band/orchestra ' "Gimme Shelter," its lyric stretched into gospel croon and laid over an African beat. (It was at the close of this number that Kidjo remarked, "Mick Jagger deserves to be in this list"—of heavyweight female vocalists, supposedly.)

From left: Angelique Kidjo, Dianne Reeves, Lizz Wright

Throughout the set, the ladies received strong support from drummer Terri Lyne Carrington Terri Lyne Carrington
b.1965
drums , bassist James Genus James Genus
b.1966
bass percussionist Munyungo Jackson Munyungo Jackson
, guitarist Romero Lubambo Romero Lubambo

guitar and pianist Geri Allen Geri Allen
b.1957
piano , all of whom found space for soloing. Allen, in particular, played a featured role, consistently negotiating an invigorating dance between soulful pop-blues and angular post-bop, melded with classical flourishes. Lubambo soloed with racing lines of Latin crispness, and Genus added a heavy—and heavily funky—bottom to the music.

However approached—from the spiritual or the secular—the music proved powerfully uplifting. Kidjo came down from the stage during the encore and snaked through the crowd, pausing here and there to dance with the spectators and rile them to even greater fits of pleasure. They ate it up, as they had the entire set, and, no doubt, continued to boogie as they ventured home, happily tapping feet between all notions of heaven and hell.

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