David Borgo: Pathika

San Diego's David Borgo, a top-tier jazz saxophonist and an ethnomusicologist with a professorship day job at the University of California at San Diego, says, "Ethnomusicology is like the anthropology of music."

He puts this concept into practice with his teaching for the "Semester At Sea." This educational cruise program takes students to various ports worldwide to expose them to perspective-broadening travel and first-hand experience with different cultures. The students benefit; the teachers do, too.

Borgo, fresh off the 2023 Spring session of the Semester at Sea, wrote a batch of compositions influenced by his impressions of the places where the educational cruise ship dropped anchor: India, Kenya, Jordan, Cyprus, Croatia, Morocco, and Portugal. Pathika is the result. World Music, indeed.

"Mumbai" opens the set. Time stands still, in the face of drummer Mark Ferber's frenetic drum backdrop. Borgo begins things in a deliberative mode, then shifts into a segment of wild John Coltrane-ish wailing (Trane's late era), while bass anchors the sound, as a sort of center of a sonic solar system, holding a batch of circling planetoids in his orbit.

"Mombasa" features Nathan Hubbard's vibes. Borgo plays straight ahead, with a rich, muscular tone on the tenor sax. The overall sound seems a cool understatement, bringing the Modern Jazz Quartet to mind. "Aquaba" features Borgo on soprano saxophone. A musical chairs game goes down the center of that musical solar system, shifts from the bass to vibraphonist Hubbard, who supplies a steady radiance behind a groove which trundles along like a runaway train.

The inspiration and creation of Pathika parallels a pair of Duke Ellington's finest recordings: Near East Suite (Bluebird/RCA) and Latin American Suite (Fantasy, 1967); music for the former was composed after the Ellington Orchestra toured Asia; the latter was inspired by a tour of Mexico and South America. While Ellington delved into a bit of ethnomusicology of his own, both sets feature his distinct and unmistakable voice, shaded by the sounds of his host countries. The same can be said of Borgo and Pathika. If we can smell the streets of "Mombasa," the voice we hear is Borgo's adventurous modern jazz sound which often pushes the permeable border between mainstream and free.

"Lisboa" features a laid-back Portuguese tinge, with Harvey Magsino supplying an acoustic Euro-guitar mood, while "Dubrovnic" has Borgo scorching the air in front of an ebullient rhythm, and "Bath" closes things—Borgo on soprano sax—in prancing, light-hearted mood.