Bobby Sanabria is a New York City treasure. As a musician,
bandleader and educator, his pedigree is impeccable. A master jazz drummer, he
was weaned at the knee of Mongo Santamaria, Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, and
other jazz legends. Through his own orchestra and smaller groups, and as a
music teacher at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, he has
nurtured, educated and inspired many of the city’s most promising young
musicians, just as he was inspired by direct contact with his jazz elders.
On top of all that, Sanabria is from the South Bronx. Even
before he became a professional musician, the rhythms and syncopation of the
streets where Latin music first took root in NYC became embedded in his DNA. He
is the product of an authentic cultural experience based on geography,
ethnicity, and musical history. And as a drummer and bandleader, he is among
the best in the country, if not the world.
If all that sounds like hyperbole, it’s not. Sanabria’s role
in the universe of contemporary Latin jazz really is all that.
Case in point: Sanabria’s new CD entitled MULTIVERSE, which
is perhaps the hottest and most ambitious Latin jazz big band record you will
have heard in the last decade. I have been listening to Sanabria’s work for a
long time, have heard all his CDs, but nothing prepared me for the scope and
sheer force of MULTIVERSE. It is a powerful statement of everything this artist
has learned up to this point in his career and will no doubt have you on board
in anticipation of everything he does in the future.
The opening cut – the theme from the movie “The French
Connection” – will cause you to drop whatever you are doing and listen with
full attention. The arrangement is complex, with an incredible driving force
that has the impact of a NYC traffic jam having been corralled and turned into
music. It is a stunning opening salvo to a CD that ebbs and flows in terms of
tempo and musical styles but never loses that same high level of integrity.
Within the realm of Afro Cuban, Puerto Rican and American
jazz styles, Sanabria’s influences are vast – a multiverse, as folklorist Elena
Martínez points out in the CD’s liner notes – and nearly all of those
influences can be heard on this new CD. The song “Cachito” opens as an Afro Cuban
rumba before transitioning into something more robust and muscular. “Over the
Rainbow” is a Latin jazz tribute to the beautiful and familiar ballad, sung by
Charaneé Wade, that segues into a melodic cha cha cha. “Wordsworth Ho!” an
arrangement by band member Chris Washburn, is another barnburner, with the
dissonance of Mingus, driven by Sanabria’s own drumming and a brass section
that distinguishes this band as among the elite playing today.
There are ten cuts on MULTIVERSE, every one of them the kind
of music you will find yourself absorbing with your heart, hips, feet, culo and intellect. My favorite is, and always will be,
the “Afro Cuban Jazz Suite for Ellington,” which is the hottest and most
exciting Latin jazz tribute to the Duke that you will ever hear. At fourteen
minutes in length, ranging over a number of familiar Ellington compositions,
you will wish it went on for at least another hour or two.
Another contribution on the CD worth noting is that of
Caridad De la Luz, also known as “La Bruja,” who, like Sanabria, is from the
South Bronx. La Bruja is a local legend in the spoken word scene in NYC, a
sassy Nuyorican with prodigious poetic gifts and charisma to burn. She adds rap
and background vocals to a number of cuts, most notably a swinging tribute to
Mario Bauza, narrated in rhyme and verse by La Bruja in her inimitable street
style.
As with most bands led by a drummer -- from Buddy Rich to
Max Roach to Ray Barretto and beyond – Sanabria’s ensemble is hard-driving and
percussive. There is physical power in this music, but also a harmonic
precision that turns on a dime. A big band with anywhere between ten to twenty
members on different cuts that plays with the dexterity of a small quintet is
something that requires a high level of sweat and concentration. In this
regard, the Bobby Sanabria Big Band sounds like the musical equivalent of a
team of Olympic gold medal winners who have been in training for nearly a
lifetime.
This is not pop music, with soothing, saccharine melodies to
be played in the background while you are doing domestic chores. MULTIVERSE
brings history, inventiveness and the highest levels of musicianship to bear on
an essential musical tradition. Sanabria throws down the gauntlet by posing the
question: do you have the chops to hear, feel and comprehend all that this music has to offer? If so, bend your ears, hold on to your hats and
pay attention, because the Bobby Sanabria Big Band will dazzle your senses, and
then some.
To learn more about MULTIVERSE, listen to selected
arrangements and/or purchase the CD or download, go to the following link: www.jazzheads.com
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