Berger Knutsson Spering with Friends, See You in a Minute—Memories of Don Cherry
Enskede, Sweden: Country & Eastern, 2005
Bitter Funeral Beer Band, Live in Frankfurt 82
Enskede, Sweden: Country & Eastern, 2007
published in Signal to Noise (Houston) 54 (Summer 2009)
A loving tribute to Don Cherry on the tenth anniversary of his passing, led by drummer Bengt Berger and other Swedish musicians who worked with him or learned from his legacy, See You in a Minute also features Cherry’s children Eagle-Eye and Neneh on guest vocals. Mostly comprised of Cherry’s own compositions and traditional tunes that he adapted, the music lifts the listener from the chair, its spirit familiar to anyone who has followed his post-‘60s oeuvre through all his worldwide wanderings. Neneh’s funky take on “Ganesh” brings to mind her father’s own hiphop-inflected delivery on Home Boy (produced by Ramuntcho Matta in ‘85). The quartet rendition of “El Corazón” summons the delicacy of the Cherry/Blackwell duo, while his unmistakable talent for stirring melodies finds reinforcement in Jonas Knutsson’s solos on soprano. Fittingly, in an ensemble of two or three horns and an augmented rhythm section, the trumpet chair remains empty (except at the end on “God Is at the Door”), but nonetheless Cherry’s voice comes through transcendent.
Through the first half of the 1980s, Bengt Berger’s far-sighted Bitter Funeral Beer Band made enormous strides in the sorts of experimental synthesis that came to be known by the shorthand term of world music. Drawing on his studies of funeral music in northern Ghana, he cast a full range of horns over a dense, meditative weave of strings and percussion (including African xylophones), geared by a collective group dynamic comparable in some ways to New Orleans music or to the shifting vamps of more direct antecedents like the Brotherhood of Breath. The group made one record in its time for ECM, with Don Cherry as a featured guest, who subsequently appeared in concert (along with K. Sridhar, sarod) as part of the 14-piece ensemble heard on Live in Frankfurt 82, a radio recording that has only now been released. The pieces build in mood and intensity to the “Funeral Dance” itself, lasting nearly half the set, which carries the mournful proceedings past their cathartic turn into animated celebration. In the end, this is exhilarating music that reaches for a touch of the divine and does not stop until it gets there.
Enskede, Sweden: Country & Eastern, 2005
Bitter Funeral Beer Band, Live in Frankfurt 82
Enskede, Sweden: Country & Eastern, 2007
published in Signal to Noise (Houston) 54 (Summer 2009)
A loving tribute to Don Cherry on the tenth anniversary of his passing, led by drummer Bengt Berger and other Swedish musicians who worked with him or learned from his legacy, See You in a Minute also features Cherry’s children Eagle-Eye and Neneh on guest vocals. Mostly comprised of Cherry’s own compositions and traditional tunes that he adapted, the music lifts the listener from the chair, its spirit familiar to anyone who has followed his post-‘60s oeuvre through all his worldwide wanderings. Neneh’s funky take on “Ganesh” brings to mind her father’s own hiphop-inflected delivery on Home Boy (produced by Ramuntcho Matta in ‘85). The quartet rendition of “El Corazón” summons the delicacy of the Cherry/Blackwell duo, while his unmistakable talent for stirring melodies finds reinforcement in Jonas Knutsson’s solos on soprano. Fittingly, in an ensemble of two or three horns and an augmented rhythm section, the trumpet chair remains empty (except at the end on “God Is at the Door”), but nonetheless Cherry’s voice comes through transcendent.
Through the first half of the 1980s, Bengt Berger’s far-sighted Bitter Funeral Beer Band made enormous strides in the sorts of experimental synthesis that came to be known by the shorthand term of world music. Drawing on his studies of funeral music in northern Ghana, he cast a full range of horns over a dense, meditative weave of strings and percussion (including African xylophones), geared by a collective group dynamic comparable in some ways to New Orleans music or to the shifting vamps of more direct antecedents like the Brotherhood of Breath. The group made one record in its time for ECM, with Don Cherry as a featured guest, who subsequently appeared in concert (along with K. Sridhar, sarod) as part of the 14-piece ensemble heard on Live in Frankfurt 82, a radio recording that has only now been released. The pieces build in mood and intensity to the “Funeral Dance” itself, lasting nearly half the set, which carries the mournful proceedings past their cathartic turn into animated celebration. In the end, this is exhilarating music that reaches for a touch of the divine and does not stop until it gets there.