Blue Mongol

Roswell Rudd (Artist)

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 11, 2005)
• Original Release Date: October 11, 2005
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sunny Side
• ASIN: B000B6TR48
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #228,140 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

About the Artist

Crossing artistic and cultural boundaries has been Roswell Rudd’s stock-in-trade all of his life. Born on November 17, 1935 in Sharon CT, Rudd’s trumpet playing father taught him his first instrument, the French horn, when he was 11. He taught himself the trombone in his teens after seeing Woody Herman trombonist Bill Harris, and before long was playing Dixieland in a band called Eli’s Chosen Six at Yale University. He later worked with pianist Herbie Nichols, Bill Dixon and with soprano sax star Steve Lacy from 1960-63. In 1964 Rudd, along with Afro-Danish saxophonist/clarinetist John Tchicai, co-founded the New York Art Quartet, and released the Quartet’s eponymously titled album. He also recorded his self-titled debut LP the next year, and in 1968, he formed the Primordial Quartet with saxophonists Robin Kenyatta and Lee Konitz and vibist/pianist Karl Berger. Rudd worked and recorded with Archie Shepp (Four for Trane), The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra of America (! Communications), Carla Bley (Escalator Over the Hill), and Gato Barbieri (The Third World). In 2001, Rudd and Shepp reunited to record Live in New York. Some of Rudd’s other recordings as a leader include Everywhere (1966), Flexible Flyer (1974), Regeneration (1982), The Unheard Herbie Nichols Vols. 1 & 2 (1996 & 1997), and 2003’s MALIcool featuring Toumani Diabate.

Product Description

Blue Mongol recording is an extension of a 2004 concert that featured Rudd with Asian musicians from Mongolia, the mountainous country that lies between Russia and China, where the art of throat singing has flourished for thousands of years. That unique vocal tradition – called hoomei by the indigenous people -- consists of overtones and harmonic resonances created by channeling air through the human vocal folds and out through the lips, creating strange (to our ears) octaves, low drones, and high-pitched, woodwind-like tones, which enable the vocalist to sound more than one note at once (think Rahsaan Roland Kirk). The Mongolian musicians are lead by throat singer and multi-instrumentalist Battuvshin Baldantseren: a virtuoso on the limbe bamboo flute, Ikh Khur horse-head bass and khomus Jaw harp, singer Badma Khanda, Dmitry Ayurov on the Morin Khur horse-head fiddle, iochin dulcimer player Kermen Kalyaeva and Valentina Namdykova on the yatag zither and the lute! -like Khalmyk Dombr. Rudd calls their music "art folk, because it combines the sophistication of conservatory, western training with the indigenous performance style of their long history."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He's at it again, October 14, 2005

By	Jan P. Dennis "Longboard jazzer" (Monument, CO USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Following up on the spectacular critical and commercial success of Malicool, a unique encounter between West African traditional kora-based string music and North American jazz, Roswell Rudd goes even farther out, melding Western improvisation with traditional Mongolian throat-singing and folk stylings.

And the results yield a unique amalgam, even more wonderfully strange than his previous effort.

For me, this intersection of various world folk musics with jazz sensibilities produces some of the most exciting music on the scene today. It started with Egberto Gismonti, continued with Andy Narell, and goes forward with Jan Garbarek, Omar Sosa, Safa, Peter Epstein, Miguel Zenon, Yusef Lateef, Lingua Franca, The Intercontinentals, Jenny Scheinman, Dhafer Youssef, Nguyen Le, Roberto Rodreguez, Jean-Pierre Mas, Rita Marcotulli, Vijay Iyer, Guillermo Klein, Pago Libre, Michael Wolff, Will Calhoun, Ben Allison, Fraser Fifield, and a host of others too numerous to name.

The key consists in retaining the authentic aspects of each music, even as both are decoded and put together in new and unforeseen ways.

Case in point: "Buryat Boogie," a fiftyish-sounding boogie-woogie seamlessly grafted onto the Mongolian steppes that comes out sounding both bizarre and completely familiar. The title cut clinches the deal. Here a traditional blues is placed in such an unlikely setting as to nearly deconstruct it, yet it all comes out as almost inevitable. Perhaps even more astounding and weirdly glorious is "American Round," an amalgam of "Swing Low Sweet Chariot," "Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer," and "Amazing Grace." Do you know of more evocative music? I don't. And I doubt I'll ever encounter it. And don't forget "Honey on the Moon," a Rudd composition that sounds so authentically eastern that one could hardly be blamed to think of it as a lost oriental folk classic.

Bottom line: Full monty mysterioso ur-folk magically melded with American jazz--something no person with minimal aesthetic sensibilities should miss. More advanced aesthetes will drop everything and purchase same post-haste.