Briyumba Palo Congo

Chucho Valdes | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 8, 1999)
• Original Release Date: June 8, 1999
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Blue Note Records
• ASIN: B00000J26G
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #62,868 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #29 in Music > Indie Music > Jazz > Brazilian & Latin Jazz
  • #39 in Music > Indie Music > Jazz > International Jazz

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Chucho Valdés's piano-led recordings are studies in musical tension and dialogues. On Briyumba Palo Congo, he enlists a pair of percussionists, and Raúl Pineda Roque, the trap drummer, shares with Valdés a smolder that turns to conflagration when their tense interplays burst. Of course much of the fire is locked into the percussion dialogues where patterned drumming inspires improvisation amid fairly strict rhythmic controls. Valdés runs away from the pack in spots, shuffling across the keyboard leaving a wake of chromatic color. Roque does the same, exploding on his drums in fits of even tempos and being tugged back into the Cuban rhythmic rumble promptly by Roberto Vizcaíno Guillót's conga and batá drums, if not Valdés's own hyperimaginative harmonic runs. This is certainly not as flashy as Gonzalo Rubalcaba's dazzling explosions, and with the title suite's choral and vocal exclamations, it's rooted much more solidly in Afro-Cuban traditions. With his medium-hot pacing and his ability to blow solos wide open, it's clear that Valdés's years in Irakere barely prepared the ears for piano work of this magnitude. --Andrew Bartlett

From Jazziz

Pianist Valdés once again puts Cuban and American music through the speed blender of his imposing technique, swirling together cuban secular dance rhythms and religious music with swing, bop, modal, and free jazz at a dizzying pace. His second Blue Note effort away from Irakere (his long-standing Afro-Cuban answer to the Jazz Messengers) spotlights his staggering chops with a quartet featuring bassist Francisco Rubio Pampin, drummer Ra·l Pineda Roque, and percussionist Robert Vizcaino Guillet. "El Rumbon," played over an uncharacteristically fast guaguanco rhythm, features the pianist's surreal changes of direction, as he cartwheels between hammered two-note drum patterns, McCoy Tyner-ish chords, blindingly fast lines, and blues licks. Ellington's "Caravan" features devilish left-hand patterns and accents that explode into dark, atonal note clusters, then downshift into the type of four-four chording that Erroll Garner would have related to. Valdés saves the most audacious ideas until the end of the album. "Ponle le Clave" grafts the basic clave rhythm and montuno piano vamps onto a 7/4 meter. Gershwin's familiar "Rhapsody in Blue" is reshaped as an elegant danzün. The title track, the most experimental on the disc, blends a celebratory Palo religious chant with stride and gospel accents from Valdés. Then it opens into a free-tempo exchange between singers, percussionists, and piano, before ending with an unaccompanied piano solo that alternates between frantic energy and quiet lyricism. Sometimes, the pianist's skill and overheated imagination can get the better of him, turning the music into directionless technical displays, but when everything clicks, there are few more exciting or provocative pianists in jazz.

--- JAZZIZ Magazine Copyright © 2000, Milor Entertainment, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The greatness of Chucho's piano, July 24, 1999

By 

Jordi Falgàs ([e-mail]) (Figueres, Catalonia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Briyumba Palo Congo (Audio CD)

In this album, the piano of Jesús "Chucho" Valdés is featured in all its fullness, rich and strong. Only a great master like him could place a "Caravan" at the level of Thelonious Monk's and Randy Weston's interpretations (the upcoming album by Gonzalo Rubalcaba has another of the same caliber). But it is with his four original compositions that Valdés' opus enters the category of universal, especially with the album title-track, a follow-up of his recent album with Irakere, Yemayá. Leonardo Acosta is right in the album liner notes when he concludes that "listening to Briyumba Palo Congo is certainly an exhilarating and unique experience".

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars stunning, July 2, 2001

By 

SETH M KLEINMAN (washington, dc United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Briyumba Palo Congo (Audio CD)

Quite simply stunning. Essentially flawless, the only criticism I can think of is that his effortless genius is intimidating. Moving, challenging, reeking of musicality, rythmic greatness.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Briyumba Palo Congo is brilliant, December 21, 1999

By 

Bradley Chodos Irvine (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Briyumba Palo Congo (Audio CD)

Like most of the music Chucho Valdez plays in whatever the setting - solo, with Irakere, with Roy Hargrove's band, or with his own jazz quartet, this recording is full of brilliant playing both from Chucho and from the percussionists. The guy is a giant and effortlessly connects the African roots of jazz to the traditional. A beautiful record and one worth savoring.