Customer Reviews

Butterfly Dreams [Keepnews Collection]

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Flora made quite a name for herself with the release of this album. She made Down Beat's top five female jazz vocalists of the year with the release of Butterfly Dreams. Another superb Flora album is Stories To Tell. These two albums marked her peak. Her work with Chic Corea was also superb and remarkable on Return To Forever and Light As A Feather. After Stories To Tell her voice and enthusiasm seem to wane. In the early 1970s, Purim was arrested and briefly incarcerated for cocaine possession. Perhaps that was the mistake that brought her down. Her subsequent albums did not shine like her previous work. In any event I do recommend this album highly.

This is an excellently conceived album featuring a few of the top jazz players working in the early 1970s. Bassist Stanley Clarke plays an important role as an arranger & composer. Purim's husband Airto plays drums and percussion (via overdubbing). Though the keyboardist on this album is George Duke, make no mistake: the shadow of Chick Corea early version of Return to Forever (of which Purim, Clarke, and Airto were all members) looms large here.

For those who love the first two RTF albums, _Butterfly Dreams_ will provide a very rewarding variation on the musical style carved out on those recordings: Airto's drumming (which to my ears always sounds like a tasty mix of samba & Tony Williams), Clarke's melding of jazz, Brazilian, and funk characteristics, and of course Purim's airy, acrobatic, and intense voice are prominent. Duke plays both electric piano and synthesizers (don't worry--the synth is always tasteful here), and does an admirable job of filling Corea's shoes. For me, one of the real treats of this album is the playing by tenor sax great Joe Henderson. The tracks are more tightly arranged (& therefore more concise) than early RTF, but Henderson gets in a number of superb solos.

Amazon's 30-second sample of "Summer Night" gives an incomplete impression of this cut, which I consider to be the highlight of the album. Through overdubbing or phasing (I can't tell which), Purim wordlessly sings the melody along with herself--the echo-like sound that results is eerie, and yet highly evocative of the thick air and hazy conditions of a summer night. (The unexpected use of a zither also gives the track some of its rich atmosphere).

The program is varied in mood, tempo, and texture; the musicianship is great; the sound (+ remastering) is superb. I highly recommend this recording to fans of Brazilian jazz and fusion--or to those interested in exploring either genre.

If jazz is defined as improvised music in a blues idiom, this lovely record isn't really jazz at all. I mean, there's improvised solos, both vocally and instrumentally, but it also seems pretty tightly programmed. There was surely multi-tracking of vocals in spots and likely some overdubbing of guitar and keyboard parts. But, if this music is based anywhere, it's in Brazilian pop. It's an electrification of the bossa nova, filtered, yes, through the searing, spiritually-yearning strain of jazz that Coltrane patented but, like Miles Davis' and Herbie Hancock's fusion experiments, owing a parallel debt to the American soul music of the day. But, whatever you call it, 'Butterfly Dreams' is an experience not to be missed. It plays almost like a continuous suite, with Flora's vocals, haunting but also a little bit hard-edged, floating over the funky polyrhythms created by Stanley Clarke, George Duke and her husband Airto. It moves from soaring highs like the title tune and "Light as a Feather", through quieter moments like "Dindi" and a jazzier mid-section of "Summer Night" and "Love Reborn". I can still hear the influence of this album in surprising places, from the sublime (the UK electro-pop group Broadcast) to the ridiculous (Talking Heads 'Naked' and any number of other world-music concoctions). But Flora Purim's 'Butterfly Dreams' remains a giant achievement because the seams in its particular pan-cultural fusion refuse to show.