Sudani

Sometimes a record blindsides you. The musicians are unknown, the idea seems unlikely, but you put it on, and the result is like a bolt from the blue. Sudani, the album from Patrick Brennan, M'allim Najib Sudani, and Nirankhar Khalsa is like that, a fusion of Brennan's free-blowing sax with the Moroccan Gnawa tradition of the others.

In fact, Brennan explained, the project was something of a surprise for him, unplanned, which "developed from the relationships among the people involved. I knew about Gnawa music through some recordings, and it was having some influence on my own composing."

To him the sound was reminiscent of one of his great inspirations - ‘60s Coltrane

"All of which is to say that I could recognize something of myself in the music and could learn from it."

"The qarqaba and the guimbri, being metal and gut bass strings, are parallels to the cymbal and bass in the jazz sound. I liked the kind of polyrhythmic relationship between them, and that''s part of what I began to incorporate into my own writing, multilevelled rhythm being one of my favorite orchestral preoccupations. And, the Gnawa "bass" is so melodic and up front!"

He also found that the vocal melodies had affinities with the blues, both in the call-and-response techniques and the shapes of the lines, "but with a more pentatonic/modal sound not all that far from what Trane was exploring on soprano.All of which is to say that I could recognize something of myself in the music and could learn from it."

He visited Morocco, where he was welcomed by Gnawa musicians, who suggested he bring his horn if he ever returned - which he did.

"I was invited into various Gnawa homes, shops and performance situations to play with Gnawa musicians," Brennan recalled. "It was actually a surprise to me how much they did enjoy the sound of my playing and how it related with what they were doing. Many of them would remark that I played as if I was already closely familiar with Gnawa music, and that they recognized my creating a feeling with my sounds rather than exhibiting technique for its own sake."

A friend in the coastal town of Essaouira suggested Brennan meet Najib Sudani. He did, and the saxophonist and guimbri player jammed together with remarkable synchronicity. And when Brennan returned to the city as an invited solist at the first Festival of Gnawa Culture, they had a chance to play more, with Sudani's band. Brennan had originally hoped to make a cassette of their music before leaving the country, but "just days before heading down to Morocco, a musical colleague, out of the blue, offered to set me up with a portable DAT, microphone, tapes and batteries. Suddenly being equipped to do a serious recording, I called Nirankar Khalsa. Khalsa is one of those musicians who is so well evolved that I had only to talk with him when we first met to know where he could go musically, and afterwards, I jumped on every opportunity to get us together to play."

The recording was done without rehearsal, which meant that the players had to trust each other's instincts.

"That's very subtle," observed Brennan, "and to get the level of coherence on the spur of the moment that we did achieve, is a tribute to Najib and his brothers as well as to Khalsa."

However, the process wasn't without its challenges. Sudani arranged a place for them to record, a barn in the village of Sidi Kouki. That was fine, with excellent acoustics, the dirt floor covered with carpets, no electricity or unwanted ambient noise - but they could only use it for two days. And then they had to scare up a trap kit, which, recalled Brennan, was "a day long affair. One drum set was literally falling apart. The owner of the only good kit was on a bus to Casablanca. Finally, we borrowed a French restauranter's drums that had certainly known better days. Only a master like Khalsa could coax a good sound out of them, which he did. Then, with the assistance of Czech musician/producer Richard Mader, the group pieces were laid down - live.

The barn wasn't available for the duos and solos that comprise the rest of Sudani, so the players took over an abandoned house near Tlat Henchance, where they ended up recording in a courtyard.

The results were spectacular, with fiery improvisations, thrilling rhythms, and the kind of musical communication that sadly rare. How much compromise was involved?

"I have a desire to bring as much recognition and financial benefit to the Sudanis as I can."

"Najib's approach was able to absorb and include anything of mine," said Brennan, "and that opened me up to play totally naturally and to push myself to get to something beyond my previous musical and imaginative thresholds as a saxophonist. That's why doing this project was creatively important for me. Najib and I consciously crafted this project as a collaboration among equals, that what we're doing has been as much his idea as my own. While we each have our own respective histories and styles, we weren't thinking as much about maintaining styles and idioms as about how, as individual creators, we could play together. Our collaboration is reciprocal: what Nirankar and I have contributed are events within Najib''s music and have now been absorbed into the history of Gnawa music in Essaouira ; equally, Najib and his sound has been an event within our musics. It''s a mutual absorption and not really a ""fusion."" In this sense, the music we make together is bilingual: everything has more than one meaning, depending on from where you''re listening.That word ""free"" is a bit of a live wire, so I''d better say a little about it. For some folks ""free"" means crazy, manic, disorganized, ugly, etc. (not that you meant that!). Actually, from a musician''s point of view, on this record, I''m always playing close to the guinbri melodies, reflecting them, reinforcing them, counterstating them, extending them, contrasting and developing what I hear in the rest of the band. And, the rhythmic connection is even more emphatic. I think all the musicians felt at home with my sound, which felt good."

Sudani isn't the first jazz/Gnawa collaboration - the great Pharoah Sanders made The Trance of Seven Colors with Maleem Mahmoud Ghania in 1994 - but Brennan wasn't aware of any of the history when he played with his Moroccan friends. The CD, he feels, "is just a sketchbook for what we might do, and if we get some outside funding, we'd do another CD and continue to develop the project.We've been working on booking live performances, and have had some offers both in Europe and North America. It's just a matter off time. I think there's a lot we can develop worth listening to."

One of Brennan's main concerns throughout is that the Gnawa don't feel exploited by a Western musician, and he has "a desire to bring as much recognition and financial benefit to the Sudanis as I can. It's been modest so far, but for the Sudanis, it's still a positive difference."

This article first appeared in fRoots

Sudani

"All of which is to say that I could recognize something of myself in the music and could learn from it."

"I have a desire to bring as much recognition and financial benefit to the Sudanis as I can."

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