Here’s a release that is truly difficult to label. Drummer/composer Jaimeo Brown has been a sideman for the likes of Geri Allen, Steve Turre, Pharoah Sanders and Wynton Marsalis. Here, he uses an intriguing core team of JD Allen /ts and Chris Sholar/g-elec along with guests musicians and vocalists to create a gumbo of various moods, idioms and styels. The message through the lyrics seem to serve as a type of Occupy Wall Street warning about global corporations and banks, how they are destroying local world cultures, as if cultures were never destroyed before. Ever hear of Hannibal? You’ve got material that ranges from field hollars/spirituals like “Mean World” and “Power of God” to East Indian folk, American blues and even some hip hop urban sounds. I’m not sure if there is a program to be deciphered from the order of material, as songs like the South Asian “Baby Miesh” seems to have no relation to the rock heavy “Patience.” Through it all, Allen’s tenor preaches, wheezes and chants to the myriad of percussive moods that Brown brings forth. Piano work by Geri Allen and guest vocals by Falu and others give this disc an almost National Geographic aura to the relese.
Motema Records