“Work fascinates me…I can sit and watch if for hours” Badda bom!
Here’s a fascinating album put together by drummer Jaimeo Brown. Along with a mix and match team of JD Allen/ts, Jaleel Shaw/as, Chris Sholar/g, Brandon McCune/prg, Marica Miget/fl, Big Yuki/key and vocalists Marisha Rodriguez & Cadence Brown, he mixes work songs from a wide variety of sources and puts it together in a jazz atmosphere.
He uses the cadences and harmonies of coal miners, stonemasons, cotton pickers, southern prisoners and more, collected from the Smithsonian and Library of Congress to form the foundation of each song. Earthy and repetitious tunes like “Be So Glad” from a prisoner’s chant, or a work song of “Lazarus” feel like the marrow of jazz as Allen’s tenor and Brown’s drum take off where the voices set the pace.
Hard work is non-discriminatory, so Japanese voices create a reedlike chorus on “Stonemason” and “Safflower” while Big Yuki’s keyboards create a silky tapestry as background. Rodriguez teams up with Falu on an intriguing “2113” while “Happy Serving” and “The Valley” meld numerous modern voices to point to a final resting place in heaven where the punishment of hard work will be removed once the pain of sin is left behind in the heavenly reward. A rewording labor of love of labor.
Motema Music