David Murray & The GWO KA Masters feat. Taj Mahal | The Devil Tried To Kill Me

David Murray & The GWO KA Masters featuring Taj Mahal –

The Devil Tried To Kill Me

 

For the past ten years, jazz saxophonist David Murray has immersed himself in the history of Guadeloupe while digging deep into the musical foundations of the island’s folk music heritage.  The seven different rhythms from this French Antilles island are played on a set of hand drums called the GWO KA.  These instruments have been commonplace during many of Guadeloupe’s celebrations and carnivals.  From Murray’s journey of ten years, he has realized four recordings Yonn-De, Gwotet and The Devil Tried To Kill Me– captured in a studio from the island’s largest city, Pointe-a-Pitre,utilizing some of the island’s finest musicians appropriately named The GWO KA Masters, plus the 1997 disc Creole (recorded in Guadeloupe’s sister island of Martinique)  All these discs showcases the sizzling rhythms of the KA drums exemplify how the beauty of jazz music can be enriched with other cultures.  Murray’s main inspiration for these series of recordings was how the drumming tells stories of the island’s ancestry; which has come full circle inits history from slavery to independence and now incorporated with France.  These recordings are also just a tip of the iceberg throughout his interesting and adventurous thirty-plus year career.   

 

The Oakland, California-born Murray played soul music as a teenager before he started taking a serious interest in jazz.  While attending Ponoma College near Los Angeles, he hooked up with such musicians as drummer/instructor Stanley Crouch and fellow saxophonist Arthur Blythe.  By the time he moved to New York to follow his professional dreams, he was attracted to the experimental scene with the likes of woodwind player Sam Rivers and others.  Murray,a familiar name in the free jazz movement, has been an extremely active artist with over two-hundred works to his credit starting in 1975.  During the earlier part of his career, Murray’s recordings have primarily been for import record companies, especially with Italian-based Black Saint/Soul Note Records who has recorded artists from the free form jazz school of jazz like Rivers.  A few of his notable works include Ming’s Sambafrom 1990 (the first on a North American label – Sony custom label Portrait); his spiritually themed projects in duet with several pianists including Randy Weston and his unique perspective of music by The Grateful Dead entitled Dark Star (1996).  

 

Even with all this in his discography, most loyalists recognize Murray for his contributions with the internationally-known World Saxophone Quartet, considered as one of the most influential improvisational jazz ensembles of all time.   Always willing to take his tenor saxophone and bass clarinet into many musical territories; whether mainstream or free-form; Murray has played in various aggregates from big bands to trios.  He has also joined forces with instrumentalists from other countries:  the Cuban big band setting of Now Is Another Time (2003); Fo Deuk Revue (1997) featuring a cast Senegal’s musicians and storytellers and the aforementioned previous discs recorded in Guadalupe & Martinique.  With his latest The Devil Tried To Kill Me, Murray taps the voices of Sister Kee, blues legend Taj Mahal and GWO KA Master drummers Klod Kiavue and Francois Ladrezeau.  Keeping it mostly in a contemporary vibe, Murray and company maintain the jazz atmosphere with a steady flow of Afropop, Caribbean, Creole, blues, spoken word and funk.  Usually an anything goes type musician, Murray actually gives the supporting cast plenty of room to breathe.  He still does not hesitate to invoke those free jazz colors, but he is also sensitive to the band’s musicianship.  The tracks that made the strongest impression in my mind are “Southern Skies,” a touching story about the unfair treatment towards African-American females accented by a spoken word break by Kee; “Canto Oneguine,” based on an opera about Pushkin and propelled by the call and response by Ladrezeau & Kiavue; and Africa, a somber but spiritual piece convincingly sung by Mahal.

 

I have always appreciated jazz players willing to stretch their boundaries, especially with innovative minds like Murray.  Overall, The Devil Tried To Kill Me is one example as to why Murray has so much excitement for his craft – both to the jazz world and the rich musical cultures of the rest of the world.

 

Peggy Oliver

The Urban Music Scene