Classical music aficionados will be familiar with the stately form of the sarabande – a Spanish dance adopted into a languorous and tender musical style favoured by baroque composers such as Bach and Handel. For American composer Keir GoGwilt, however, the sarabande contains something far more radical. On his collaborative project The Zarabanda Variations, he enlists a 10-piece ensemble that combines free jazz with baroque strings and spoken-word poetry to delve into the colonial Latin American roots of the dance before it was popularised in 17th and 18th-century Spain.
On first listen, it’s hard to hear how this music could relate to the classical sarabande at all. Scrapes of atonal strings, clattering percussion, guttural vocalisations and sharp whistles create a cacophony of tension throughout, as if mirroring the passionate, whirling energy supposedly contained in the original forms of the dance. In fact, rather than creating a baroque sarabande fusion, GoGwilt’s compositions embrace its lesser-known historical references to produce something entirely new.
The wonky metre of Matachín alludes to the contemporaneous Spanish carnival dance of the same name and embodies its riotous energy in Alec Goldfarb’s muscular, finger-picked jazz guitar, while Otra Llorona calls to the sarabande’s Mexican influences with yearning folk vocal melodies from singer Mariana Flores Bucio. Tonada Americana is a highlight, combining the swaying rhythm of the 17th-century Hispanic dance tonada with shards of frenetic atonal violin bowing that create a jolting sense of anticipation for a resolution that never arrives.
This is by no means an easy album, with the several spoken-word interludes from poet Edgar Garcia often containing confounding references, but its instrumentation is virtuosic and its scope is remarkable. Through the strange reimagining of this courtly dance, GoGwilt uncovers depths to keep composers interested in the sarabande for generations to come.
Also out this month
Brazilian-German duo Curió Curió release their self-titled debut album (Mr Bongo), blending the warm analogue sound of 70s música popular brasileira with funk breakbeats, soulful horn fanfares and jazz improvisation. A retro pastiche that nonetheless engages thanks to its slick production values. A rare unearthing of 60s and 70s Malaysian jazz, Alfonso Soliano’s Tiga Trombone (Audible Beauty) contains a tantalising insight into a psych-influenced improvisatory niche that drew on Malay influences as much as big band melodics. Singer Somi releases What Does It Take to Bloom? (Salon Africana), a charmingly breezy collection of classic deep-swinging jazz vocals that reaches a peak on the fierce Nina Simone references of So You Want to Be a Woman.
