Originally
released as 1750 ARCH RECORDS S-1790Originally
released as 1750 ARCH RECORDS S-1790
BIG BLACK * ETHNIC FUSION
Big Black, tumbas and bongos * Anthony Wheaton, guitar
BIG BLACK-ANTHONY WHEATON
CLASSICAL-AFRICAN
FUSION
Original Liner Notes from the 1982 lp – Philip Elwood
In a recording world nearly suffocating with the monotonous sounds of pre-fab electric "rock," 1750 Arch Records has been like a breath of fresh musical air. They have dared to record "live," and issue unedited renditions; they have presented new sounds, fascinating ensembles and esoteric instrumental experiments.
But even in the rarified audio world of 1750 Arch Records the microgroove disc contained herein must be considered as unusual. Unusual, in fact, that the recording session ever took place; unusual in the sounds that emerge, and unusual in the concept and instrumental collaboration that we hear.
Black phoned. He said "Phil, you write the notes for our record". "Yessir," I replied, "…what record?" Black is not only physically impressive (he is, after all, called "Big" Black) he is also very persuasive verbally.
"Our record – you know what I mean? Our record," Black replied.
Black has syntax patterns very much like his late great friend, Julian Adderly–another big man, but he was called "Cannonball", not just "Big".
"You know what I mean," repeated Big. I allowed as to how I knew what he meant.
In the summer of 1980 I’d run into Black at a saloon in San Francisco’s North Beach section. Pharoah Sanders was playing, his band was wailing, there were singers, percussionists and a big, lively audience. Black strode over (he doesn’t walk, he strides) squashed my fingers in a handshake, condensed the three years since we’d seen each other in a couple of sentences and suggested that I ought to come by his place on Potrero Hill (in San Francisco) some time soon and hear what he was up to.
"Yessir," I replied. We laughed, exchanged laudatory comments about Sanders (who was playing "See See Rider", avant garde style, at the moment) and Black, whacking my back as a departing salutation, vanished into the smoke filled room.
"Meet Anthony – Anthony Wheaton," Black said, once I’d walked into the house. No one heard my knocking or ringing of the doorbell. How could they? There were some pretty impressive instrumental sounds ricocheting through the building.
Wheaton, pleasant, attractive and lean, with the unmistakable look of a dedicated artist, nodded to me, thrust out his hand, smiled, and quickly withdrew to strumming the guitar that hung around his neck.
Black laughed. Black’s laugh can crumble the sandy plaster that holds 75-year-old walls together. "We’re working out–dig?"
I dug.
Black had more than his usual accumulation of drums set on one side of the room. Tumbas, congas, bongos, miscellaneous percussion devices. Black, as usual, was wearing a coarse-thread African shirt that hung over his pants. His hands aren’t just large, they’re astonishingly muscular. They seem to have joints that the rest of us don’t possess, muscles that are unseen by non-fingerdrummers.
Wheaton played his classical guitar constantly. Phrases came, and went; Black would ripple across five drum heads–Wheaton cascaded down the guitar strings. Call-and response, I thought to myself.
"When I first heard Anthony, I knew where he was comin’ from," said Black. "He was comin’ from where I was at!" He roared with laughter.
What I heard was a beautiful guitar sound–simple, "classically" influenced, structurally stable: "He’s radical in his quest to be different." Black said.
I’m not sure I know what that means but it was said respectfully.
Wheaton it seems, had been playing guitar for some time before a knowing friend suggested that he might find the artistic freedom he was seeking by meeting, and playing with, Big Black.
Wheaton worked in San Francisco’s Mission District (nearby) in recreational activities through the city’s Art Commission. His guitar is part of his professional life, his personal life, and his soul.
"I think of myself first as a communicator. I communicate in heartbeat rhythm," notes Black. "Anthony was in rhythmic conflict, when we began," Black continued "but our mutual love of the music, and our respect for one another, gradually brought our ideas together. I tried things his way, he did mine—it worked. Neither of us compromised, we just fell-in together.
"When Anthony listens to the old guitar masters, I mean the classical masters, he hears things differently than we do—when he plays he has the freedom of a jazzman but the technique and structure of a classicist."
Black, of course, is the dominant sound on this disc, as he has been on many before it.
Well into his 40’s, now, Black is nearly 15 years Wheaton’s senior, but, (like all fine musicians I know) his music is ageless. Black, a Georgian, grew up with drum rhythms from across nearby waters—from the Bahamas and from the Caribbean; later from Africa.
For over 20 years he’s been part of the Afro-American and Caribbean-American musical scene; he’s known in South America and a Brazilian residency was in the offing as these notes were written.
I’ve never known whether Black’s personality was projected through his drums or whether the drums conditioned his personality.
I do know that the man is rhythmically possessed.
For me to comment in detail; to comment at all on the intricacies of sounds on this disc would be, to say the least, presumptuous. What I hear and what you hear are likely to be quite different things.
What I hear are marvelous shadings on the drums, brilliant (and considerably more introspective) playing by Wheaton on the guitar. And I hear a wild assortment of rhythms—the bata, wawaco, samba, ska and calypso-reggae beat (among others I can’t identify). Black has a solo track, Wheaton often erupts, and at other times seems just to bubble.
The artistic alliance, unusual at first encounter, not only makes sense–it works.
I wish, somehow, that tape-loops (or a disc equivalent), wee common in audio reproduction, in the way they are in films.
The music on this disc is continuous–continuous communication.
Continuous African-classical sound-fusion.
It’s Big Black and Anthony Wheaton, percussion and guitar.
"Hey Phil, we’re gittin’ it together–you dig?"
I dug, and I dig.
You will, too.
Produced by Tom Buckner
Recording supervision
by Bob Shumaker
Recorded by Gerald
Oshita, using the Mark Levison ML-5 master recorder, and two Bruel & Kjaer
model 4135 microphones.
Recorded at 1750
Arch Studios, Berkeley, California; Winter 1981/82
Design by Matthew
Schickele
Library of Congress
Catalog Card No. 82-743106s
All songs published by Joko T Publishing/Creative Arts BMI
BIG BLACK - ETHNIC FUSION
(Mutable 17504-2)
This 2001 re-release on this Mutablemusic CD of the LP from 1982 on 1750 Arch
Records is a fresh breeze in the somewhat over-simplified and commercialized
world of ethnic hints and glances, which in many cases has proven to falsify
and down-grade the musical roots on which they draw.
This set of tracks were
recorded live as live can be, and the story behind the recording and its haphazard
occurrence is fresh in itself, portrayed by Philip Elwood, who wrote the original
linear notes for the 1982 vinyl. Elwood describes how Big Black called him up
one day to have him write the linear notes to a new record. ”What record?”,
Elwood answered, completely lost. ”Our record - You know what I mean? Our record!”.
And so it was. A few years earlier, as Elwood had encountered Black at a Pharoah
Sanders session in San Francisco, he was invited over to Black’s place. As he
walked into the house, which burst at it seams with music (like a Donald Duck
cartoon house in Disney’s world), he was introduced to Anthony Wheaton.
Black said: ”We’re working out! Dig?”.
Elwood was impressed by
the way Wheaton played his classical guitar, while Black ”rippled” across his
five drum heads, calling up a cascading response from Wheaton.
The bringing together of Wheaton and Black was the lucky whim of a friend of
Wheaton, who thought, rightly, that this would provide Wheaton with the creative
freedom that his special talent craved for.
Black described Wheaton as having ”the freedom of a jazzman but the technique
and structure of a classicist”.
Black grew up in Georgia, picking up influences from the Caribbean and the Bahamas - and later from Mother Africa herself.
”China Lake” is the starter, opening in watery, mellow guitar caresses, inviting the tender rhythms of the drums, played directly, of course, hands-on (tumbas and bongos). There is a peculiar softness in this accelerating motion down the trail, and the sound is colorful - not in the least brutal or crude, even though it turns into an up-beat, fast event.
I am surprised at the merger of these instruments, wherein the strumming and the twanging of the acoustic guitar seamlessly flow in a coherent progression with the drums, extremely elegant and with a classical tradition fuel-injected into the sunny rhythms of the Caribbean or the Southeastern seaboard of the United States. It’s peculiar and very beautiful, and very much in it’s own vein, in an unexpected possibility of sound.
”Pavan”, sporting Wheaton as the sole composer, introduces a true classical - or troubadour - atmosphere, or a merger of the two, and the guitar almost sounds like a lute here. Wheaton dances up and down the neck of the guitar, and the sound is full, giving a palpable sense of the wooden body of his instrument. Suddenly Black’s hectic drumming picks up and breaks in, while Wheaton rests his guitar, and vice versa - until the guys sort of start to accompany each other, and it’s hard to tell who is leading the way here; such is the fusion of these seemingly different sound worlds and traditions. The sound itself is clear-cut and rounded, with shiny surfaces and perfect dimensions. It’s a treat to let this music - unlikely as it is - flow around you like the water of a Colorado stream. The melody is a sweet, thoughtful incident of a medieval scent, resting on centuries of human artfulness.
”Jigs” moves directly into the atmosphere of Bach, but with an Incredible Stringband feel of old British Isles traditions, with a melody in the guitar which evokes scenes of medieval and renaissance dances, where fair maidens and gallant riders circle each other under the eyes of dukes and counts. Black has soloistic passages in the piece, producing brownish, noble, and sometimes curiously bent, glissandoing sounds on his tumbas and bongos, wonderfully recorded - close and clear - even having you feel - in some cross-sensual phenomena - the soft and cool surfaces of varnished hard-wood furniture! The feeling is noble and sensual, like the thoughts you may receive while relaxing in a room filled with the fragrances of amber incense. There is something triumphant about this particular piece.
”Afro-Cuban Lullaby” approaches in these stark, rounded, spherical percussion flashes of Black’s tumbas and bongos, having you thud and vibrate between the corners of sound, rubbery, soothing - but instantly clear-cut and exactly defined; I can’t get over these peculiar properties of this music; hasty, clear-cut, rhythmic and soft, fondling and noble at the same time, in this exotic incense atmosphere of enlightenment and appeasement.
“Trinidad” concludes this all too short CD, starting on a note resembling Led Zeppelin and “Stairway to Heaven”, with very full guitarisms, also diverging your referential thoughts in the direction of Joni Mitchell and her private tunings. Black’s drums only accompany - softly and precisely - in the first part of this piece, giving a suiting basis for the flowering, glittering and waterfalling gushes of chordal bliss from Wheaton’s acoustic guitar, which even hints at some bluesy influences here and there, but only audible to connoisseurs’ ears.
This CD has been a revelation to me, in it’s perfect merger of the guitar and the tumbas and bongos, and in its soft and noble presentation of events that could easily be blurred or crude, but here rising in an almost Eastern consciousness of enlightenment. - Ingvar Loco Nordin, SONOLOCO
BIG BLACK: Ethnic Fusion
Ethnic Fusion is a reissue of an LP released on 1750 Arch Records in 1982. Percussionist Big Black, performing on tumbas and bongos, is accompanied by Anthony Wheaton on guitar. Raised in Georgia, Big Black is credited as being one of the first musicians to translate bebop rhythms to hand drums. Throughout the 50's he performed in salsa and calypso bands, and in the 60's he moved to New York to explore his burgeoning interest in bebop and develop a unique teaching method for hand drums known as "Heart Beat".
Ethnic Fusion features five pieces of varying length. Anthony Wheaton accompanies Big Black's hand percussion with admirable dexterity and charisma; his performance is strongly influenced by classical music, as phrases from classical repertoires appear and disappear at regular intervals (this is especially evident in the lighthearted and classically informed track "Jigs"). Big Black's percussion - the force of his rhythms, his energy and sensitivity to Wheaton's playing - is really something to marvel at. The simple set up of drums and guitar ensures that the focus is always on the rhythms and the playful melodies on guitar that flirt with the more dominant percussion. African-classical-carribbean-american sound-fusion? sounds great to me. An original, spirited and engaging work, reissued and admirably rescued from obscurity by Mutable Music.
Richard di Santo
The Incursion Music Review
issue 045
04 - 17 february 2002
Big Black - Ethnic Fusion
When an album is deemed "unclassifiable," it usually is either because one feels it belongs to a style yet to be defined or because one doesn't know what to do with it. There is a little of both in the case of Ethnic Fusion. For this late 1981/early 1982 studio session, percussionist Big Black teamed up with a young guitarist named Anthony Wheaton. He plays acoustic guitar with a definite classical background. Black handles the tumbas and bongos with great dexterity, playing with fire and conviction. The unamplified duo performs original compositions that stand somewhere between classical Spanish guitar pieces and Afro-Cuban jazz - in "Trinidad" the 12-string guitar part even conjures Anthony Phillip's album Twelve. The meeting between the delicate guitar lines and Black's rock-hard hands is unexpected and highly unusual, but it works. It may take you a couple of listens at first to get used to the very low recording level and the initially frightening inequality between the two instruments. Even though the percussionist dominates, the real leader is Wheaton. His inflections in "China Lake" trigger Black's choice of rhythms. The "Pavan," very 16th-century, constitutes an extreme example of these two worlds colliding. After the guitar has stated the theme, the tumbas enter thunderously, retreating to let the theme rise again, almost inaudible. And what about the "Jigs," so French in spirit, accompanied by African instruments. This one-of-a-kind fusion was first released in 1982 on 1750 Arch and reissued on CD in 2001 on Mutable Music. -François Couture, All-Music Guide