With a career spanning more than four decades drummer Ginger Baker has been bestowed many epithets such as legendary, brilliant, influential, irascible, rude, hell-raiser etc, yet Friday night at The Stratford Circus bore testament to the more positive and creative traits that helped define the man.
His Jazz Confusion consisting of saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis – famed for his contributions in the legendary James Brown band, Ghanaian percussionist Abass Dodoo and Mike Mondesir on electric bass. The line-up minus any chordal instruments such as piano or guitar worked well to draw focus to the drums – both percussion and kit – where at times the interplay between Baker and Dodoo produced some complex polyrhythmic passages which not only created waves of excitement but also moments that left you thinking that there must be some psychic communication going on between the two.
The band wasted no time in laying out their jazz credentials with the opening Wayne Shorter composition 'Footprints', where Ellis and Mondesir establish a straight-ahead groove and melodic foundation leaving Baker and Dodoo freedom to rhythmically explore the spaces creating an interesting variation to this jazz standard. Baker's long association with Africa was evinced through songs such as the self-penned 'Aïn Témouchent' (the Algerian town where he spectacularly crashed his car) and the Yoruba folk song 'Aiko Biaye', but it was the Afrobeat rendering of Pee Wee Ellis' composition 'Din Don Dan', which drew quite a cheer.
The evening lived up to expectation despite problems with the sound, which was soon remedied after the raspy voiced Baker uttered an invective to sound man to, “sort it out…” However the fans and admirers showed hearty appreciation that the bad man of drums still has fire and a strong passion for playing.
– Roger Thomas (story and photo)
via Jazzwise Magazine http://jazzwisemagazine.com/news-mainmenu-139/70-2013/12851-jazz-breaking-news-ginger-baker-gets-jazz-confusion-spinning
