The American saxophonist Archie Shepp is 83 years old and the fatigue is there.
You can feel it, hearing it on the radio or on stage, the words are struggling to come out of his mouth.
But under this slow flow, this difficult speech, we guess that the ideas are fuse.
Like the powerful breath of his saxophone, inhabited by more than half a century of music.
The jazz legend releases albums without giving the impression of saving himself.
This time, a new duet with pianist, his fellow American Jason Moran.
He had already done it with tutelary figures like Horace Parlan, Mal Waldron, Abdullah Ibrahim ...
Uncluttered, his dialogue with Jason Moran moves by its intensity.
Airy, but serious, it carries the weight of history.
Trailing, uprooted from the depths of the soul, their notes carry within them the heritage of spirituals, blues, a
Great black music
inseparable from the ordeals experienced by the African-American people.
The album's name,
Let my people go
, is the subtitle of the fourth track,
Go Down Moses,
a 19th century spiritual.
By this standard, famous for the interpretation made by Louis Armstrong, African Americans, in search of freedom, identify with the Hebrew people in exodus, released from slavery by Moses.
In the Old Testament, God charges the prophet with a message to Pharaoh: “
Let my people go.
Once again, Archie takes the floor, recalls the claiming scope of his art.
On three pieces, he sings the tragedy of his family in a deep and rough voice.
A blues that he sees as the ideal medium.
On
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
, another spiritual, he marks the distance from Africa (“
A long way from home
”), giving it all its dramatic significance.
Each note of this album is loaded with a thrill.
Recorded in public, during the Jazz à la Villette festivals, in Paris, in 2017, and Enjoy Jazz festival, in Manheim, in 2018, the album includes, in addition to the spirituals, themes by John Coltrane (
Lush Life
,
Wise one
) , Thelonious Monk (
Round Midnight
), Archie Shepp himself or Fats Waller, to whom Jason Moran dedicated an album, in 2014, for the Blue Note label (
All rise: a joyful elegy for Fats Waller
).
The pianist, thirty-eight years younger than Archie Shepp, is nonetheless a cornerstone of American jazz turned to his roots, an assiduous disciple of his predecessors, but a revered modern creator across the Atlantic.
He and Shepp were made to record this music together.
The civil rights movement is no more.
The theme remained, heady.
Hot news with Black Live Matter.
Like an unfortunate red thread in the saxophonist's work.
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