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Gato Barbieri: Third World Jazz

Gato Barbieri: Third World Jazz image
Parent Issue
Day
16
Month
November
Year
1973
OCR Text

Gato Barbieri: Third World Jazz

Screaming jazz saxophonist Gato Barbieri appeared recently inside Ford's symphonic auditorium in Detroit, along with his band of rural folk musicians from deep inside Latin America.

It was a truly inspirational performance that night from all the Impulse jazz musicians appearing, including Pharoah Sanders and Keith Jarret with Dewey Redman and Charlie Haden. Support tor this music is growing, and finally reaching the point where the recording industry will put money behind it for the advertising, promotion and tours needed to reach a large audience. Until only recently these musicians were rarely heard outside New York and Europe. But their time is fast approaching.

Gato himself has become somewhat more widely known recently after penning the soundtrack for the popular film Last Tango In Paris. On stage he commands an orchestra of nine Latin American musicians flown in for the tour, blowing and strumming a variety of native instruments in a colorful stream of latin rhythms, rising and falling in intensity. The group plays as though creating one continual solo. Gato concurrently pierces through to lead the ensemble through lyrical latin melodies, at times changing slowly into the sound of the screaming agony being perpetrated on the people of South America. Putting his face to the microphone, Gato yells out: "Chile. Cuba. Chile. Cuba. Aiyyyyyy!"

Gato picked up the requinto, an Argentine clarinet, when he was twelve. Soon after hearing a Charlie Parker record, "Now is the Time," he took up the alto sax. Rising in popularity until he was the best known Argentinian in his field, Gato still found the musical stimulation he wanted lacking. So in 1962 he and his wife Michelle travelled to Italy. There they met trumpeter Don Cherry, who had been pioneering what is loosely known as new black music with Ornette Coleman in New York. After playing around Europe, where many of these musicians are highly acclaimed far beyond the recognition they receive in their own countries, Gato and Cherry travelled to New York where they recorded a lesser known masterpiece known as Complete Communion.

While becoming a part of the New York-free-black-jazz scene, and doing various odd recording ventures, Gato began to dig into the power and spontaneity of his Latin American roots. "It was through playing black jazz that I learned to express my self," he once explained, "but now I know I can be even stronger in that expression if I keep learning more about my own musical background in the third world."

Soon enough Gato had his own recording contract with Bob Thiele's Flying Dutchman label, and the album The Third World was released to high but isolated acclaim. It was followed by Phoenix, El Pampero, Under Fire and Bolivia, named for the country in which Che Guevara was killed by the CIA.

His most recent album, Latin America Chapter 1, is out on ABC-Impulse. It was recorded live in Argentina after Gato spent three months recruiting and practicing with his band. It's a fine record and a very accessible introduction to his music. You should be hearing Gato's blend of latin music and energy jazz; Impulse is even releasing a single/45 from the album.

We spoke with Gato while inside, of all places, the Pontchartrain Hotel, awaiting the concert at Ford's. Also present was his wife Michelle, who translated for Gato, who speaks only broken English. Michelle also had much to say for herself.

SUN: What is the concept of Lat in America that you are trying to express, through your music, with these musicians, in the titles of your albums?

GATO: That Bolivia is under fire. That Chile is under fire. That Latin America is under fire. The people there, except for Brazil, are very political. The young people, especially in Chile, Argentina, Peru, are very beautiful. But to live in these countries it you are political is very difficult. For instance, now Peron comes in Argentina, everybody was happy and said Peron would change things. And he changed to the right. It brings all these people down and makes change more difficult. The government watches people closely. In Chile they killed people in droves after the coup.

MICHELLE: What is going on is American intervention in Chile. It's very obvious, they even said it in the newspapers here--it's money. Brazil for instance has become like a colony of the United States. There's a big economic boom in Brazil, where they have oppressed any possibility of a left movement.

GATO: Chile was doing well with Allende and now it's closed off. Because of the U.S., Argentina is closed. Uruguay is closed. Brazil is in a strategic position between them all. They're trying to cut off the possibility of a union of Latin America.

MICHELLE: That's why this new album is called Latin America Chapter 1, because he wants to express the fact that Latin America should be united. In Uruguay, for example, which was very strong in the left with the Tupamaros popular guerillas especially, the military took over with U.S. aid. Because Uruguay was very dangerous. If it had a left government, a socialist government, it would be very dangerous for Brail to have it at the frontiers, because all the exiles and people working underground would be able to have sanctuary in Uruguay. It's the same thing they're doing with Chile, which, under Allende, nationalized everything, and now the military government is giving it all back to the U.S. corporations. All the industry belonged to America. ITT owned the phone company. Anaconda owned the copper mines. Even in the states there was a scandal about the CIA aiding the coup. It's American capitalism, it's money power. There's a lot of potential for them in Latin America, and they hated Chile, a socialist government.

"But what we want to make clear is that Gato doesn't play music only for political reasons; it's a natural expression for him. Since you know you are influenced by whatever happens, your music reflects what is going on around you. So he feels he has to express this till it comes through. He doesn't say he's a political man, just that a musician is aware of certain things. He's an idealist, he loves Latin America very much, and he would like it not to be oppressed. His music tries to be beautiful, and Latin America is beautiful and unhappy and desperate and dramatic like his music. Maybe if the music is good enough or beautiful enough it helps people to realize what is happening and attain a consciousness of what should be done. But that's all; you cannot make a revolution with music. You can make a revolution inside music, but not with music, unfortunately. Also it's a contradiction that while we are talking we sit here in this plush hotel, playing a concert in Detroit. But an artist has to express himself, so you have to allow for certain political contradictions. Otherwise Gato would not play but would have to take up a machine gun."

Gato Barbieri. John Coltrane. Pharoah Sanders. Sun Ra. Archie Shepp. Charles Mingus. Ornette Coleman. These musicians are making a new song of themselves, heralding the emergence of a new harmonic age from within the prevailing chaos.

"Where I want to arrive musically," Gato projects, "is the point at which I will be able to express what is in me through the horn as naturally as the act of breathing. The way it is now, you have a thought and then you proceed to execute it. My dream is to eliminate that step in the process so that the music will flow instantaneously, the music will be so natural that other people will respond to it as naturally as the way it is made. It would be the beginning toward being natural in all things.

--David Fenton