The jazz gods have been kind to us. It had been raining for two days, and again yesterday for a good part of the day until 5 p.m., when the 43e edition of the Montreal International Jazz Festival. Ignoring the smog alert, music lovers stormed the Quartier des Spectacles to enjoy a hot, humid evening full of musical discoveries – starting with the British orchestra Kokoroko, which filled up the audience in front of the steps of the Place des Arts forecourt at 8 p.m.
We were waiting for this one. The orchestra has made a name for itself in Great Britain since the release of its first mini-album in 2019 with its own version of jazz, soul, afrobeat (the classic, that of Tony Allen and Fela Kuti, not the contemporary Afrobeat of Burna Boy) and Ghanaian highlife, garnering praise upon the release of his first full album, Could We Be Morereleased last summer on DJ and curator Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings label.
Kokoroko has forged a sound that stands out as much from that of the actors of the new London jazz scene (Sons of Kemet, Theon Cross whom we will see again on 1er July at Studio TD, to name a few) than that of the Brooklyn purists of Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra. More flowing, more soulful, more open to the many popular musical flavors of West Africa.
This highlife groove counts at least as much in the balance as the time signature of Nigerian Afrobeat and gives a unique color to the sound of the orchestra, which we found less refined in terms of brass orchestrations than on the album – note that one of the two saxophonists on stage was missing, the orchestra having to perform with only seven members.
Regardless, these musicians put on a spellbinding concert – the two musicians taking center stage with their vocals and horn solos, the rhythm section (drummer, percussionist, bassist) pacing the undulations of the crowd, a guitarist and a keyboard player (and master of ceremonies) embellishing the grooves. This group was born to play on outdoor stages during the summer season.
However, our FIJM started on a very different note. At the Théâtre du Monument-National, at 7 p.m., in the company of the trio made up of singer Arooj Aftab, pianist and keyboardist Vijay Iyer and precious bassist and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily (the New York Times profiled him two years ago days in a text entitled How Shahzad Ismaily Became Musicians’Favorite Musician). The small ensemble then tried to recreate the magic of Love in Exilethe magnificent album, released last March, of improvised modal jazz meditations imbued with a form of ghazal, a poetic genre of Persian heritage widespread in South Asia and sung in Urdu (and for a moment in English!) by the Pakistani of origin Arooj Aftab, who visited us last year in the wake of his solo album Vulture Prince.
The trio kicked off the evening with a first improvisation that stood out from the album in that Iyer’s piano anchored the performance to jazz, an argument presented with great delicacy on Love in Exile. Flanked on the garden side with his grand piano and electric piano, Iyer already took over the entire space with his minimalist, rhythmic melodic motif, Ismaily delicately playing his electric bass. Arooj Aftab, in the center in front of his microphone (if not towards the back where, on his stool, were placed a bottle of red wine and a stemmed glass), closed his eyes to sing, in a right, dull and tender voice, his towards.
The last piece before the encore came full circle with this first improvisation, Iyer playing the piano with unprecedented force on the album; between these two long pieces (they were all between 12 and 15 minutes), the musician turned to his electric piano to knit more diffuse harmonies. For his part, Ismaily impressed with the refinement of his playing: constantly listening to his two colleagues, he always found the right sound, the right line, with his electric bass, which sometimes imitated the ringing of bells, sometimes the buzzing of a train passing in the distance. Nothing they played was on the album Love in Exile and yet, one recognized the chemistry between them, and the soothing climate that is its product.
By 9:30 p.m., the Place des Festivals was packed – not like a scorching Saturday night enriched with tourists, but like an inaugural Thursday night without the threat of downpour. The good mood among the spectators weaving through the queues in front of the bars to get closer to the stage where the Franco-Lebanese composer and trumpet player Ibrahim Maalouf, a regular at the FIJM, was officiating, who rolled out the red carpet for him at the big stage.
A groovy but polished show, the musician and his troupe articulating his own vision of a fusion of jazz, rap and rock (“It’s the Festival international de hard rock de Montréal!”, he joked in ending a more robust piece), certainly vigorously, but remaining within the aesthetic guidelines already laid down. On the square, the public chatted, listened, danced a little, then chatted even more. Like a real beautiful summer evening, reassuring and familiar, right in the heart of the city.