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“Iruman”
Akira Sakata: alto sax,
clarinet, voice, bells and shakers
Giovanni Di
Domenico: piano
Seijaku No
Ichimai - A Piece of Silence 1:40
Kousa No Odori - Yellow Sand Blowing from China 3:48
Suiren No Saku Huruike – Lotus Blossom in an Old Pond 5:01
Yamadera Ni Kikoyuru Koe
– Voice from a Temple in the Deep Mountain 6:00
Moe I – Bud I 3:46
Tanbo Ni Mizu Ga
Hairu – Water Coming Into Rice Field in the Spring 2:55
Sukiyazukuri No Tatazumai –
The Peaceful Atmosphere of a Wood Sukiya-style Temple 5:03
Hachi To Ohisama – The
Bee and the Sunshine 1:39
Papiruma 3:23
Moe II – Bud II 15:23
Commissioned by Portuguese
label Mbari, “Iruman” – which, in a career spanning 40 years, is Sakata’s first
duo recording with a pianist – is built upon paradoxes. Its title, for example,
notwithstanding the deconstructionist urge one senses throughout the CD,
suggests brotherhood or even redemption. After all, iruman is a Japanese word of Portuguese origin, derived from the
etymon “irmão” (“brother”), used by Jesuits who reached Japan in the XVI
century. But, in the present context, the meaning of the word is only fully
captured if we ignore its implicit missionary zeal. In fact, one could argue
that what this music evokes does not stem from that ancient geographic and
cultural collision but, rather, precedes it.
Sakata has always
questioned stereotypes. His performance takes on a ritualism that is at times
sardonic, others tender, taking communion from a truth that is unreachable and
yet perfectly relatable. Perhaps because of this, even while fully integrated
in a scene where most have a perfect notion of how free improvisation should sound
like, he has remained immune to sectarianism. In “Iruman” the main drive behind
the action was the premonitory nature stirred by an encounter with Giovanni Di
Domenico, another iconoclastic juggler. Recorded on November 5, 2012, at the
GOK Sound studio in Tokyo, the present material suffered no other
predetermination.
Steeped in
mysticism – one could well describe as anachronistic, if that concept wasn’t
more of a feature in each listener’s own mind – these themes flow naturally with
a dynamic that has something in common with that of chamber music though it
emphasizes aspects usually neglected in the latter. There are provoking asymmetries,
elliptic piano chords and cathartic oratories, niceties on the clarinet and
astringent exhalations on the alto sax. An ambiance that could have been
construed by a scenographer transports the duo to a remote village, devoted to
enigmatic and ancient cults. This is not music of derision, destined to
puncture conventions, even though Sakata and Di Domenico practice it
splendidly. It isn’t specifically servile either.
Given over to so many nuances,
in these spontaneously generated structures, perhaps its most surprising
characteristic is its cohesion. Whirlwind declamations and primeval litanies
serve a gregarious logic, in which the well-honed instincts of the improvisers
methodically balance out individual utopia and collective drama. A certain phrasing
from Di Domenico appears to gather countless phases of jazz piano, while other
choices could effortlessly feature on a post-serialist piece. Sakata likewise
sails towards a point of synthesis one would argue is inhabited by many other
voices apart from his own – a tactic that is both tempted by transcendence as
well as marked by minutiae, typical of one who investigates microscopic
systems, i.e. those invisible to the naked eye.
In that regard,
“Iruman” summons onto itself a perplexity generally absent from, not to mention
almost contrary to, improvised music: that which presumes no man is the
absolute lord of all he does and even less of his historical time. Sakata and
Di Domenico are separated by nearly thirty years and originate from very distinct
cultural universes, yet in translating all that is sacred and profane in
creation, they are indeed like brothers.
Akira Sakata
Akira Sakata, sax player, was
born in Kure on February 21, 1945, a few months before aerial raids destroyed
the Japanese naval arsenal stationed in the city’s port and just in time to
sense the shadow of the American bomber Enola Gay, on its way to Hiroshima.
This is a region steeped in perpetual grief, whose pain has been forever
pressed up against the reconstruction effort, causing surprise, delusion and
alienation in a generation that grew up despising nationalistic cults. Many
felt that opposing cultural conformism was the only way to bring together all
that is strange, beautiful, grotesque and mysterious in life – an attempt to
give some shred of meaning to the irrationality epitomised by the atom bomb.
Jazz, popular in Japan since
the 1920s, and further validated by the American occupation, came about as an essential
tool in the development of a critical spirit, legitimizing deviant behaviour,
but also bringing visibility to the pain and suffering, offering a chance to
dialogue with chaos, a way back to the world. The trio made up by Yosuke
Yamashita, Akira Sakata and Tateo Moriyama symbolized this impulse, presenting to
the West – in festivals such as Moers, Berlin, Montreux or Newport and in LPs
such as “Clay” or “Chiasma”, edited by ENJA and MPS in the mid-1970s – a free
jazz looked upon as the result of a separate evolutionary strain. Other LPs
from the period – such as “Distant Thunder”, recorded live by the trio with
Manfred Schoof – further emphasize a speech that was taken up with a need to
escape any form of coercion.
Back in Japan, Sakata took this libertarian paradigm into other areas. His recordings dating from the first years of the 1980s, from the theatrical “20 Personalities” to the idiomatic essays with the group Wha-Ha-Ha (not coincidentally released by the Better Days label, the anchor catalogue for the most singular and futuristic synth-pop, and in Europe, partly licensed to Chris Cutler’s Recommended) ran a parallel track with an international career progressively linked with the most uncompromising and globalized jazz fusion. In 1981, he performs in Berlin alongside The Lounge Lizards, James Blood Ulmer, Defunkt and Bill Laswell’s Material. The American bassist would later on invite Sakata to take part in the “The Noise of Trouble” session with Herbie Hancock, Sonny Sharrock, Peter Brötzmann and Ronald Shannon Jackson. Laswell would be a constant presence in other key moments of Sakata’s discography: the producer in 1991 of “Silent Plankton” and “Autonomous Zone” (with Ginger Baker, Foday Musa Suso, Anton Fier and Brötzmann) and later, in 1996, of the pan-Asiatic project Flying Mijinko Band (Fier, Suso, Nicky Skopelitis, etc), whose Japan Foundation sponsorship took to Uzbekistan, Mongolia and China.
Since 2005,
through countless collaborations with Jim O’Rourke, Chris Corsano e Darin Gray,
Sakata’s path has gained a renewed visibility outside his native Japan.
Recordings such as “Hagyou” (with Boredom’s Yoshimi), “Friendly Pants”, “And
That’s the Story of Jazz” and “Sora Wo Tobu!” (also listing Yosuke Yamashita)
as well as tours in Europe and North America have made his name familiar to a new
generation. In the past couple of years the ties between his artistic activity
and his career as a marine biologist and guest lecturer at Tokyo University
have also grown closer as demonstrated in the DVD “Mijinko – A Silent
Microcosm” dedicated to the water flea.
Giovanni Di
Domenico
Giovanni Di
Domenico, pianist, was born in Rome on July 20, 1977, a significantly tempestuous
period in socio-political terms, featuring hostile polarizations and an ostensive
paramilitarism, mutinous ideological confrontations and bloody terrorist
attacks, rendered infamous in the description ‘Years of Lead’. In that
particularly caustic summer, the so-called ‘Movement of 1977’, non-aligned,
without any ties to the Parliament and non-violent, broke into the scene of
prevalent conspiracy-steeped paranoia condemning the repressive, discriminatory
and authoritarian tendencies of the Italian State and demanding equality for
minorities and further civil rights. The coinciding liberalization of the media
market, putting an end to RAI’s monopoly, further defined this period as the
prime moment for pirate radio, with the consequence of a libertarian
fragmentation of youth culture, epitomised by punk.
One could argue
that Giovanni, self-taught until the age of 24, inherited – in philosophy,
politics and artistically – the most benign and affirmative traits of that
period, diversifying his action in the context of a recently unified Europe,
promoting improbable connections, exploring varied geographies, comfortably manoeuvring
aesthetical fringes and making a commitment to live performance at its most
liberating and engaging. Surprisingly, the path that lead him to that point had
an unexpected detour: following his father’s consecutive assignments as a civil
engineer he actually lived out his first decade in Africa – until he was five
in Libya, from then until his eight anniversary in the Cameroons and until ten
in Algeria. His far off native country was not synonymous with civil unrest as
much as with opera, whose arias he would memorize with his siblings in order to
practice the language and provide some family entertainment. The condition of
expatriate had a strong influence in his education – he clearly remembers the calls
of the muezzin, the sound of exotic
musical instruments in local markets, the ritualistic expression music took in
the streets of Yaoundé, or the songs he heard from his nanny in the Cameroons.
Perhaps because of this he currently blends in so effortlessly in the Trance
Mission collective of Moroccan Hassan El Gadiri.
When he finally
enrolled in music school – majoring in ‘jazz piano’- he further built on an encyclopaedic
technique; rhythm, harmony and tone are informed by non-western traditions yet
equally sensitive to Debussy’s “Préludes”, Luciano Berio’s “Sequenzas”, to the
‘ambi-ideation’ heard in Borah Bergman’s Soul Note recordings, Cecil Taylor’s
polissemic density, Paul Bley’s bruised transparency and of course, the most
radical manifestations stemming from the underworld of pop music, invariably
tied together by his own original praxis. A distinction –
one would call it generational – he shares with many of the musicians he has
crossed paths with recently, of which we could enumerate Nate Wooley, Chris
Corsano, Arve Henriksen, Jim O’Rourke, Alexandra Grimal, Tetuzi Akiyama, João
Lobo or Toshimaru Nakamura. Di Domenico has founded his own label, Silent
Water, home of an eclectic and occasionally unclassifiable production. He lives
in Brussels.
all songs by akira sakata & giovanni
di domenico; titles and “moe” kanji by akira sakata; recorded at gok sound
(tokyo) by yoshiaki kondo, november 2012; mixed and mastered at golden pony
studio (lisbon) by eduardo vinhas, march 2013; cover illustration by okyo
maruyama (1733-1795); design by tomás cunha ferreira; produced by joão santos
