Recorded in 1970
Today's album is a vivid illustration of jazz's worldwide reach by the beginning of the 1970s. It's also an example of the increasing number of artists outside of the U.S. who were making vital new music by melding their own musical idioms and traditions with jazz.
The Brotherhood of Breath was led by South African pianist and composer Chris McGregor.
The core of the Brotherhood of Breath was The Blue Notes, a sextet formed in South Africa in the early-1960s. The most famous version of the sextet featured Chris McGregor (p), Mongezi Feza (tr), Dudu Pukwana (as), Nikele Moyake (ts), Johnny Dyani (b), and Louis Moholo-Moholo (d). (By 1970, when today's selection was recorded, both Moyake and Dyani had left the group.) The Blue Notes played American jazz and mixed it with various forms of South African Township music, such as kwela. (This exciting hybrid has come to be known as Cape Jazz.) Since the Blue Notes were a mixed-race group and that was forbidden in South Africa, the band often faced police harassment. So, like many other artists, the band left the country, hoping to find more acceptance for their music and less oppressive political circumstances elsewhere.
Beginning in 1964, the band traveled from one European country to another, eventually settling in the U.K. They soon became a fixture at The Old Place in London, the former site of Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club. In the late-1960s, this club became a hub for the growing British avant-garde scene. Emerging from this ferment, McGregor formed the Brotherhood of Breath around 1969. The group was an expanded, big-band version of The Blue Notes, augmented with British musicians like John Surman, Mike Osborne, Alan Skidmore, Harry Beckett, and others. The band made such a splash that they were signed to RCA's Neon imprint, and their first album was produced by Joe Boyd. Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath was their self-titled first release.
As for the music, it's an energetic and exciting mixture of South African influences and jazz. Writers sometimes speak of Ellington or Mingus when they're discussing The Brotherhood of Breath. I think those comparisons are a little misleading. Of course, there are commonalities; all three of these groups were led by exceptional composers who filled their bands with exceptional soloists. But, aside from the debt that all jazz musicians (and most especially composers) owe to Ellington, I'm not sure how much The Brotherhood of Breath has in common with Ellington or Mingus. The Brotherhood of Breath sounds different. And I don't mean "different" in the pejorative sense. Just the opposite! They are gloriously, splendidly different.
Two cuts from the album demonstrate two very different aspects of the band. The LP opens with "MRA," a shouting, joyous song that jumps and jumps and jumps. It's irresistible, and it seems to have one foot in Township music and one foot in jazz.
The album's emotional core, "Night Poem," is a twenty-minute free-jazz tone poem. Rather than a quiet nocturne (as you might expect, given the title), the music evokes a night in the wild. It clatters and rattles and chirps and squawks. The music bursts with life, and it's beautiful.
More Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath
Some of their official releases:
• Brotherhood (RCA Victor, 1972)
• Live at Willisau (Ogun, 1974)
• Procession: Live at Toulouse (Ogun, 1978)
The Cuneiform label has also released several of the band's archival recordings:
• Travelling Somewhere (2001)
• Bremen to Bridgwater (2004)
• Eclipse at Dawn (2008)
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