TT 553: Three Rhythmic Losses
D'Angelo, Hermeto Pascoal, Eddie Palmieri
D’Angelo obit at NPR by Sheldon Pearce.
Hermeto Pascoal obit at O Maringá by Luiz de Carvalho.
Eddie Palmieri commentary by Nate Chinen at The Gig.
It seems like every musician in my circle about my age can remember the first time they heard the 2000 release Voodoo by D’Angelo. The album was a detonation.
In one way, there’s a lot of harmony on Voodoo. There’s tightly-grouped vocals in euphonious thirds and sixths. There are bass lines. There are horn lines. Guitar and keyboard are omnipresent.
Yet part of the magic of Voodoo is how the dense soundscape denies harmony. Nothing from the record can be played on the piano. It is perhaps the ultimate attack on the European system from deep within the beat. Questlove’s hi-hat and side-stick is in the center; the rest hangs far back in the swamp.
Even people who can’t dance get up and attempt to start moving in tempo when Voodoo comes on. Yet this album was also truly a gift to the musicians.
Hermeto Pascoal was folkloric and modernistic at the same time, and gathered his Brazilian sidemen into a surreal family like Sun Ra or Charles Mingus. Guillermo Klien recommends Só Não Toca Quem Não quer, especially the profound track “Suite Mundo Grande,” four harsh minutes of through-composed brilliance.
I saw Hermeto live only once, in the Allen Room at JALC, and it was one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever attended. He turned the whole audience into singers and percussionists, made up sonatas on the spot with a water bottle, and led a tight quintet in peerless jazz fusion.
Some claim the piano is lyrical, some argue that the keyboard is the soul of harmony, but Eddie Palmieri surely understood the piano as tuned percussion. What was implicit in Thelonious Monk and McCoy Tyner became explicit in Eddie Palmieri. Nobody hit harder.
The 1989 appearance on Night Music with an all-star band is awesome.
Thanks for mentioning Hermeto, my musical mentor since 1977. His contribution to the world will only be realized in two or three generations from now. It's up to us to keep his legacy alive.
"It seems like every musician in my circle about my age can remember the first time they heard the 2000 release Voodoo by D’Angelo. The album was a detonation."
I still remember the great Hal Galper - not necessarily known for his deep interest in r&b - talking about this album in class about a month after it came out. (We'd all been listening to it obsessively, of course, but Hal? Into D'Angelo? What a hip motherfucker.)