The fall 2022 jazz revelation, Sweet Tooth, by composer, double bassist and bandleader Mali Obomsawin, was greeted with a concert of praise across America and Europe. Presented as a “suite for Aboriginal resistance”, the album provokes a fusion between Abenaki tradition and exploratory jazz, reimagining the encounter between the old and new worlds: “I don’t know if it’s a militant album, but the nuances of the musician don’t matter.” I see it more as a way to tell the story of my people in a modern way that’s rooted in the present, she says.
“I have my own way of expressing this story from the point of view of the adaptation,” continues the musician, who she meets at her home in Farmington, a village in southern Maine, where she is resting before touring with her sextet continues. “I’m drawn to adaptation stories because people usually know little about the indigenous people, their history, and how they treated white people during this time. »
“When we think of First Nations,” she explains, “we think of healers or shamans, for example, those kinds of stereotypes.” Of course we value these traditions, but they obscure our people’s efforts to constantly adapt to the upheavals, caused by the settlers and their culture. “We have always been interested in different art forms, we are curious and connected to popular culture. We are modern. Throughout our history we have had to introduce ourselves and reinvent the way we present ourselves to the rest of the world. Mali Obomsawin found a poignant and ingenious way to do this: through jazz and the music that rocked her community.
Born in New Hampshire in 1995, she spent her summer vacations in Quebec and regularly visited family on the Odanak Reservation. At the age of ten she discovered the bass, an instrument which she perfected at the renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston and then continued her studies at Dartmouth College. At Berklee, she will be part of the folk-rock trio Lula Wiles, whose latest album, Shame and Sedition, was released on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings in 2021. The formation of Sweet Tooth began after the trio broke up.
Touching
What a poignant album! Infused with the spiritual jazz of his idols Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders (on saxophones and bass clarinet, Montreal-based Allison Burik and Noah Campbell, with Taylor Ho Bynum on flugelhorn and cornet) or even the outstanding bassist-double bassists Charles Mingus and Charlie Haden. With one foot in free jazz, the other in music with indigenous and American roots – the distinctive Wawasint8da is the translation of a hymn brought into the Abenaki language by the Jesuits – Mali leads the orchestra while they perform their New Fellow Yorkers Savannah sings Harris (drums) and Miriam Elhajli (guitar).
We have always been interested in different art forms, curious and connected to popular culture. We are modern. Throughout our history we have had to introduce ourselves and reinvent the way we present ourselves to the rest of the world.
Sweet Tooth is the result of years of studying the traditional Abenaki repertoire. The album opens with the song Odana – “It’s practically the national anthem of our community,” the musician points out – which legendary filmmaker and musician Alanis Obomsawin also sang on her visionary album Bush Lady, originally released in 1985. And yes, Alanis and Mali are from the same family: “She was at the Montreal release for my album last fall. I asked her for help with the lyrics to make sure I understood the meaning, she also explained the story of this song to me,” says Mali, who regrets not being fluent in the language yet.
Mali’s cultural heritage is crystallized with symbols in the gorgeous photograph that serves as the cover. In his right hand the mouthpiece of a trumpet – we want to see a connection to the famous trumpeter Don Cherry (1936-1995), pioneer of free jazz, friend of Ornette Coleman, born to an African American father and a Choctaw mother, an indigenous community in the southern United States. “Ah, cool,” said Mali. Yes, I admit that one could interpret it that way, even if it is not quite the case. Look, in the other hand I’m holding pieces of wampum shells [un collier traditionnel]. It is a way of bringing two objects from two different cultures into conversation to represent the passage of mind, memory, into sound. »
When Mali Obomsawin began her journey last winter, she made a point of visiting Aboriginal communities to share the story of Odanak with them in her own way. “I’ve thought a lot about this question: Do I need to talk to the indigenous people first? I understood that the most important thing is to express myself freely, with my aesthetic choices and my desire to experiment – although I compose a lot, I’m also an improviser and leave a lot of space for it in my songs – but I’m also myself aware that my music isn’t for everyone… Let’s say I don’t want to scream out loud in front of my elders for an hour! My performances differ from audience to audience – I don’t play in the same way to a community audience and a jazz-loving audience in a Montreal club, although the two audiences are not mutually exclusive. »
“Most of all, I think it says a lot about my music that it can interest such a wide audience.” Mali Obomsawin is already thinking about the sequel to Sweet Tooth and is preparing a shoegaze rock album alongside her jazz project “with big electric guitars -Sounds ahead – we’ll see if the fans I’ve gained thanks to Sweet Tooth will follow me in there! »
A few other native jazz figures…
Mali Obomsavin
In free concert with his sextet. At Studio TD, Friday, July 7, 6 p.m