For those who live in chains, the forms of freedom are malleable. The maroon horizon is by no means designed as a flat line, but can be drawn in the air from the ground up with the plasticity of free jazz. Therefore, the music of liberation is not limited to comfortable, melodic songs, but can consist of pianos such as saws, wind instruments (saxophones, cornets, flutes and clarinets) that are concave, padded or torn, and choirs that emerge from the depths many languages and percussive screams.
This idea of open horizons is conveyed by the album Spiritual Healing: Bwa Kayiman Freedom Suite, signed by Jowee Omicil (Montreal, 1977), just released on January 19th.
Omicil, a Canadian saxophonist and son of the Haitian diaspora, practices free jazz to narrate the liberating achievement of his ancestors, known for breaking the chains of slavery imposed on them on the shores of West Africa, and the foundation stone for one laid new state.
Because the case of Haiti wasn't just about Maroons – slaves who had escaped and hidden in the mountains – dispersing freely in the hidden corners of this humiliated America. The exiles became central figures in their own history as a country. They laid the foundation for the construction of an island nation that emancipated itself from colonial ties, with words in a Creole (or Creole) mixture of French and African languages such as Wolof, Fon, Ewé, Kilongo, Yoruba and Igbo adding expressions and place names in the languages of the Taínos (the Arawak) and other Indian peoples.
In fact, Haiti (which means “land of mountains” in Arawak) was the first country in Latin America to declare independence in January 1804, following an abolitionist revolution initiated by people of African descent a decade earlier. It is from these first conversations and uprisings, known as “The Caimán Forest Congress” (or Bois Bwa Caïman) that Omicil speaks precisely in his sixth album, which is a concept and a tribute to the best meaning of “free”.
The slave rebellion of August 14, 1791 in Cayman Forest – in what was then the colony of Saint Domingue under French jurisdiction on the island of Hispaniola – becomes a healing ceremony in which Omicil calls the souls of the living and the dead to celebrate bravery. “Because you have to tell your children how freedom came about.”
Like many of the descendants of the enslaved, Omicil knows that his grandparents arrived on the new continent accompanied by deities worshiped in ancient African empires.
The composer, recently known for his role in The Eddy, the series produced by Damien Chazelle (La La Land) for Netflix, and in the jazz world as Mr. BasH, admits that he will prepare this album in the summer of 2020 – while imprisoned in his home in Paris – he suffered, sang, fell into trances and recited, tried to embody the initiation rites of his ancestors and embraced all Antillean mestizos.
This musician who draws on the styles he learned at the prestigious American music school Berklee, but also on most street and contemporary styles (and who has played with Branford Marsalis, Richard Bona, Marcus Miller, Wyclef Jean and Roy Hargrove ), is convinced that the truth is liberating. And her way of approaching this truth is through improvisation, arising from the body, and attempting to break through the doors that traditional practices open. This is how this hour of music was born, in 21 sections that are naturally integrated into a history of these revolts, with the first calls for a meeting, the musings, the threats, the agreements of action and the dynamics of the struggle. This accelerates with every step towards this new horizon.
Like many of the descendants of the enslaved who crossed the Atlantic against their will, Omicil knows that his grandfathers and grandmothers arrived on the new continent in the company of deities worshiped in ancient African empires such as the Kingdom of Dahomey (modern-day Benin). . Thus, from Voodoo and Yoruba practices, spirits (or Iwas) arose, which can be called Papa Legba (in Haiti) or Eshu (in Brazil), who guard the boundaries between the present and the timeless and facilitate the exchange between the visible world and enable reality. supernatural wealth.
This 18th-century Afro-Atlantic universe was therefore governed by Bantu-Kongo principles and therefore populated by beings who fraternized from different shores (and dimensions) thanks to the messengers between gods and men who crossed time and space. which in this way were no longer impassable for slaves. For example, according to legend, Eshu killed a bird “with a stone he had thrown yesterday.” This poetry of spirituality gives courage to radical change and is the source of inspiration from which a musician wants to draw several generations after his great-great-grandparents landed in the Caribbean. He is accompanied in this magic by Randy KerBer and Jonathan Jurion (piano), Arnaud Dolmen & Yoann Danier (drums) and Jendah Manga (bass).
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