Enji: Sonor (Squama SQM033)
On her fourth album, Mongolian-born, German-based vocalist Enkhjargal “Enji” Erkhembayar plays it safer compared to her more experimental earlier albums and a live show I caught last summer when she stretched her warm voice toward soaring vocalise, drawing on the Mongolian long-song tradition.
Here, the sound is pleasant but more conventional easy-listening vocal jazz, somewhere between Norah Jones and Arooj Aftab. She’s backed by a five-man European quintet, with a thoughtful guest baritone sax on Much by Khasar Ganbaatar, another Mongolian based in Munich, who wrote the song.
New York-based Austrian keyboardist Elias Stemeseder plays with the likes of John Zorn, Laurie Anderson and Nels Cline, but here his acoustic and electric piano playing is lovely and supportive rather than edgy. The same goes for mellow German guitarist Paul Brändle, who co-wrote most of the material.
Highlights include the world-weary, deep-bass Ger Hol, with the band’s sparsest, most atmospheric playing, and the intimate Bayar Tai, with an elegant Brändle solo and breathy, delicate vocals. Besides Much, non-originals include the traditional Mongolian Eejiinhee Hairaar, whose propulsive rhythm suggests a slight kinship to Ethiopian jazz.
Then there’s a head-scratching choice of standard: Old Folks, that corn-pone 1938 tale of a nonagenarian US Civil War veteran. It’s by far the longest track on the album, a ponderous, nearly-nine-minute reading over minimal piano. Pleasant enough, but it doesn’t add much to the set, or to the countless earlier versions.
Two other incongruous, skippable tracks are spoken in German, distracting from her singing. Suspicions that this could be related to the album’s state funding raises unsettling doubts about lingering neocolonialism.
Antoñio Carlos Jobim & Luis Bonfá: Black Orpheus (Jazz Samba 709126 LP)
The patronising European portrayal of the “simple” people of Rio’s slums in this film is also problematic, but the soundtrack is credited with introducing the world to bossa nova. It’s a chaotic listening experience, though, probably not one to throw on during your next Sunday brunch.
Long segments of it are directly from the film, that romantic tragedy spliced into an ethnographic documentary about Rio carnival. The samba schools’ rambunctious African-inspired drumming is abruptly intercut with interludes of the new, gentler bossa sound.
Those parts feature the acoustic guitar of Luiz Bonfá, who composed the tunes with João Gilberto, and the mellifluous voices of Elizeth Cardoso and Agostinho dos Santos, dubbed over the musical numbers.
The LP was originally released in 1959, that year of jazz landmarks, soon after the first bossa-nova singles by Gilberto and Cardoso. The poignant main theme, Manhã De Carnaval (Carnival Morning), became a minor jazz standard. 1962 brought jaunty versions by Stan Getz, Vince Guaraldi and Quincy Jones which missed the film versions’ underlying sense of aching and mystery – that untranslatable saudade. Oscar Peterson’s 1966 take comes close, and Susannah McCorkle’s later vocal version gets it.
This vinyl reissue includes three bonus film songs from a 1959 EP by Gilberto. They replace three splendid versions by guitarist Bola Sete on my old Verve CD release. The sound is slightly less sharp but warmer, while the new cover art from the film poster is a vivid improvement.
