What's Wrong With Groovin'/Send In The Clowns

a review by dan hill of
release format What's Wrong With Groovin'/Send In The Clowns by Letta Mbulu (CD Album)

text

Two pieces of music, re-released on a no-nonsense 7" by Jazzman. No doubt heard numerous times by the rare groovers, northern soulers, and heavy funkers, and no doubt a redoubtable floorfiller for the DJs who cater for those scenes. But now available to all - thank you Jazzman, thank you.

First up, Letta Mbulu's "What's Wrong With Groovin'", which I remember hearing in a Gilles Peterson mix a few years ago. It's hard to believe there's a more affecting piece of music out there. The groove is almost primeval in it's simplicity and sureness. In texture, it sounds like a gently loping, street-walking, Bacharach version of Herbie Hancock's "Dolphin Dance". Immense piano chords dropping out of the sky, pinned down by crashing cymbals. A Hugh Masekala song, there's only one thing of real distinction here. Singing that is so attention-grabbing it derails the song, and the listener, utterly. It's almost phenomenological, such is its physical hold. A performance of such strength, charisma and character that you can do little else but smile in amazed beatification. From the start, she's in total control. Letta Mbulu issues a command more than a question: What is wrong with groovin'. Her voice, after lifting each second line with a rocket's trajectory, audibly shifts up gears into the bridge, becoming the most beautiful foghorn you never heard. A contradiction, sure, but wait 'til you hear it. Delicacy and power alternating from one phrase to the next, floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee. John Coltrane one minute, Miles Davis the next. Her shift out of the chorus back to the verse is as subtle as the preceding entrance is raw. An instinctive angular phrase, it's effectively beyond verbal description. It's a truly remarkable piece of improvisation - it actually does remind me of the way Miles would play across changes. For me, this is up there with Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man" as a piece of soul singing - not actually virtuosic, simply a beguiling mixture of natural technical genius and heartfelt expression. It lasts for almost 3 minutes, but it actually lasts about half-an-hour, because you'll just lift the needle back to the start again, such is the fascination this track inspires.

If "Send In The Clowns" doesn't quite have the same alchemic effect, it's still a unique, wonderful piece of music. Lorez Alexandria's singing is as classily sassy as Mbulu's is boldly honest. Drifting, in almost diaphanous fashion, across the perky hornlines and ticking beat, she tosses out the phrases of Stephen Sondheim's showtune, carelessly/carefully unpicking the melody in instinctive fashion. Here the band is tighter, fuller, beefier, stronger - an extremely sharp performance, as if arranged by a Jones, Schifrin, or Mancini, and Alexandria's singing is correspondingly jazzy, each line a quixotic, personal interpretation of the original melody. It's curiously attractive, seemingly letting the lines drift around the sparse melodic punctuation of the band, draping the phrasing across the beat, and as with MBulu, capable of rendering lines with throwaway insouciance or powerful determinism. Again, simply wonderful.

These tracks are both worthy of the epithet 'classic', usually bandied around so loosely (inc. by yours truly) but here entirely appropriate. Posted by dan hill at 00:00, 26 Jul 2000