Three Journies (Africa)

A musical snippet from Steve Klink's CD Searching the Blue:

This song is a journey in my head. I always wanted to go to Africa, but I never did. There was a time when I was totally into different kinds of African music. I listened to as many recordings as I could find. Of the whole panorama of what was available on LP at the time, I especially liked some of the 12/8 triplet kind of grooves that you hear here, based on a 12/8 clave. I remember seeing some dance groups from Ghana dancing to something like this. I bought "Studies in African Music" by A. M. Jones and tried to study the transcriptions (heavy stuff to read!!). I read some different writings of Paul F. Berliner trying to get deeper into African music. I wanted to somehow get to the bottom of things.

In the end, though, I did not find any great revelations. African rhythms are of course a major source of jazz music. But I found that there are very few exact similarities between recorded African music and recorded jazz. The closest is maybe this 12/8 clave which I find similar to some medium swing grooves in jazz. Especially when Wynton Kelly really gets grooving at a medium swing blues.

Some might say that this song sounds Irish. I guess that will be the next part of the "Three Journies" that I will write: Ireland. Another place that I've never been to and always wanted to go to.