Bennie Maupin
The Jewel In The Lotus

There's no going around it: Bennie's debut work is an extremely arduous and complex album to listen to, not advisable for those unwilling to venture onto the challenging paths of polyphony and improvisation. Nonetheless, it's a fascinating and "atmospheric" record, intense, passionate, at times bewildering, decidedly closer to contemporary avant-garde than to the classic 70s Fusion stylistics (to which it can still be attributed). Tackling "The Jewel & The Lotus" mainly means setting aside expectations and preconceptions to embrace the unpredictability of daring instrumental solutions, far from the immediacy of the more “funky” Jazz of those same years.

Who is Bennie Maupin, for those who do not already know this unique figure of a "music researcher"? He's a wind player from Detroit, born in 1940, known for working with Herbie Hancock in the Mwandishi Sextet and later in the Headhunters, but also for collaborating with Miles Davis from "Bitches Brew" to "On The Corner". "The Jewel In The Lotus", recorded in March 1974 at the end of his collaboration with Miles, amazes and fascinates critics and audiences with a strange and very original formula of ethnically tinged instrumental music, full of contrasts and moods, conceived under the banner of a rarefied and mysterious minimalism. Spirituality and meditation permeate the eight compositions of the album, divided between harmonic sketches lasting less than two minutes and expansive "excursions", where single notes are prolonged by the soloist (here playing sax and flute) for several seconds, fully faithful to the late Coltrane and recent Shorter, that of the early Weather Report’s performing practices. It is no coincidence, for example, that the opening and development of the initial "Ensenada" closely resemble an "Orange Lady": the Zawinul of the moment is Herbie Hancock, guest of honor of the album, and the cascade-like sequence of notes on the piano is the perfect harmonic carpet for Bennie's inspired and touching commentary; sweetness and moving delicacy alternate with moments of disturbing atonality. The continuous pulse of the double bass overlaps the disorienting effect caused by the duplication of the percussive substrate (the drums of Billy Hart - barely hinted at - on the left channel, the vibraphone of Frederick Waits on the right channel). There's confirmation of the influence exerted on Bennie (as on other experimenters of the period) by the futuristic production techniques recently experimented by Teo Macero.

Menacing Tibetan chants define the sound framework of "Excursion", undoubtedly the piece closest to "free" and cacophony, as well as "psychedelic" in its outcomes, dominated in the second part by an uncontrollable storm of sounds and instruments in which it's almost impossible to find direction. Here, as in "Mappo", is where Charles Sullivan's trumpet enhances the timbral variety of the whole. Hancock takes the lead in the short piano-flute interlude closing the first part of the album, playing complex arabesques accompanied by the flute and, towards the end, by Hart's soft drums. Turning the side to get lost among the colors and moods of an ever more eastern-oriented "title track" (superb introductory exposition of double bass and electric piano), before Bennie enters for ten minutes of total enchantment, between "floral" harmonies and the unnatural suspension of an "opiate" mirage. In "Song For Tracie Dixon Summers" and the concluding "Past Is Past" - listen to believe - the ghost of Coltrane lives again.

Only repeated and thorough listening can guarantee a complete appreciation of this "jewel in the lotus". Aged exquisitely, by the way.

It's 44 minutes of pure ecstasy. An unmissable listening experience for the enthusiasts of kaleidoscopic Jazz of the decade.