Esperanza Spalding
Esperanza

THE REVIEW

She is very young and already a promise of jazz. She plays the double bass with the voracious appetite of someone who, through that sound, is truly searching for something. Moreover, she is enchanting. As if that weren’t enough to make my heart race, as the tracks flow one after the other, I find myself intimately drawn to the modulations of her voice; surprising and fresh like a tropical waterfall in its pitch variations, soft and tapered when she lowers the tones, extraordinarily warm.

Whatever the stimulus, music should have the task of stirring something. It is for this reason that, suddenly, all the desires found at the periphery of my listening perception are gathered around a single note. The track is titled "Espera" and in the introduction it unfolds for a few seconds along a web of delicate dissonances between a double bass and a piano. Then comes the main riff, an incisive bass soaked in funk, which closes and restarts, emphatically hitting the first beat of the cycle. It lasts a moment and you almost don't notice it, but it’s there: you know when the string of an instrument is struck with more force and the note is pushed against the fret, producing that frayed sound that is neither a vibration nor a noise? There it is, that grace note is perfection. It is emotion prevailing over technique. It’s the calling card of a musician. And if you turn up the volume of the stereo, it almost seems like you can see her, standing on the double bass polishing her arms with her compelling touch, the swaying afro hair, and that voice of hers, that smile returned in sound.

"Esperanza" is a little gem, a record with an enveloping groove; an invitation to dance made of motifs that look to the warmth of soul, touched by the movements of samba and the rhythms of batucada, gathering it all in the fabric of a finely jazz style.

Just try not to fall in love.