Sonny Fortune
Awakening

Ah, the Jazz of those years. Those years when you had to "try". Those years when labels and genres mattered little or nothing, those years when everything was mixed and everything was experimented with, because you had to change the world, or rather... change the world starting from music. Oh yes, on the other hand, my former University professor Vincenzo Caporaletti (yes, him, the former guitarist of Pierrot Lunaire, for those who remember them) was the first to tell me about this: back then we all looked to Hendrix, he said, Hendrix was God, Hendrix was everything, Hendrix was the beginning and end of everything; and everyone tried to imitate him, to study him, to delve into his secrets like one who investigates the unknown, like one who embarks on a path without knowing its exact destination. Everyone, indiscriminately; even those who would never have imagined flirting with Rock and its executive practice, the jazz musicians.

And in those years, jazz musicians were truly the interpreters of change, the flag bearers of that "progressive" music ideal so dense with extra-musical implications (political, first and foremost); ask Maestro Fariselli, ask the "great minds" of the new Italian sounds of the '70s, or a James Senese singing about the "gente 'e Bucciano", ask them why, among many possible genres, they chose the language of Jazz-Rock to delve into such socially and culturally relevant themes and conquer the "militant" audience of Parco Lambro and other Pop festivals of the period. Because Jazz-Rock was the music of change, the music that went beyond the song, beyond conventions, beyond the simple idea of music as "entertainment"; it was a challenge, a provocation, it was "frontier" music but intolerant of borders, an enemy of boundaries, of any limitation. It was the strong "alternative" that was not limited to a vacuous display of technical skill and musical prowess, but spoke the language of the young, it was an "outlet", an explosion, a total liberation of "instinctive" creativity.

Today, the contact with the unreachable reality of those years is lost, today it's hard to grasp the immensely ideological, as well as musical, magnitude of that phenomenon; while the ghettos raged, young white people from good families would go to the record store to buy "Bitches Brew" without having any idea of what they were going to listen to (because no one knew, not even the luminaries of criticism who were blindsided by that album); and they would keep it at home as if it were a cult object, because they were fascinated by the "new thing" that Jazz seemed to be, because they were hypnotized by the ancestral charm that Mati Klarwein's images could evoke; and they knew the imagery of Afro-American culture; some of them even stopped seeing their black neighbor as a "different", as just any "Uncle Tom". I find it funny today when I hear people talking about Jazz and Fusion as "penthouse music", to be listened to with a Martini and other such "yuppie" clichés, I find it funny thinking of the unique atmosphere of those fabulous years, I find it funny when I see the usual stereotype of the "snobby jazz musician" being repeated.

Of the album in question, you’ve already guessed it, I won’t talk much, also because you know by now how I am used to reviewing Jazz; what interests me is to provide you - with this "historical" introduction - the right stimuli to rediscover another great figure of the new '70s Jazz, one who was both spokesman and exceptional protagonist of the new aesthetics: some remember this Philadelphia horn player only for the collaboration with Miles, when he duet fiercely with the fiery guitar of Pete Cosey in albums like "Agharta" and "Pangaea". But few recall his work alongside Mongo Santamaria, and especially the pure gems he gifted as a soloist, interpreting the novelty of "change" while preserving the acoustic genuineness of the music; and having an ensemble accompany him, as in "Awakening", (trumpet, piano, double bass, and drums - with minimal inserts of Kenny Barron's Fender Rhodes) that would be suitable even for a Post-Bop proposal, except that the executive practice embraced here speaks volumes about Sonny’s "progressive" approach: the sax is "strong", incisive, powerful, and moves along tortuous lines that on one hand recall Coltrane and contemporary Dave Liebman, on the other express the passion and "corporeality" of a Rock guitarist's solo. In Fortune’s discography, I purposely chose a non-electric album to demonstrate the pervasiveness of this influence, to prove how the musical context of the time is felt throughout the grooves of this record, regardless of the instrumentation used. Echoes of Latin Jazz à la Santana (the emblematic use of congas) blend with murky double bass acrobatics, sobs, and sax regurgitations emerging powerfully over the constant rhythm, outlining a picture that's rich, multifaceted but never overcrowded nor cacophonous (not even when Sonny experiments with the high register).

There's nothing to be done, I go into a trance when I listen to this kind of music (and also when I write about it). Minutes of absolute enjoyment, I hope the same ones you will spend in the company of this masterpiece.