Andy Narell

 
Live in South Africa (HUCD 3060), Andy Narell's new two-disc (enhanced CD) release on Heads Up International, is what happens when one artist discovers an entire nation of fans that he didn't even know existed.

Though a native of New York, Narell has spent more than two decades developing a global reputation as a steel pan virtuoso whose multicultural style embraces a range of Afro-Caribbean, Latin jazz and pop traditions. He's one of only a small handful of steel pan players in the world who are playing jazz, and perhaps the only one among that coterie to commit an entire career - live and in the studio - to creating new music for the steel pan in that context.

But while Narell was busy playing around the U.S., Europe and the Caribbean, or composing for the Panorama steel band festival in Trinidad, or laying down tracks on albums, films and commercials, a grassroots movement was taking shape in South Africa that would have a dramatic impact on his musical and cultural perspective.

The lifting of economic restrictions and the transition to majority rule in South Africa in the early '90s allowed residents of the major cities and outlying townships easier access to recorded music from around the world. A network of "listening clubs" sprouted throughout the region as low-income South Africans pooled their monies to buy CDs of their favorite artists. By the late '90s, Narell had ascended to folk-hero status in a fan club he knew nothing about.

Narell had been hearing rumors as early as the mid '90s, but he didn't know what to make of them. When South Africa's government-sponsored Arts Alive festival invited him to come and play in September 1999, he figured he might fill a couple 200 or 300 seat clubs, maybe play an outdoor gig or two, and then come home.

He figured wrong.

When Narell and Heads Up president Dave Love landed in South Africa, the entire Andy Narell Jazz Club was at the airport, waving signs and sporting hats and t-shirts bearing his name. Arts Alive staffers told him there could be as many as 20,000 people at his outdoor performance.

But even they figured wrong.

Backed by some of the tightest, most intuitive jazz players from the Johannesburg scene, Narell took the stage and witnessed what he recalls as "a mass of people like I'd never seen. I'd never played in front of anything like this before in my life. The people from Arts Alive estimated between sixty and eighty thousand. And the people knew all the music. In the middle of songs, I'd hear this roar from the audience, and I'd realize that they were singing along with the music. All I could think of was, wow, we are really not in Kansas anymore. This is Africa, man."

Narell came down from the experience just long enough to come home and record Fire in the Engine Room (HUCD 3056), his 2000 studio release on Heads Up. Among the musicians featured on the album was guitarist Louis Mhlanga, whom Narell had met in Johannesburg. He returned to Southern Africa in April 2000 for an extensive concert tour that reunited the band he'd played with seven months earlier and explored many of the lesser-traveled cities and townships off the beaten Johannesburg-Cape Town-Durban tour path frequented by most foreign artists.

Live in South Africa - recorded over a two-night stand at the Blues Room in Johannesburg at the tail end of the tour - chronicles another expansion of Narell's already multicultural sensibilities. The musicians are veterans of the South African music scene, and they bring a rich musical heritage to the performances. Along with Mhlanga, hailing from Zimbabwe, the lineup includes: keyboardist Andile Yenana, from the eastern Cape; bassist Denny Lalouette, from the island of Mauritius; drummer Rob Watson, from Bloemfontein; and percussionist Basi Mahlasela, from Soweto. For every song Narell taught them, he learned his share of their music and culture in return.

From the opening drumroll of the midtempo "Play One for Keith," the playful synergy between Narell and his tight rhythm section is hard to miss, and when Yenana steps in on keyboard, the exotic Latin backbeat assumes an accessible pop layer. A couple tracks later, "Out of the Blue" opens to a responsive crowd, and for good reason: the song's funky, percussive sensibility is tailor made for hip shaking and head bobbing. "Hannibal's Revenge" closes the first disc on a more intense note, with a driving rhythm, heavily syncopated breaks and an infectious melody.

The second disc opens with the laid back "Sugar Street," where Mhlanga's percussive guitar work frequently underscores and accents Narell's pans. Further in, "Little Secrets" sounds much like what the title suggests - something understated and mysterious, yet full of energy and vaguely seductive.

The home stretch includes a couple of surprises. Narell's lively "Mpule," last heard on Heads Up's Smooth Africa (HUCD 3054) compilation in 2000, reappears here in an energized live setting with its bacanga rhythm and its minimal but unmistakable African flavor.

The coda is an impromptu rendition of the South African traditional, "Oxama," that serves as a farewell handshake - and in many ways, a bridge - from one culture to another.

While the formula of solid material interpreted by high-caliber musicianship may be sure-fire, Narell insists that much of the album's energy comes from those moments - in the songs themselves and in the tour in general - when spontaneity and creative energy transcended traditional musical structures and cultural boundaries.

"A few gigs into this tour, I realized, This is really clicking. We've got a band now. The guys were more comfortable with the music, and I started pushing them to experiment more and take more chances, open the music up and allow it to become more African. And sometimes we'd have people up dancing on stage, and they'd break into their township jive and the whole place would turn into a big party. Those were the greatest moments for me, when it was their culture front and center on stage."

Either by design or by instinct, that sense of integration and inclusion is at the root of Narell's global appeal - either in South Africa or Trinidad or San Francisco or New York City. He's spent a career reaching out to anyone in any corner of the globe who might be receptive to his music. Live in South Africa is all about the response.

"With the South Africans' openness to jazz and instrumental music, somehow I've found a way in the door - or my records did, on their own," he says. "But there was no way I could have known. Recordings are like a message in a bottle, and you really don't know where the message is going to land and who's going to hear it or understand it."

Releases featuring Andy Narell on the Heads Up label:
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