Artist: Oran Etkin

Title: Kelenia

Label: Motema Music

Cat.#: MTM 24

Genre: JAZZ/World

Reviewed by Jim Hoey

Kelenia is a jazz/world music release, mixing American jazz, Jewish rhythms and the music of Mali and western Africa. Just how do all these different elements become joined in concert on an album that features a relatively young leader, Oran Etkin? Take an early obsession with the music of Louis Armstrong, a later tutorship with jazz great Yusef Lateef, and years blending the music of Western Africa with the many different influences in the air around NY conservatories and streets, and that gives you some inkling of how this album came to be.

Etkin is recognized as a clarinetist and tenor sax player, and surrounds himself on this release with players of subtlety and nuance. West Africans Balla Kouyate and Makane Kouyate (associated with the Broadway musical Fela) play (respectfully) balafon (similar to xylophone, but more acoustic) and calabash. Makane Kouyate also sings, and when paired with Etkin’s clarinet, brings to mind a great experimental what-if question: What if Benny Goodman had been able to fast-forward or jump ahead in time, by-passing decades of racism, and play with a group of Africans that had never been through the American experience of slavery, or if he had been able to mix black American jazz artists like Charlie Christian, with white players as well as purely African musicians? This kind of mix is not even standard today, but the way Etkin fuses his Israeli roots, American heritage, and African tastes is the key to this album, and all the players he works with are ready and more than able to explore those possibilities.

It’s quite a mix, and highlights the appropriateness of the album title that was chosen for these recordings. “Kelenia” is a word from the Bambara language that describes a specific kind of love “developed between people who are different from each other”. This album is soulful and exploratory, awash in “kelenia”.

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