Paal Nilssen – Love: New Brazilian Funk Kick Off the 60th Jazz Festival Ljubljana with a Thunderous Bang
Location: Ljubljana / Gromka (Metelkova) / Slovenia
Date: Monday, 17.06.2019
It has begun! Officially the start is listed for Tuesday, 18.06.2019, but on the very eve of the 60th International Jazz Festival Ljubljana, the first boom went off at Gromka. Yes. An overture to the 60th jubilee edition of this much-loved festival, dedicated to jazz in all its known and unknown varieties. At Gromka, that is, where the Scandinavian drum oddball Paal Nilssen – Love played with his crew.
Paal Nilssen – Love is a man who has already played in Slovenia quite a few times. In the quintet with which he “stormed” Metelkova this evening, or more precisely the club Gromka, his fellow Norwegian Frode Gjerstad holds down the fort on alto sax, while three fifths of the rest of the lineup are Brazilian musicians: guitarist Bartolo, bassist Felipe Zenicola and Paulinho Bicolor on percussion, specifically the cuica, a staple of Brazilian folk tradition. As Paulinho’s surname hints, the concert was supposed to be two-toned! A fusion of free jazz with the spirit of Brazilian samba. Groove flooded with free-jazz adventurism. That duality is exactly what we got. From the quintet called Paal Nilssen – Love: New Brazilian Funk, that is.
It really did boom. The right moment in the right place. Here is “Gromka” (“Thunderous”) and here is the adjective “thunderous.” Paal Nilssen embodies all of it . He is a thoroughly physical drummer, and if he had his cymbals set flat, you could almost mistake his kit for that of the late John Bonham (Led Zeppelin). The concert started fifteen minutes past nine in the evening and lasted exactly one hour, encore included. But don’t ask what all went down in that hour. The band tore itself down to its prime factors, and that goes especially for the fierce Paal, who didn’t hold back on incredible speed and extremely loud swings. Cannon-shot swings, a super noisy and downright raw approach, rough, at times almost punk, and of course Invasive. Especially when Felipe Zenicola’s piercing bass kicks in, which repeatedly gave a rock-solid backbone to the thunderous caliber of the show. Paulinho Bicolor, with the quirks of the cuica, rounded out the sound as a sort of extra brass section. You could say he was basically playing talking drums. A crazy collision of “soft meets hard,” into a properly eclectic fury of free-jazz mischief and the creation of a vivid groove that still sounded very musical and tight, and far from being a (too) tough bone to chew on.
The alto sax locked in phenomenally in dialogue with the voice of the cuica drum, while in contrast the smashing guitar kept picking out an entertaining grab bag of utterly “wrecked” chords amid contrasting harmonies. Perception and instinct. That is the guiding principle of this razor-sharp quintet, and the show confirmed once again that the live concert is the only true act that, with this kind of approach to music, can touch the listener fully, carry them away and enchant them. It was a one-of-a-kind performance, unlike any before it. A concert unicum, just as the quintet itself is a unicum. The band didn’t just roar through a rich haul of colorful improvisations. At times it knew how to happily drop the racket and move the action toward total softness. That contrasting dialogue was driven by instinctive perception, with Paulinho, Frode and Bartolo trading inserts among themselves, while Paal picked up extra percussion and shakers, slipping into the “sweet sounds” and at most marking the basic rhythm with a gentle tap on the bass drum. And then, completely unexpectedly, a piercing bass suddenly rumbled and the band leapt into a devastating groove that earned huge ovations from the crowd. The audience felt that vivid contrasting leap with everything they had.
A truly excellent choice for the opening and overture to this year’s big 60th anniversary of Jazz Festival Ljubljana. Paal Nilssen – Love: New Brazilian Funk took us on an hour-long crazy musical adventure that hits with its unusualness and rich sonic color, where fragmentation and tightness constantly shake hands and where, as said, the rhythm is not just an equal but the dominant force in the sound of a free-jazz premise infused with punk racket, and in the extraordinary collision of Paal’s drumming technique with Paulinho’s samba-style salsa-ing on the colorful Brazilian folk instrument called the cuica. Extraordinary sound, extraordinary density, relentlessness, fire, playing all-out and perfect giving of themselves. Exactly what the music gourmet comes for, drawn to the avant-garde, eclecticism and the offbeat. Right on the edge of “tantalizing” excess, in other words!
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
