Lumiere - Bob Brozman Album Review

Photo: Ali Madjdi

Album Review

Globe - trotting maestro, dazzles once again.

Fifty three year old American guitarist and ethnomusicologist Bob Brozman continues his world music journey on this mind-blowing audio experience. The played instruments are as exotic as the titles and the music. Nicknamed ‘musical wizard’, Brozman has long been rated as a virtuoso musician, with Lumiere consolidating those credentials. This is very much a musical memoir from his travels and experiences working with artists from around the globe.

If like me, you have a diverse musical palette, you’ll thoroughly enjoy the menu. This is not so much a master at work, but play. What he successfully manages to do is absorb each indigenous environment sucking in the smell, the food, the air and just about everything associated with the numerous regions he’s dipped into. The ‘orchestra’ tag is a slight misnomer because the orchestra is actually Brozman, sometimes playing up to 10 instruments, obviously not at the same time, which makes this even more remarkable. Look at the CD packshot – it tells all. Sleeve notes do actually credit some other musicians, but the bulk is the great man himself.

What he’s achieved is quite staggering, as all the individual instrumentation (much of it improvised) then needs to be weaved together in the studio, which is some feat in itself. This international suite begins with Brozman featuring a ten-string Finnish harp, the Kantele, intended to replicate the sound of various 78rpm records of European orchestras. Island music has been a long standing fascination, so he respectfully dedicates Lumiere De La Mer to an imaginary island between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, this time featuring a reso-rango, a kind of charango / ukulele hybrid.

Co-composed with friend and long-time collaborator Michael Dunn, Mars Over Sorrento is baffling. The title suggests something Mediterranean, whereas the lead instrument – a 14 string Hindustani slide guitar delivers a more eastern flavour. Then there’s the meshed-up island stylings, again with an eastern twist with maloya and sega rhythms of N’Oubliez Pas La Reunion in the Indian Ocean, which he feels great passion for, reflected in the music. A medley of his favourite Trinidadian calypsos, Calypso Calaloo is a magnificent composite piece giving a nod to the cross-cultural influences. Gazal is a rhythm Brozman learned in Turkey, Greece and Iran. The indigenous flavours are simply divine, played on a 22 stringed chaturangui.

For Mazurka Maracaibo, he delves into 1930s Venezuelan music. This fingers-on-fire blast is an explosive exercise on the ten string charango, whereas the slow melodic drive of Hawaiian medley Aloha Laie takes us to the sun-drenched shores of the Pacific island. Moving to the shores of West Africa, the heavily percussive Bamako Blues is kind of modal blues. I’ve always had a fondness for Ska, so to hear his take on its early 60s stylings, by introducing the ‘alien’ chaturangui on Ska Waltz Train is fascinating. His biggest ‘musical leap’ goes from west to east, via the open tuning method. Exhilarating Afro Mada is a brilliant voyage from East Africa, through Madagascar to India. The closing eerie lullaby Yaeyama Okinawa is a far more stripped back and simplified sound using only three instruments.

File under: Listen. Learn. Admire.

Elly Roberts