CHINA AFRO CUBA / Jasmine (Chinese folk song). Kangding Love Song (Sichuan folk song). The Moon Represents My Heart (Teresa Teng). Lofty Mountains and Flowing Water (Chinese folk song). The Butterfly Lovers Over the Rainbow (Liu-Arlen-Harburg). Gloria’s Steps (Scott LaFaro). Ode to the Yellow River (from Yellow River Cantata) (Xian Xinghai). Colorful Clouds Chasing the Moon (Liu-Rubalcaba) / Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Dongfeng Liu, pno / Zoho Music ZM 202407
Cross-cultural jazz is scarcely new, particularly when it comes to Latin music; Jelly Roll Morton was using the habanera beat in his compositions New Orleans Joys and The Crave a hundred years ago, and the influences of Cuban and Mexican music go back to the 1940s, but combining Cuban and Chinese influences is clearly something different.
That, however, is what we get on this new release from the superb piano duo of Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Dongfeng Liu, and what is particularly interesting here is that it is the Chinese element which dominates in terms of melodic and harmonic contours with the Latin influence being predominantly in the rhythm. Moreover, the rhythms that Rubalcaba lays down are not your typically straightforward rumba or mambo rhythms but quite complex, beat-fractioning patterns that sometimes defy instant analysis and often interfere with toe-tapping. In short, this music is so complex that it borders on the classical, which makes this music my cup of tea (gunpowder, to be exact).
In the second piece on this album, for instance (Kangding Love Song), Rubalcaba opens with a lick that sounds like Professor Longhair but at an even higher level of complexity—and, as David Amram recently revealed, Longhair (Henry Byrd) picked up his calypso-styled left hand from the Cuban laborers who regularly came to New Orleans for trading. There are, however, also touches of bebop and funk in the patterns that Rubalcaba plays, and it is to Liu’s credit that he can fall in with these patterns as easily as he does. To be honest, however, I have no idea who is playing which improvisation; there may indeed be many moments here where the Cuban is playing the rhythm while the Chinese pianist improvises over it. Or maybe vice-versa. Only their hairdresser knows for sure.
But knowing who is playing which chorus is not as important as simply listening to this music and taking it all in, because these two musicians are on such an excellent wavelength that their improvisations form an almost continuous musical train of thought. One of the few pieces in this set that breaks the pattern is The Moon Represents My Heart, a Chinese song but a pop hit originally recorded by Teresa Teng. This is a Western-style romantic ballad of fairly simple but catchy construction that could easily pass for a Western pop tune, and both soloists slow down their internal metronomes to lavish some absolutely exquisite playing on it. I’m half-hoping that this recording will establish this as a jazz standard here in America because it is such a beautiful tune with nice changes, but I’m not holding my breath.
Lofty Mountains and Flowing Water is also played as a ballad, but with its more Asian chord pattern—here unchanged by Cuban influence—it sounds more exotic though no less lovely. (And I’m the kind of person who normally HATES ballads!) But surprise! Rubalcaba completely changes the beat and ups the tempo a little less than halfway into this piece, thus it suddenly takes on a surprisingly funky feeling, which also works to its advantage. Yet oddly, their reshaped version of Over the Rainbow is a dud. Thank goodness it is followed by an excellent version of Scott LaFaro’s Gloria’s Steps to put things back on track—and this one has neither a Cuban nor a Chinese feel to it, although the rhythms are again asymmetrical.
Ode to the Yellow River actually comes from a Chinese classical piece, the Yellow River Cantata by Xian Xinghai, here changes around and partially Cuban-ized. It’s an interesting piece, yet somehow I didn’t feel that it synchro-meshed as well as many of the other pieces on this CD. Fortunately, Colorful Clouds Chasing the Moon bring us back to the vibe of the opening pieces, with Rubalcaba and Liu matching their ideas like two peas in a pod.
Thus this album is a bit of an uneven ride, mostly adventurous and fascinating with a couple of low-energy tracks. Nonetheless, it’s a good set to listen to in order to hear two master pianists seamlessly blending rather than juxtaposing their very diverse styles.
—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley
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