Jazz Blue Notes: Indigenous People Meld World Music, Jazz

BACK TO THE ROOTS: After recording several highly regarded albums under his own name, pianist Marc Cary decided to return to his roots. "The seeds of this project were planted way back in the early 1980s," he says. "I grew up in Washington, D.C. Every neighborhood had a band, and [flutist/percussionist] Yarbrough Charles Laws and I played in rival bands. We met up again several years ago and decided it was time to work together."
Their youthful competition put aside, Cary and Laws began exploring the music that originally inspired them. The result is the band Indigenous People, whose debut, "Captured Live In Brazil," will be released Tuesday (23) on the Jazzateria label. "These rhythms, these melodies, are all part of the cultural climate in Washington, D.C.," says Cary of the group's blend of African, Caribbean, and South American music with jazz. "It's a way for us to explore the music we've been exposed to in our lives and to identify with our own roots. We represent people from all of these different cultures."
Recorded live in São Paulo, Brazil, during October of last year, "Captured Live" finds the group (Cary, Laws, bassist Tarus Mateen, percussionist Daniel Moreno, and drummer Johan Rucker) performing a set of percussive, often meditative originals that challenge the parameters of conventional categorization. Equal parts early Weather Report and electric Herbie Hancock, Indigenous People's cross-cultural amalgam includes a healthy dose of both world music-influenced grooves and soothing melody. It is also heavy on improvisation, while referencing late-'70s and early-'80s pop music, as befits Cary's unique jazz vision.
"A lot of the rhythms we play actually come from go-go music," says Cary, who played in go-go bands as a youth. "For me, go-go is an art form, and it is totally indigenous to Washington, D.C."
The 32-year-old Cary, who went on to play with Betty Carter, Jackie McLean, and Dizzy Gillespie, notes that "world music is a fairly broad term, and it includes jazz. At the same time, improvisation has transcended into a lot of other forms of music. But it all comes out of the foundation of jazz, in terms of the music being spontaneous."
Cary started playing the drums while still in grade school and credits his family with nurturing his musical talent. "My great-grandmother was a concert pianist; she used to play along with the silent movies. She lived to be 101," he says, adding that "when I started playing around on the piano, she immediately recognized that I had a certain touch, a feel for it."
Cary recorded two acclaimed albums for Arabesque, including last year's "The Antidote," which featured Laws on percussion. The pianist is featured prominently on Abbey Lincoln's exquisite "Wholly Earth" (Verve, Feb. 16) and continues to tour with the vocalist.
Indigenous People will perform several shows in the Northeast to support "Captured Live," including a week at New York's Sweet Basil beginning March 30. Not content to rest on his laurels, Cary is already composing material for the group's next release. "This is not a one-off thing," he says. "This is a family. We live, eat, and sleep this music, together."
PARTNERS: Heads Up International and the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild have entered into a partnership to benefit the guild's Jazz Program, which teaches inner-city high school students about jazz through interaction with jazz musicians. Heads Up will release a series of live albums recorded at the guild's concert hall in Pittsburgh. The first, "Ivan Lins Live At MCG," will be in stores Tuesday (23); two subsequent discs will be released this year, with more to follow.
AND: Bell Atlantic will be the title sponsor for the annual New York Jazz Festival, produced by KnitMedia. Now in its 10th year, the festival will be renamed the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival and will be expanded to include venues in Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. These cities will host a weekend festival in the weeks leading up to the major New York-based event, to be held June 3-13. In addition, KnitMedia will produce an 11-week series of long-distance learning programs, called J zzschool, which will be delivered live to schools in eight East Coast cities via multiple ISDN lines.