Rabble Without A Cause
Wednesday April 16th, 2014 with Bernard Stepien
Ottawa Jazz Festival Sequel: Amsterdam based Boi Akih

Jazz is well known to be high energy music even at a slow tempo, thanks to the essential concept of swing. Creativity in Jazz has no limits. Besides stylist that find new ways to master the iconic II-V-I harmonic progression, others like the Boi Akih group that played last year’s Ottawa International Jazz Festival and countless others in the world, instead search in distant cultures. Boi Akih revolves around two concepts: an unusual instrumental configuration (voice-acoustic guitar-trombone-drums) and musical sources in European, Indian and Indonesian traditional music with their extremely relaxing and meditative styles. All of it of course including the legendary concept of improvisation that makes Jazz a very distinctive music. Indian and Indonesia cultures provide the meditative atmosphere, known as chill in the West while Jazz improvisation blows all that chill apart in a subtle, slow motion way. Dutch trombonist Wolter Wierbos floats in the middle, driving the music in all of those conflicting directions. Vocalist Monica Akihary stretches the mystery by using even her father’s Huraku language. All in all, Boi Akih’s music forces the listener to reconsider continuously his perception. Once, one may find himself in a familiar musical environment until some additional element throws that comfort seamlessly totally off. Missed last week’s RWAC show featuring Ottawa Jazz Composers for unsuspecting gems? Get it from the CKCU archives by copying this link to your browser: http://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/95/16524.html