Co-Motion, one of this year’s noteworthy jazz releases, is a collaboration between Belgian drummer Kobe Gregoir and Dutch/Congolese spoken word artist, Danielle Zawadi.
Kobe’s considerable compositional nous harks back to the halcyon hard bop days of the 1960s.
Sturdily constructed tunes such as ‘Mona Lisa’, ‘Familiar Faces’ and ‘XOXO’ will readily prick up the ears of discerning jazz fans.
They mirror the guile and complexity of albums such as Joe Henderson’s Page One and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers at The Café Bohemia (Vols 1 and 2).
‘Recipe for the Unknown’ features the sinewy unison horn lines of trumpeter Carlo Nardozza and tenor saxophonist Claudio Jr de Rosa. The pair thread shade and sheen into the telling tapestry of the composition. Ignacio Santoro holds everything together with firm bass lines and pianist Vivienne Chu Liao accompanies the musicians with a dexterous touch.
Vivienne’s nimble-fingered approach on the somewhat dissonant ‘Familiar Faces’ is also cogent and compelling and you can hear traces of Elmo Hope and Herbie Nichols in her solos.
All of that said, the gem hiding in plain sight on the recording is 25-year-old Dutch/Congolese spoken word artist Danielle Zawadi.
Snatches of Danielle’s arresting declamations (she’s from the artistic lineage of Gang Starr, the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron) can be discerned on ‘Mona Lisa’, but are more fully realised on ‘Laud’ and ‘Leefplicht’.
Danielle’s work revolves around her bi-cultural identity, living as a Black woman in the Netherlands with all of the challenges that this brings for a person of colour in Europe.
Born in 1995, Gregoir completed his musical education four years ago at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague. Following several Asian and European tours he was commissioned to take part in a large project called ‘Wij Den Haag’ (We The Hague), which provided the main catalyst for Co-Motion and his intriguing collaboration with Zawadi.
This is indeed quite a unique recording, bringing together young instrumentalists influenced by American jazz from the turbulent 1960s with a powerful spoken-word artist representing Africa and Europe all at once.
It makes for pretty compelling listening.
