Arnaud Dolmen’s lively French Caribbean rhythms brought great cheer to his Ladbroke Hall audience on a dreary and drizzly Friday evening.
The Guadeloupean drummer’s Adjusting Quartet (with pianist Leonardo Montana, acoustic bassist Samuel F’Hima and tenor saxophonist Francesco Geminiani) performed compositions taken from his ‘Adjusting (2022)’ and ‘Tonbe Leve’ (2017) albums.
Although definitely influenced by modern straightahead jazz, the sound of the quartet is strongly informed by the Gwo Ka rhythms and accompanying dances of Guadeloupe’s African slave descendants, comprising: Toumblak (love and fertility); Kaladja (mourning); Woule (waltz danced with a scarf); Graj (work dance with movements suggesting cassava production); Padjanbel (work dance with movements similar to plantation slaves); Mende (carnival dance suggesting collective escape) and Lewoz (martial dance calling to memory plantation rebellion).
Arnaud Dolmen took up Gwo Ka studies from the age of five with legendary Guadeloupean musician Georges Troupé before proceeding to the Dante Agostini drum school in Toulouse for further drum and percussion instruction.
He has since gone on to record and collaborate prolifically with many groups and leaders including So, Franck Nicholas and Dédé Saint-Prix.
He has also performed around the world alongside Jacques Schwarz-Bart, Bojan Z, Olivier Ker Ourio, Alfredo Rodriguez, Mario Canonge, Naïssam Jalal, Laurent de Wilde, David Linx, Samy Thiébault and Jonathan Jurion, to mention a few. He has won several coveted jazz prizes. What’s more, the 39-year-old has garnered a meaty role in the Netflix series, ‘The Eddy’.
From the off, Dolmen gave his Ladbroke Hall audience a grand Gwo Ka master class with the highly entertaining ‘Graj ou Toumblak’, revealing Samuel F’hima’s deep and dependable pulse. The bass and drums tandem set up a solid launch pad for Montana and Geminiani to take improvisatory flight.
Montana nimbly navigated the melodic and harmonic complexities of ‘SQN’ (from the Adjusting album which featured accordionist Vincent Peirani), composed by Dolmen during the coronavirus pandemic. It was also an opportunity for a blazing display of bravura from the Brazilian-born, Paris-based pianist.
The Adjusting Quartet’s contemplative and heavily syncopated ‘Cavernet’ (a portmanteau of ‘cave’ and ‘internet’ inspired by Dolmen’s study of Plato’s allegory of the cave), was one of the evening’s more spellbinding pieces.
It certainly drew attention to the evident sympatico between Montana and Dolmen as they traded exquisitely wrought extemporised musical phrases with each other.
The ultra-funky, ‘The Gap’, upped the groove factor several notches, as Geminiani’s tenor rode on top of the off-beats and accents of Dolmen’s tasteful drumming. The rendition also encompassed the Ka drum situated to the left of his kit, which Dolmen played with his heel.
‘Les Oubliees’, (The Forgotten Ones) was Dolmen’s ode to the musical ancestors.
This is a delightful beguine piece, reminiscent of the songs performed by Guadeloupean jazz piano stalwart, Alain Jean-Marie.
Kudos to Zhenya Strigalev for curating the excellent Friday Jazz series at Ladbroke Hall, a former car showroom transformed into what is arguably one of West London’s more polished performance spaces. Notable too is Chef Pollini and his staff, who offer exceptional dishes and service at the Sunbeam Theatre.
Photo credit John Stevenson
SET LIST
Graj ou Toumblak
SQN
Ka Sa Té Ké Bay
Expérience One
Cavernet
Ti Moun Gaya
The Gap
Les oubliées
Future concerts at Ladbroke Hall include Chilean pianist Jorge Vera on 28 February, Zhenya Strigalev on 14 March and NY pianist Micah Thomas on 11 April
