Sean Trane
Of all the John Mayer works that he played and recorded, it’s amazing that the present Dhammapada album never got a proper release until a few years after his death, thanks to his son’s efforts. Indeed, the Indian-born composer and violinist had emigrated to join the London jazz scene and also frequented the classical auditoriums by the early 60’s. In the mid to late 60’s, he had formed with Jamaican-born jazz saxman Joe Harriott the aptly-named Harriott-Mayer Double Quintet, which released three albums of the then nascent Indo-Jazz Fusion style. Further on, he worked in classical circles, which is plainly discernable on the present album, recorded in 76 with some of the usual-suspects of the London Jazz Scene, like wind player Chris Taylor, Henry Lowther, Tony Coe or ex-Arthur Brown associate and High Tide member percussionist (tabla drums, mainly) Drachen Theaker. For the more exotic soundscapes, tambura-sitar players Nil Coton and Clem Alford or player of koto & cheng (Far Eastern Asia instruments) John Leach provide a unique touch.
The album is filled with an outstanding fusion of Indian or Far-Eastern-Asian musics and jazz and even some classical passages. Interspaced by three different tambura-dominated Sannyasin piece, the main themes veer from enthralling jazzy passages where the sitar provides happily a bed of string sounds (this is particularly successful under Tony Coe’s sax solo, then Chris Taylor’s flute intervention in Mana-Samana), to some downright classically-inspired interludes (see the following paragraph).
Elsewhere Japanese instruments provide a different exotic feel over the same tambura in Yamabushi, before the tabla drums and Coe’s clarinet take the composition south of the Himalaya. Bikkhu opens on flutes and a very classical first part, somewhat reminiscent of what Bartok and Mussorgsky could pull if they’d worked together, but the Indian side of Mayer’s hasn’t given up and returns sporadically. Tri-Dandin opens like a long spiritual improvisation on sitar and tambura, before the wind instruments speed up the pace halfway through and segues almost immediately in the superb but short finale of Chakka.
Once again, the excellent British label of Vocalion (its jazz section anyway) has released an essential posthumous John Mayer release, thanks to his son’s dedication and patience. The present album should’ve definitely been a refrrnc in the genre, andd one can only wonder how the Indo-Jazz Fusion movment might have evolved had the album found a way to the store racks and musicians’ ears.