Shamek Farrah - "La Dee La La" (1980)

Originally posted by Bacoso at "Orgy in Rhythm", November 2006.
Kindly re-upped by Bacoso to complete the Shamek Farrah collection. Text by Rex Butters

Reed player Shamek Farrah ranks with the great unrecorded. Two releases on Strata East in the ‘70s, some for RA, a release in ‘95. The reissue of this 1978 recording reintroduces a roomful of rarely heard musicians, along with a young Malachi Thompson. Roger Howell’s congas and Lenny King’s percussion give the music a tropical feel, while Saeed Amik’s quick luscious piano harmonies blossom all over the music.

The disc opens with the title track. Preceding the '80s African jazz boom, “La Dee La La” features a lush, easygoing composition and arrangement, not unlike Abdullah Ibrahim’s gentle Cape Town swing. After a bracing acapella chorus intro, pianist Saeed Amir introduces the chords, Lenny King and Roger Howell hit the hand drums, and Ghanniya Green sings the theme. Guitarist Harry Jenson plays silky rhythm, while Farrah’s playful soprano sax composes festive variations. Playing a vocalesque plunger mute, trumpeter Abdullah Khalid makes a soulful statement, followed by Amir’s elegant variations.

Moving into a warmer hemisphere, “Waiting for Marvin” sees Amik’s effervescent piano dance over the joyously grooving rhythm section. Farrah serves ripe alto, twisting through the changes. Thompson romps his full-toned trumpet around the festive sounds, followed by Amik’s cool, refreshing inspirations. The orchestra returns to take it out. Some shuffling on “White Lady” brings Sonelius Smith to the piano chair. Sans percussionists, the band just swings with Farrah taking the first solo. Smith plays chords blocks, as opposed to Amik’s blending shimmer. Thompson soars again, casually taking chances. Smith solos with deliberation, poking out the right handed notes.

Jenson’s limber electric guitar slyly welcomes the listener to “And Along Came Ron Rahsaan.” With King and Howell back, Farrah blows soprano, making way for Marvin Neal’s meaty trombone solo. With Vivian Chandler singing wordlessly, Amik builds a final graceful musical lattice.
By Rex Butters@AllAboutJazz

TRACKLIST

01 La Dee La La Song
02 Waiting for Marvin
03 The White Lady
04 And Along Came Ron Rahsaan

PERSONNEL

Shamek Farrah - alto sax, soprano sax
Grant Reed - tenor sax
Abdullah Khalid - trumpet
Malachi Thompson - trumpet
Marvin Neal - trombone
Saeed Amik, Sonelius Smith - piano
Hasan Jenkins - electric bass
Kiyoto Fujiwara - acoustic bass
Ron Rahsaan, Ayon Falu - drums
Roger Howell - conga
Lenny King - bongos and percussion
Harry Jenson - guitar
Ghanniya Green, Vivian Chandler - vocalsRecorded in 1978

DOWNLOAD

Also available by Shamek Farrah at 'Never Enough Rhodes' :
"First Impressions" (1974)
"The World of the Children" (1976)

Shamek Farrah & Sonelius Smith - "The World Of The Children" (1976, Strata-East)

First posted at "Orgy In Rhythm" in September 2006. Text by Bacoso. Re-post by permission.

Another great session of spiritual soul jazz and one of the rarest albums on Strata-East from 1976. Shamek Farrah's soulful alto is matched with the free spiritual piano of Sonelius Smith, for a totally memorable session that virtually defines the essence of the Strata East sound. The music is free, but not too free; lyrical, but never indulgent; and always turning over with a fresh sense of imagination, and a strident groove that's very much in the classic Strata East mode.

The highlight of this lp is the latin romp of the 10 minute title tune "World Of The Children", a real banger of the first order. David Murray also cut a fantastic version of this with his big band on "South of the Border" which i will post some day.

This rip is from the original vinyl @320 but it did actually make a cd release in Japan on Bomba which is now deleted.

MUSICIANS

Bass - Kiyoto Fujiwara, Milton Suggs (track 3)
Drums - Freddie Wrenn
Percussion - Tony Waters
Piano - Sonelius Smith
Saxaphone - Shamek Farrah
Trumpet - Joseph Gardner

Recorded at Sound Ideas, April 1976

TRACKLIST 

01 'The World Of The Children' (9:58)
02 'Conversation Piece' (6:28)
03 'Milt: A Bass Solo' (2:57)
04 'People Puttin People Through Changes' (7:17)
05 'Juluis' (5:22)

DOWNLOAD

Also available by Shamek Farrah at 'Never Enough Rhodes' :
"First Impressions" (1974)
"La Dee La La (1980)

Shamek Farrah - "First impressions" (Strata-East, 1974)

First posted at "Orgy In Rhythm" by Bacoso in September 2006.

Re-post by permission.

Simon says :

Check the "First Impressions" above. When I was about fourteen years old, a few years after this record would have come out, a late night radio DJ used to play this song every night - I guess he was kind of obsessed with it. Soon, I was too - it was like an alien message being transmitted into my cheap AM radio headphones. The bass - percussion - drums unit holds down a dark, finger-snap funk , while saxaphonist Shamek Farrah and trumpeter Norman Person emit this eerie, wailing series of rolling arpeggios, almost falling into quarter tone gaps.

At fourteen, I thought of snake charmers and other Hollywood-style images of the middle east, there was something exotic here. But it's really pianist Sonelius Smith who takes us on the journey in "First Impressions". In his slightly distant, reverbed space, he rhythmically and melodically skirts around the other musicians, tone clusters rolling up and down the piano to settle in clouds of arpeggiated colour - it's almost as if he drifts off, only to get brought back by the insistent pull of Milton Suggs' bass and Kenny Harper / Calvert Satter-White's hypnotic click percussion. It's still my favourite piano performance, and an extraordinary piece of music ....

Kevin Moist says :

As Strata-East Records got rolling, one of the admirable things it was able to do was offer a platform to some more obscure artists who weren’t being heard elsewise, folks like Billy Parker’s Fourth World (including DeeDee, Ronald, and Cecil Bridgewater); the Washington, DC ensemble Juju (who evolved from an Art Ensemble knock-off into the great jazz-funk band Oneness of Juju by the mid-70s); and alto sax player Shamek Farrah. I don’t really know too much about Shamek except that he made two great albums of spiritual jazz for Strata-East in 1974 and ’77 (the second and half of the first in collaboration with pianist Sonelius Smith).

Both are way cool, but my favorite is probably this one, recorded with 2 slightly different ensembles but consistent in style: largely dark, minor-mode pieces w/a drone implied or explicit and executed w/plenty of edge. The playing is chunky, heavy, and group-minded; Farrah emits a glorious wail on alto sax that takes the lead on most cuts but still leaves plenty of elbow room for everybody else. The most “out” cut is the opener, 'Meterologically Tuned' (titled perhaps for the bracingly out-of-tune trumpet & sax on the intro & outro unison melodies), swirling horns and percussive piano and a rhythm that moves in and out of focus throughout; while the album closer, 'First Impressions', hovers like fog above a loping bassline digging a moody jazz-funk furrow so deep it’s hard to see up over the edge (no surprise it was sampled by Tribe Called Quest some years back).

TRACKLIST

01 "Meterologicly Tuned" (11:20) - Shamek Farrah
02 "Watch What Happens Now" (5:41) - Fredger Dupree
03 "Umoja Suite" (7:23) - Norman Person
04 "First impressions" (10:28) - Shamek Farrah

MUSICIANS tracks 1-2

Alto Sax - Shamek Farrah
Bass - Milton Suggs
Trumpet - Norman Person
Piano - Kasa Mu-Barak Allah
Drums - Clay Herndon

MUSICIANS tracks 3-4

Alto Sax - Shamek Farrah
Bass - Milton Suggs
Conga - Calvert "Bo" Satter-White
Drums - Ron Warwell
Percussion - Kenny Harper
Piano - Sonelius Smith
Trumpet - Norman Person

PRODUCTION 

Recording Engineers - George Klabin, Geoff Daking
Recorded and mixed at Sound Ideas Studio, NYC
Graphics : Jerry Harris
Liner photo - Richard Hinson
All Tunes : Supreme Reality Pub. Co.
Produced by Shamek Farrah / Janfar Productions
1974 Strata-East Records
Special thanks to my father and mother, brother Norman Person, Strata-East Records Inc. and all the beautiful people whose names appear on this album.

Poem from the back cover :

Time unbalanced.

The state of those who are going out,
but forgot how it was to come in.

You see that what is
Outweighs what was.

And you try to balance it out with
Dreams of what could be.

Only what could be
is not what is.

And what's left is
What was.

Time unbalanced,
A state that comes with time.

Niheem Glover

Also available by Shamek Farrah at 'Never Enough Rhodes' :
"The World of the Children" (1976)
"La Dee La La" (1980)

FIRST IMPRESSIONS WAV - MP3