Trombonist
William Cepeda has a firm grip on his Puerto Rican heritage and African roots; therefore, his Afrorican Jazz ensemble springs from those traditions. But this is not a Latin jazz or an Afro-Cuban band. Instead, there's a more progressive aesthetic happening, combining jazz, funk, fusion, and Puerto Rican bomba into a unified whole that is eminently danceable and musically electrifying.
Cepeda uses a core octet, the most prominent players being saxophonist
Donny McCaslin and drummer
Mark Walker. Guests include percussionist
Bobby Sanabria, trumpeter Tony Lujan, a four-piece vocal coro on half the disc, and cameos from trombonists
Luis Bonilla and
Slide Hampton, alto saxophonist
Paquito d'Rivera, and cuatro master
Yomo Toro.
Cepeda himself gets around nicely on the trombone, never fluffing or slurring notes, and expressing his ideas clearly. He has written a definitive anthem for his homies, "Pa' Mi Gente" (For My People), a vocal chant/rallying cry that is as definitive a tune as you will hear in this genre. The bomba rhythm is most prevalent throughout, but mixed with straight jazz on "Bomba Swing"; with
Toro and
Edgardo Miranda's cuatro on "Ponte Pa'l Monte"; and with bop, funk, and fusion alongside
d'Rivera on the straight-eight "Quasi Plena."
Cepeda, like counterpart
Steve Turre, also uses conch shells during the funkier "Toca Mi Caracol." A more involved chart provided by
Michele Rosewoman on "For Now and Forever" puts the band through a complex series of tricky changes from the stop-start intro to a 6/8 groove,
McCaslin's soprano sax all over the place. There's more 6/8 on the interesting piece "Waiting for Carmen," again with
d'Rivera, and a darker groove with
Cepeda and
Hampton trading solos on a Spanish-inflected "Sara," while a descarga on "Afrorican Jam" concludes the CD in a feverish fashion. The Afrorican Jazz ensemble provides a fresh outlook to this music, which is hard to place in any one single bag.
Cepeda's taste is broad-based and his execution of these tunes, the majority of which he has composed, is near flawless. He has played with
Dizzy Gillespie,
Eddie Palmieri, and
Tito Puente, so lessons well learned translate into this exciting brand of world music. Highly recommended. ~ Michael G. Nastos