The world of Puente

[Serial_Apologist]

Sat 15 April
Kevin Le Gendre marks the centenary of Tito Puente, who was born on 20 April 1923* in New York and pioneered the fusion of traditional Latin sounds with jazz. Featuring classic recordings, lesser-known cuts and a live set from Tito Puente's Golden Latin Jazz All Stars recorded in 1994.

*Tito passed away on June 1st 2000, just in case anybody was wondering!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kvlx

12midnight - Freeness
With Corey Mwamba, including a collaborative performance from American flautist Nicole Mitchell and British pianist Alexander Hawkins.

This is a repeat.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001fdw2

Sun 16 April
4pm - Jazz Record Requests

http://www.alynshipton.co.uk/blog

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kvl1

The following programme might just be of interest:

6.45pm - Sunday Feature
A Charlestonian Rhapsody - the Story of Edmund T Jenkins
Pianist Allyson Devenish profile African-American composer and musician Edmund Jenkins (1894-1926), who made his life in London and Paris in the early 20th century. In 1914 he travelled from South Carolina to London, studying at the Royal Academy of Music for seven years. Devenish travels to Charleston to hear about Jenkins's roots and meet some of the people who are trying to bring his music the recognition it deserves.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kvlf

[Alyn_Shipton]

Good to see Jenkins getting attention, rather late in the day. Jeffrey Green's biography came out from Greenwood Press in 1982 as we were starting work on the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, so it's not as if he hasn't had a degree of recognition. (Copies are now changing hands for silly money...) I was sorry to see in the recent Royal Academy of Music foyer exhibition devoted to Jenkins that there was no mention whatsoever of his jazz career. (Though his 20s jazz inflected recordings are actually pretty lame.) It'll be interesting to hear whether Allyson picks up on John Chilton's pioneering work in getting the Jenkins Orphanage's role in jazz properly recognised.

[Ian Thumwood]

i have never heard of Edmund Jenkins but the clips on Youtube are interesting. They sound well recorded for 1921 but the two tracks I have listened to reminded me about a book on jazz orchestration that was mentioned in a biography of Fletcher Henderson that books about jazz orchestration were being published in 1926 (One by Paul Whiteman, one by Arhur Lange.) From recollection, I think that the idea "jazz " orchestration in the early 1920s was much different from the second half of the decade so that musicians / arrangers would have percieved the likes of Whiteman's more "formal" attempts at dressing jazz up as what the future held. From recollection, I believe that some (white) musicians around that time thought that orchestrated and non-improvisational functions were the future of jazz as opposed to improvising. The Jenkin's tracks seem pretty polite and you could argue that he was of his era. I would have cut him some slack given that it was probably difficult to distinguish what good "jazz arrangement" should have sounded like in 1921. For me, I am glad this music exists as it sheds light on music being played in a jazz by-water - a bit like the PH music I posted on the other thread. You could probably live without it but it is great that this music exists to shed light on a different world unfamiliar to all but the specialist. Anyone, I have always had loads of respect for the early big band arrangers as they invented this music and had not real precedent to rely upon.

I enjoyed the Tito Puente programme. I find Latin jazz fascinating if for nothing else other than the way the percussions blends together at different beats and pitches. It is rather like some of Steve Reich's music where you keep listening to one instrument and it is continually changing whilst the rest of the musicians still lock in. I can never really understand what is happening and why it works. It is endlessly fascinating.