Personnel:
Louis 'Sabu' Martínez (bongos, cond), Ray Barretto, Ray Romero, Evelio Quintero (conga), Steve Berrios (timbales), Jack Hitchcock (vib, tb), Gene Allen (oboe, ts), Cecil Payne (bs), Oscar Pettiford (b)
Reference: BMCD 1631
Bar code: 8427328016315
Newly remastered. Better sound than ever before!
SAFARI with SABU, is one of the most celebrated albums recorded by Louis Sabu Martínez, one of the greatest conga and bongo drummers of the modern jazz era. There is a persuasive quality about the music recorded herein that creates an unusual rapport between it and the listener.
The album is a sparkling of three cultures: the African, as represented by the percussive instrumentation, the Latin-American via the female voices, and American jazz through the reeds and horns. In old jungles strange ache-hungry birds watch from trees that wilt and hang. Small loin-clothed men step brittlely through overgrown verdure. Natural boleros sound in the teeth of giant crocodiles crunching the bones of careless waterfowl, while in the grass banks, the lice violate in aimless joy the matted fur of some dead, cold, warm-blooded species.
SABU... has heard all this and much more. The rhythmic cadences of natures boiler room are here, the aural history of the sex life of a cosmic corn popper, the wail and chime and gong sound of the eternal SORCERY.
