Sky Dancers - Henri Texier (2016)
February through the years: on the Feb 2016 playlist, An era when I wasn’t listening to much new music, but still managed to find Damien Jurado, GoGo Penguin, and Esperanza Spalding
Paris-born Texier was a pioneer in bringing free jazz to Europe. Along the way integrated a lot of jazz sounds, as well as everything else he was exposed to. He has spent his career engaged with indigenous cultures of North Africa and North America, paying tribute to the themes of colonization and displacement that unite so many strands of music and culture.
This record was inspired by the history of the Mohawk “skywalkers” who have spent generations building high rise steelworks.
The music is a thoroughly modern mix of 21st century jazz harmonics and the distinctive themes he finds in Native American music. It’s all filtered through his own sensibilities, so don’t expect some sort of archival recording, but he’s no dilletente: Texier has built a musical vocabulary that lets him express his French and non-French musical ideas with clarity.
His sextet includes his son, Sebastian Texier, on clarinet. There are a number of his records that might show up in this space as well.
