Some Indo-Progressive jazz last night. The three eponymous Codona albums (1978, 1980, 1982)
At this point I can either pay acute attention or else read to these works forever on a summer night. It did take more than awhile for a few of them to fade to background... and they are still worth the option of paying full attention.
The three albums were reissued as a trilogy by ECM in 2009. It's up on Spotify at
https://open.spotify.com/album/12Kk9Hps7gVYKudvAL3qYy
Codona performers were:
Collin Walcott, 1945-1984 (percussion, sitar, tabla)
Don Cherry, 1936-1995 (trumpet, organ, melodica)
Nana Vasoncelos, 1944-2016 (berimbau and other percussion, vocals)
The name Codona used for their collaborations was formed from the first two letters of the performer's last names.
Colin Walcott was the primary influencer of the group with respect to Eastern music, having become educated in the classical Hindustani style, studying sitar with Ravi Shankar and tabla with Alla Rakha. He joined the band Oregon later on (along with some other former members of the Paul Winter Consort). Tragically at age 39 he was killed in a car crash in East Germany, while on tour with that group.
Don Cherry and Nana Vasoncelos both had extensive careers and discographies as solo artists and contributors to live jazz performances and studio albums. Cherry worked with John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman among many others, creating works for labels including Blue Note, Atlantic, ECM etc.
Nana Vasoncelos was a versatile Brazilian jazz and world music percussionist who won eight Grammy awards. He played an astounding number of instruments including berimbau, palmas, xequere, Turkish drum, gourd, repique, tabla, caxixi, talking drum, cuica, shaker, pandeiro, zabumba, udu, cabasa, prato, tambor, congas, water drum, güiro, ganza, surdo, shells, African bells, agogo bells, clay pot, Tibetan gong... as well as what the rest of us amateurs might figure belongs in a standard drum kit.
Me, I cop to being easily impressed by percussionists: in the right mood and with enough time on hand, I could watch the average hip hop drummer rap a stick on his other stick for half an hour at a time. I have been known to drive companions half-crazy by mimicking what I see -- on a countertop with a couple wok-sized chopsticks. I suppose doing this in the early morning while waiting for coffee to happen could be part of the problem.
Some of that background stuff on the Codona players I knew about from having hung out with some jazz players and aficionados in the West Village back in the day, a few of whom were indo-prog fans, but the details I most certainly had to look up in the likes of allmusic.com and Wikipedia.
