If the rules of good saying have difficulty supporting the imprecision of the word “thing”, philosophical discourse (since Freud and Heidegger, at least) is more tolerant with regard to a term which, in German and in English, allows us to designate both the primary object in its threatening imprecision and, in the plural, the multitude of small objects that attach us to the world. In jazz, we find “The Foolish Things”, the title of a standard celebrated by Lester Young which evokes all the “little things” of love and, as an aesthetic watchword, the “new thing” , music from the early 60s, in other words free jazz.
John McLaughlin's latest disc (Verve/Polygram) – like his recent group – is called “The Heart of Things”, and there is no doubt that it constitutes the essential material of the tour that the guitarist English undertakes these days. To say that there is something new here would be very excessive, even if the constitution of the combo suggests certain openings, with the arrival of saxophonist Gary Thomas, for example, a musician who has been compared to Steve Coleman because he He too seemed interested in the urban sirens of rap and the hip-hop movement. Also note the presence of bassist Matt Garrison, who is the son of John Coltrane's favorite double bassist.
« Guitar hero »
Overall, the current music of the former Miles Davis guitarist refers to the canons of the most traditional “jazz-rock”. She is always superbly virtuoso, she exudes jazz energy as if it were raining, she projects her precision and dynamic message with determination. His style called “New York fusion” is aimed at all those who do not despair that the message of the last Miles Davis has an extension.
When it comes to “guitar heroes”, jazz knows little other than Charlie Christian, who introduced and revolutionized the electric guitar in the 1940s before dying prematurely. McLaughlin has boundless admiration for him, as he does for Django Reinhardt, in fact. The personal contribution of the founder of “Mahavishnu Orchestra” was to reintroduce into jazz what had been exported into popular music, in order to set the record straight and the accounts in order.
Throughout his career, nothing that made the six-string instrument famous has been foreign to him, from Paco de Lucia to Jeff Beck via Jimi Hendrix. Grizzled and relaxed, he calmly continues his path in today's jazz, that is to say without any particular hopes, but without unbearable concessions either. The heart of things is perhaps a beat, a pulsation, a sort of twist in which some people recognize themselves.
John McLaughlin, “The Heart of things”, with Debora Seffer and Thierry Maillard in the first part, Thursday March 26, 1998, at 9 p.m., at Vigean, Eysines (05.56.00.21.30).
