THE SOULJAZZ ORCHESTRA as part of GLOBAL GROOVES at Yonge-Dundas Square, Friday (August 27), 8 pm. Free. ydsquare.ca.
For many, the phrase “acoustic funk” calls to mind John Mayer making sex faces while playing rhythm guitar. The Souljazz Orchestra challenged that image this year with the release of Rising Sun, wherein the Afrobeat-influenced band eschews electricity in favour of a rawer aesthetic.
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“We didn’t want to keep putting out the same kind of record over and over again,” says bandleader/keyboardist Pierre Chrétien from Ottawa, where Souljazz is based. “So we looked at different orchestral sounds for colour, and ended up playing about 30 different instruments on the album.”
The resulting music is richer than the CEO of Ikea. Take a song like the kinetic Agbara, five minutes of straight-up celebration incorporating chants, kalimba plinks and a horn motif that would make Fela Kuti proud.
Rising Sun came out on the storied Strut label, whose international reach (it has offices in London, Berlin and Brooklyn) opened all manner of doors for Souljazz, not the least of which was the opportunity to play for a crowd of about 180,000 at Glastonbury in June.
“It was surreal,” says Chrétien. “To be on the same bill as U2 and Snoop Dogg, that was really cool.”
Also cool – the band’s upcoming projects on Strut, including one with Senegalese musicians, collaborative work with Studio One veteran and reggae cult hero Horace Andy and a side project with Canadian R&B singer Slim Moore that Chrétien expects will be, once again, “different from anything we’ve done before.”
Bottom line: prepare for Souljazz to continue rising on the global funk scene, a prospect that excites the band, though not enough to abandon their roots in the nation’s capital and set up shop elsewhere.
“Ottawa’s a good spot,” Chrétien says. “It’s halfway between Toronto and Montreal and not far from New York. We’ve come to like it here.”
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