Storyteller, composer, saxophonist, and visual artist
Matana Roberts is a dozen years into her visionary
Coin Coin project that began in 2011. A canny, provocative, utterly revelatory history of African Americans through history and lineage, it's titled after Marie Therese Coincoin, former slave, mother, businesswoman, and activist.
Coin Coin Chapter Five: In the Garden (the first of a projected 12 parts) follows previous entries, juxtaposing folk songs and avant jazz, free improv and post-bop, spoken word, noise, and post-rock. Her tentet offers a great variety of sounds, textures, and colors in a complex yet illustrative narrative. This album expressionistically chronicles the tragic aftermath of an ancestor's terminated pregnancy, echoing poignantly across time into the 21st century when the Supreme Court invalidated Roe v. Wade.
Roberts employs an excellent cast that includes clarinetist
Stuart Bogie, drummers/percussionists
Mike Pride and
Ryan Sawyer, saxophonists
Darius Jones and
Matt Lavelle (who also plays trumpet), violinist
Mazz Swift, pianist
Cory Smythe, and vocalist/actor
Gitanjali Jain (she also appeared on the first volume).
Kyp Malone (
TV on the Radio) played synths and produced.
"We Said" opens with white noise, shimmering, subdued percussion, and almost indecipherable female voices, creating a backdrop for brass, woodwind, and reed drones before a drum kit and tin whistle carry it out. "Unbeknownst" introduced by modal violins and synths playing a four-note pattern are joined by subdued reeds, winds, and processional snare before
Roberts' narrative emerges -- from the point of view of her late ancestor speaking from beyond the pale: "My name is your name/Our name is their name/ And we are named/We remember/ They forget ..."
Roberts answers with a mournful alto sax solo. The instrumental "Predestined Confessions" is also an excellent case in point, as is the poetic "How Prophetic," which employs droning horns to introduce a slamming rockist drum kit, post-bop reeds and winds, and driving funk. "Enthralled by Her Curious Blend" melds layered synth tones, chamber strings, and winds under
Roberts' absorbing, poignant reflection of a marriage and family beset by cultural and racial pressures, coming apart. "But I Never Heard a Sound So Long" is a choral round based on the plantation lullaby "All the Pretty Little Horses." It's followed by "The Promise," a gorgeous choral piece in multi-part harmony with original lyrics atop traditional liturgical hymns. "Shake My Bones" is wonderfully abstract free jazz with horns, winds, and strings all soloing together in a conversation centered on a rhythmic pattern before merging into a mutant post-bop avant blues. "A(way) Is Not an Option" weds chamber jazz, rockist drumming, and frenetic strings and reeds underscoring the protagonist's harrowing story from beyond the grave.
Coin Coin Chapter Five: In the Garden's collision of styles, genres, and individual and group voices are not only welcome, but essential to the process of
Roberts engendering dialogue, celebrating difference, and communicating emotions, psychologies, and cultures, all testifying to the import and cultural and artistic achievement of her evolving project. ~ Thom Jurek
