Jazz breaking news: Henderson, Berlin and Chambers get Shaka Zulu shaking
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Two floors below street level in London’s Camden Market lurks a bewildering venue that’s as bizarrely exotic as it is undeniably compelling to gaze at its ostentatiously ornate walls, ceilings and huge African statues.
Shaka Zulu is now some three years old and increasingly popular for its gourmet food and ‘game platters’ served up onto furniture and fittings all imported from South Africa at the cost of several million pounds. Yet as head-spinningly surreal as this is, the optical overload was given another disorientating spin thanks to the presence of three jazz fusion warriors – Scott Henderson, Jeff Berlin and Dennis Chambers – who pitched up somewhat unexpectedly in the wooden temple-style surroundings and attempted to blow the roof off, or at least be heard at street level.
Guitar guru Henderson has thankfully been a more frequent visitor to the UK of late with both his own blues-edged trio and with his resurgent Tribal Tech, and it was he who stepped up for a pre-gig Q&A with the venue’s promoter Stevie Evans. It was a nice touch and allowed Henderson, famed for his dry-humoured wisecracks, to tell it like it is on the road, unpick some of the musical interactions with his bandmates while also underscore the fact that music industry is now on its knees – the old model sure to be superseded by something new. Not the cheeriest of thoughts to preclude such an unfettered and enjoyable two sets from these three virtuosi but a clue to their mentality of still wanting to dance on the deck of a now sinking ship but do so with all the life affirming urgency of men 20 or 30 years their junior. And it was this simple straight down the line approach to a tasty set of what Henderson also described as “their standards,” music that they’d been raised on, all delivered with rocket-fuelled vigour.
The opening blues set a steady pace, but it was their take on Weather Report’s ‘Elegant People’ that the trio’s exocet missile of a drummer was given his first mind melting solo spot. Chambers has been absent from jazz club gigs for some time, perhaps understandably preferring to play well-paid stadium ones instead, but boy have we missed him. He may not be the hot new name as he once was in the 1980s, but his ability to warp bar lines into quivering pools of jelly on the floor (making the term ‘metric modulation’ seem virtually redundant) saw him dispense with the ‘one’ leaving Henderson and Berlin sweating to find it as they maintained a simple ostinato riff over his solo.
This joyfully tense moment sparked new life in the threesome, Berlin’s serpentine bass lyricisim coming to the fore on Shorter’s ‘Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum’ before the collective riot on Weather Report’s riff heavy world-funk anthem ‘Black Market’, which came complete with drummer and guitarist dueling à la Shorter and Erskine on WR’s 8.30 live album. Rock and funk dalliances appeared too via The Beatles’ ‘Come Together’ and Sly Stone’s ‘If You Want Me To Stay’ but the last two words were given to an astonishing, turbo-charged take on Joe Zawinul’s ‘D Flat Waltz’ and Jaco Pastorius’ R&B fave rave ‘The Chicken’. This rumble in the basement jungle may have appeared like some acid-fried African mirage, but as loud-jazz waltzes go it really doesn’t get any better than this.
– Mike Flynn (story and photo)