Vocalist VENISSA SANTI Pays Homage to Billie Holiday with Eclectic Interpretations on Big Stuff: Afro-Cuban Holiday
Available September 10 on Sunnyside Records
"Her voice has a tone that is very original and very special ...
you hear that voice and you won't forget it." - Danilo Pérez
"I think we are going to be hearing a lot
from this young lady." - Ruben Blades
Just what is so special about the vocalastics of Venissa Santi - just what is so singularly unique - is so eminently clear on Big Stuff: Afro-Cuban Holiday, the brilliantly innovative follow-up to her 2009 Sunnyside Records debut, Bienvenida.
If at first blush this record appears to be a mere tribute to the great
Billie Holiday, it is clear that first impressions can be somewhat
deceptive. True, this is Santi's homage to the legendary singer. However
the music on this record comes from the very depth of her soul that
this is so much more than a tribute: it is more like an anguished cry,
rich in the metaphor of Afro-Cuban-Blues, cry of sisterhood that is
lifted up in elevation to the celebrated ghost of Ms. Holiday.
Just
as she was on her first album, Santi has once again channeled her ideas
through percussion-colourist and long-time band mate François Zayas,
who is responsible for the majestic arrangements of 12 songs with which
Santi, in turn, re-imagines the heartfelt repertoire of Billie Holiday
in an idiom that melds the heartbeat of bata and offbeat of clave with
African-American deep song. Also joining the vocalist on this musical
odyssey are trumpet and flugelhorn players Tim Thompson and Chris Aschman, the late guitarist Jef Lee Johnson, pianist John Stenger and bassist Jason Fraticelli. Special appearances are also made by bassists Paul Klinefelter and Madison Rast, clarinetist Jon Thompson and percussionist Cuco Castellanos.
The origins of this music are vividly recalled by Santi, who remembers how Danilo Pérez
invited her to share the stage in Philadelphia's Kimmel Center with
such luminaries as Kurt Elling, Sheila Jordan, Lizz Wright and Claudia
Acuña among others on a gig that was designed to present a series of
homages to Billie Holiday in May of 2010. For Santi to be included in a
playbill that comprised of such stellar artists was both a privilege as
well as a chance to do something truly special. She and Zayas, went to
work on selecting an appropriate Billie Holiday repertoire; then
transferring it to the landscape of danzón, guaguancó and bolero. All
this happened about a year from May 2010.
Next
came learning the challenging arrangements that Zayas came up with,
swirling from out of the fiery cauldron of Afro-Cuban music. This took
the musicians close to six months to master; a memorable effort that,
together with the fact that this homage was written in Afro-Cuban
idioms, made the project so distinctive. The memory of a show that
played in Billie Holiday's birthplace, and was later broadcast on WRTI
radio on Mother's Day a couple of weeks later, lingered long and hard
with Santi and Zayas. They concluded this was music worthy of a longer
life vis-a-vis a record that would preserve both the beauty and
authenticity of this Afro-Cuban odyssey into the heart and soul of
Billie Holiday.
Santi
acknowledges that following the 2010 performance, it was not easy
getting into character for the next stage of the project - the recording
of Big Stuff: Afro Cuban Holiday. "Life
happened and we had great odds keeping our crew from finishing the
record," says the vocalist, "and in the journey of putting these songs
together, while I was delving into the lyrics and repertoire that I had
started checking out when I was fourteen years old, I realized I had
grown up into the songs," explains Santi. "The journey has been long and
at times dark. By daring to interpret the tunes as uninhibited as
possible it enabled me to come face-to-face with something bordering on
danger and I experienced great gratitude. What emerged was an-almost
four-year labor of love that overflowed onto this record," she
concludes.
Nothing
can really prepare the listener for the transcendental melancholy of
Billie Holiday's music like "On the Sunny Side of the Street," which is
deliberately set as the gateway to the album, in a prelude to dimming
the lights and before entering the world of Lady Day, who virtually
changed the way a song ought to be interpreted. "I started to sit with
the tune daily, doing just what the lyrics require, taking the sunny
side with my son on cold morning walks to school to stay warm," says
Santi. "It was an extreme honor to record with Jef Lee Johnson as well.
I miss him dearly."
Santi's
musical intellect that combined with the erudite delicacy of
manipulating phrasing and tempo is brilliantly on display in the
breathtaking complexity of "Big Stuff," a song that Santi turns into a
musical equivalent of a darkish expressionist film. The footage of a
damaged life unravels in the elemental sadness of "What's New" as Santi
dialogues with the eminently soft, almost vocal work of John Stenger's
piano and so begins the descent into the nourish life of Billie
Holiday. The stark portrait of "My Man" appears on a ghostly canvas
daubed as if by the magic of a brush dipped in the "makuta" rhythm of
drums and bass. The shock and awe of "Stormy Weather" is propelled by
the rhythmic sweep of Central-African "palo" highlighted by a burbling
ostinato that churns the melody and harmony into a veritable twister's
vortex before Santi enters the narrative, breaking the verses of the
song with a pirouetting "coro."
"You're
My Thrill" is perhaps the most sensuous song on the album and
"Travelin' Light" is a cross-hatching collision between the Cuban
"guajira" and the second line rhythm so characteristic of New Orleans.
"You get a sense of the interpreter (of the song) travelling light
because I am only accompanied by the bass at one time; then by the
piano; later the trumpet," Santi explains. The stately, shimmering
rhythm of the Cuban "danzón" bathes "Involved Again," with Jon
Thompson's sweet clarinet and the singer who is yearning for a new love
in her life, yet realizes that she is a fool for love. This is a chart
that Billie Holiday wanted dearly to record, but died before she could
do so. Dick LaPalm, Nat "King" Cole's promoter suggested that Santi
record this song. "It was extremely special to be mailed the lead sheet
personally by the composer, Jack Reardon," Santi reveals somewhat in awe
of being considered as an interpreter of a song that Ms. Holiday
herself yearned to do.
"That
Old Devil Called Love" sashays with the voluptuous ecstasy of
"son-Abakuá" and is resplendent in the rich imagery of Afro-Cuban music.
"There are codes here which only those who listen carefully will hear,"
Santi says, "including a quote from a famous Cuban song called "El
Diablo Tun, Tun," she reveals, almost as a gentle challenge to anyone
ready for it. "I Cover the Waterfront /Monk's Dream" is another song
worked into the cracked rhythm of a Monk-like idiom and "You'd Better Go
Now" is set to a deliciously sexy "yambú" rhythm that is beguiling
despite its sad and lonesome lyric.
Perhaps
the darkest part of the album is "Strange Fruit" a song that Billie
Holiday's infused with the searing imagery of an ugly part of America's
tainted history. Performed as a swaying "bolero" this chart infuses the
horror of lynching in the deep south of the United States with a prayer
to the Yoruba deity, "Oya." "She is the keeper of the cemetery gates and
the fierce winds," Ms. Santi warns about a torch song that she sings
with breathtaking power. "Strange Fruit is a political and graphic song.
I am drawn to repertoire like that. "Strange Fruit," "My Man," "Good
Bye Pork Pie Hat" - I have sung these for years," says Santi. "In this
performance on the record I very much wanted to sing in a way where
there is room for the audience to sing along to it again and I recall
performing it in a way where I literally don't breathe." In many
respects "Strange Fruit" is the crowning glory of Big Stuff. It is a
song that Ms. Holiday never took lightly and neither does Santi.
As for the absence of one of Holiday's more popular songs, Santi says, "I
haven't gotten to 'God Bless the Child' because I have so many thematic
ideas regarding that tune, which leads me to believe that I might do a
'God Bless the Child' suite."
A
musician of rare and unbridled genius, Venissa Santi was born to
parents who filled her life equally with the music of Celia Cruz,
Maurice Ravel and Michael Jackson, and numerous other musicians. Her
musical heritage goes further back: to a grandfather, Jacobo Ros
Capablanca, a Cuban composer. She honored his memory by playing one of
his songs on Bienvenida. Santi was born in Ithaca, New York, but moved
to Philadelphia after she graduated high school. There, through the
study of her grandfather`s compositions, she re-connected with her Cuban
roots and majored in Jazz Vocal Performance at the University of the
Arts. She was a vocal instructor at the Asociación de Músicos Latino
Americanos. In 2008, Ms. Santi won the Pew Fellowship for Folk and
Traditional Arts. In 2009 she was signed to Sunnyside Records. She went
to Cuba specifically to study Afro-Cuban song, dance and percussion as
well as to prepare for this project.
Reflecting
on the past three years, Santi reflects, "It's sort of intense to think
how close I've been to this repertoire and Billie's story. It's been an
extremely existential experience."
Upcoming Venissa Santi Tour Dates:
August 22 / The Blue Whale / Los Angeles, CA
August 25 / La Pena / Berkeley, CA
September 14 / Chris' Jazz Cafe (official album release party) / Philadelphia, PA
September 19 / Jazz Bridge / Philadelphia, PA
September 27 / Barnes Museum / Philadelphia, PA
Venissa Santi· Big Stuff-Afro-Cuban Holiday
Sunnyside Records · Release Date: September 10
For more information on Venissa Santi, please visit: venissasanti.com
For more info on Sunnyside Records, please visit: sunnysiderecords.com
For media information, please contact:
DL Media · 610-667-0501
Don Lucoff · don@dlmediamusic.com
Amy Miller · amy@dlmediamusic.com
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