Personnel: Antonio Arnedo Ben Monder Jairo Moreno Satoshi Takeishi Chris Dahlgren Bruce Saunders
Some kind of trip around Colombia through jazz, an indirect approach to the South American country’s folk music via contemporary music. These two sentences summarize the essence of an album in which Colombian sax player Antonio Arnedo meets some New York based musicians to create their unique version of cumbias, pasillos, and other rhythms from the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts, and the Andes region. Most of the songs are Arnedo’s compositions except for two traditional songs from local folk artists. In some of them Antonio, who is mainly an alto and soprano player, introduces the gaita, a long wooden flute used in cumbia and other rhythms from the north, and a wooden flute used in the south of the country. Other musicians also play Colombian instruments. Satoshi Takeishi uses a non traditional drum set composed by pieces from different parts of the world and plays a marimba de Chonta, and instrument which sound is very similar to the African balafon. And Bruce Saunders plays the tiple, a twelve-string guitar from the Andes. Though the sound of the album is far from being ethnic. Arnedo’s compositions and sax playing is nearer to the avant-garde jazz that Ben Monder, Chris Dahlgren usually play. This is a good example of Colombia’s contemporary music. A good example of the music a growing jazz movement which looks into traditional rhythms looking for a unique sound. And a complete different way to do cumbia-jazz fusion.
Antonio Arnedo is one of the best Jazz musicians these days in Colombia. He can easily move from playing sax with the National Symphonic Orchestra as soloist to teach at one of the most prestigious local Universities, Universidad Javeriana de Bogota, all with the same talent that he shows while playing with his Jazz band.
About his first CD as a leader, "Travesia", recorded in 1996 he told writer Hugo Chaparro "To me, in this record there's no fusion but mixture. And this mixture obtains a conjunction, a reunion of elements, conceived by the right musicians. There's a guitar player who plays Jazz but can also relate to other elements and become a "cumbianbero", someone who can play a "Pasillo", who knows all the impulses behind other rhythms and can swing to them".
Arnedo recorded a few months ago his 4th CD in 4 years, closing with it a stage in his career on which he went back to his musical beginnings, to those tunes and rhythms that characterize Colombian Folk music and that have become an inherent part of his style. With his music, Arnedo achieves something unique, making us, colombians, feel proud of a country mostly known by intolerence and violence.
This quiet, gentle and talented man lets us connect with a different idea of nation, the dream of a Colombia in Peace, enjoying its natural diversity and its human richness.
Antonio initially studied Geology at Universidad Nacional but after a few semesters, music ended up by seducing him. He worked with Francisco Zumaqué in a revolutionary project called Macumbia on which Zumaqué attempted a fusion between Jazz, Classical music and the Black folk music of the caribbean coast of Colombia. Remembering those days, Arnedo told Hugo Chaparro : "I couldnt read charts and my efforts resulted in wrong interpretations. Zumaqué confessed to me later that he didnt take me out of the project just because he respected my father so much (A well known musician) and because of solidarity with me".
It was Arnedo's total dedication that led him to overcome the many obstacles of starting late in music. Playing everyday and practicing for long hours, getting to weigh just 85 pounds, Antonio became the inspired and talented Jazz musician we know today.
