BY SAUL LATHAM
Thirty years ago, my brother Jabra Latham was a humble, freckly faced boy with a bowl cut and a love of music. I was a newborn child.
Thirty years on, and Jabra has climbed to great artistic heights: writing, producing, and performing on his new album Play.
These are my reflections on this new album in light of growing up with its creator Jabra, the eldest of our five siblings.
We grew up in an idyllic setting out the back of Sorell, down a gravel road called Nugent, which meanders its way through farms and countryside east of Hobart. Our backyard was a near-endless paddock. Jabra lived in three houses out that way, across a time spanning more than a decade of his life.
My earliest memories are from Wattle Hill. I remember walking down the gravel driveway to the main road, and seeing my three older brothers off to school in the school bus that looked like a shoe-box with a brown ribbon wrapped around it. I remember helping mum make sandwiches for the shearers who would work next door in the shed.
We were free. Time was nothing.
Since then, much has changed in our lives; although, much still stays the same. We live in a busier world, but we’ve still got the memories of our childhood. Jabra has accomplished a lot with his saxophone, particularly with his newest work Play.
Play is a wonderfully retrospective album filled with hope, drama and fun. The album takes listeners on a 53-minute journey through a dense landscape of latent and bouncy rhythms, sweet melodies and discord. Seven elite musicians entwine the sounds of joy, melancholy and mischief. Existential questions are posed, and calm reassurance given. This is an album that works in totality, and in its pieces.
In the ‘80s and ‘90s, saxophone was all over pop music. David A Stewart’s Lilly Was Here was a Saturday morning anthem in our house. I think that’s where Jabra first took his inspiration. It seemed to me, growing up, that Jabra’s saxophone was being played from deep within. Literally and metaphorically, this was true. Perhaps what I didn’t grasp was that these bonds between the inner person and his instrument had to be forged with hours and hours of practice.
Certainly, I noticed the hours of practice once we’d moved from our big country house to a smaller 1970s suburban home. First, it was the popular sensibilities of Kenny G’s Breathless; then, it was the jazz inclinations of Baby Elephant Walk rolling out underneath his bedroom door.
Jabra began to reach further into classical traditions, extending into new techniques with the avant-garde postures of Luaciano Berio, Christian Lauba and Tristan Keuris. By this time, he’d developed a strong skill for intuitive playing and listening.
With this great skill, Play seems to balance on one foot with an ear-to-ear grin and tongue-in-cheek, somewhere between classical music and pop music. It’s an instrumental album composed of 11 tracks built on rhythmic pulse, tangled melodies, and free spiritedness. We hear the talents of Douglas Coghill on viola, Amanda Hodder on piano and celeste, Nick Parish on guitar, Timothy Coghill on drums, Ivan James on cello, James Menzies on double bass and, of course, Jabra Latham on the saxophone.
Play develops contrast by showing the listener through an eclectic labyrinth of catchy tunes and varying moods. The instruments are used as colours to play up deliberate pop structures with familiar classical tones. Jabra writes with this same intuitive skill which sets apart his saxophone playing. It’s easy listening music with challenging compositional elements; it’s simplicity entwined with a tapestry of colours and textures. Intellect plays alongside nostalgia and emotion. Science meets art and, as in the mind of a child, the imagination plays up sensing good and bad, hearing harmony and dissonance.
This Way Up opens as a song without words which turns light and sophisticated instrumentalism into pure pop. Play is a catchy tune which rolls out an uplifting set of ideas upon the imagination of the listener. A grim viola lowers the mood in Out of The Mud. The piece shakes off its lower moody notes and evolves into a sanguine testament from its composer. Understory sits intelligently as the microcosm of the album with its unsettled sensibilities and exploratory themes.
Existential questions are raised in the epic Beyond as the music traverses through time in search of hope and rest. Slowly, the piece wanders through a desolate G-flat Lydian landscape. Hand-in-hand, the sustained piano chords and sombre viola melody grapple between this G-flat and an Fm change. The two voices are joined by cello and double bass before a bridge in B-flat minor climbs up, by a major third, into a B-flat Lydian key change. An optimistic glimpse of the horizon ensues as Parish’s guitar and Hodder’s celeste add harmonic detail to the scene. Quietly, the piece falls back away into its initial patterns, finishing on a good note.
Jabra is, like all sensible Tasmanians, a lover of nature. In this way, Play is heavily influence and inspired by nature. Feeling as if we never left, Jabra takes the listener back Into The Wild where the piano and saxophone bounce around in an irregular 5/8 timing like light bouncing through a forest. Deep, low notes from the piano and bass serve as chunky roots holding the song together like the forest floor. A beautiful woody timbre from the viola imitates the sound of a king billy pine. Drums are pounded away giving their echoes to the surrounds as a single 3/8 bar swells the music into a chorus. Intuitively the piece continues in 5/8 until a bridge introduces a regular 6/8 pulse. The saxophone quickly spirals up into a solo like a bird in the air. It reaches a zenith with a squeal out into the open sky above the forest. Underneath, the piano continues its introductory sequence. The music pulls back to a vividly quiet moment where the bass hints at an ending and the rest of the instruments eventually oblige.
This is Jabra in his element, out bushwalking in Tasmania’s great wilderness.
As much as Play reflects a connection to nature, it reminisces of childhood. Indeed, these two elements of nature and childhood, and our memories of them, are inextricably linked.
I remember being outside a lot as a child. Out the back of our home, Wattle Hill continued up towards a big rocky outcrop. One evening at sunset, Jabra, Jasiel and I hopped over the back fence and up to the top of the hill. There, Jabra spooked Jasiel and I with a tale about the ‘Gorilla Wolf’. He told us that it lived on the hill and was after us. Then with his older, longer, stronger legs, he ran off home. It was almost dark and we were completely freaked out as we ran back down the hill. Being the smallest, I was, of course, the slowest and at the mercy of the Gorilla Wolf.
It was not the first time that Jabra had passed on a scary myth to his younger brothers (and enjoyed a good laugh because of it). I hear this same sense of mischief and imagination in the intricate playfulness of The Last Place He Looked. The bass has that creepy jive that reminds me of the Gorilla Wolf. There’s a haunting feel to the saxophone and piano. Coghill’s viola picks up the chorus and runs with it in the same way we ran from our imaginary creature as children.
Amongst all this, we get a treat in Rejuvenator Blues. It was commissioned by Marie Heitz for the birthday of her husband David Boyles, who is a lover of the blues. Marie requested a piece that combined Jabra’s compositional style with David’s love. The result is an exceptionally unique interpretation of a very non-classical form.
From an old barn in the memory of our childhood, sounding like an old engine kicking into gear, the music breaks down into discord on two occasions and throws up a fun key change with the help of Parish on guitar. A darker mood is passed on Things Not Allowed (a reference to classical nose-upturning) and eventually, a crescendo finds the music back in an optimistic chorus.
Like It Knows Something is for me the standout piece, given its emotive design and exceptional musicianship. The basses, drums, and guitar lock in to a rhythmic thump behind the fast-paced unison of the viola and piano. Jabra pulls out an insightful melodic ribbon. Together, the parts make a whole, tight and delicate gift to the listener. Topographical hues and shadows extend out between the compositional space that’s left. The melodies in this piece are like succinct wisdoms; I can hear in them the very earliest paternal songs and graces being uttered by my mother to her children.
Second Last Day closes the album like a warm hug. Harmony prevails and those gentle, delicate themes seem to hop around with excitement. The excitement is contained, and calmness gives way to peaceful music. And then, we hear a percussive element, almost like the sound of a tapping foot. A familiar time signature keeps the sparkling piano in time while the bass anchors the ship. Light, shimmering music closes the album with lullaby like material. The stars in the sky are the last image.
Play was released on March 28, 2018 and is available on Spotify, iTunes and other major distribution channels. A published hard copy will soon follow. Follow Jabra Latham’s Facebook page to stay up to date.
Images supplied. This review was published in its original form on Saul Latham’s website. Saul has expanded his story for publication on CutCommon.
