Path of Seven Colors

Drummer/percussionist Ches Smith, an acclaimed bandleader and seasoned Tim Berne sideman, is also a devoted student of Haitian music and traditional drumming. Path of Seven Colors is the culmination of a long and immersive process, essentially a dream come true for this son of Sacramento based in New York. Collaborating with Haitian singer/lyricist and percussionist Daniel Brevil, Smith formed We All Break, which started as a unique four-piece with Brevil on vocals and tanbou drum, Markus Schwartz on tanbou as well, Smith on drum set, and Matt Mitchell (Smith’s Tim Berne bandmate) on piano. In 2017, that group quietly made an eponymous album, now being offered as a bonus disc to accompany the new, more expansive Path of Seven Colors.

Alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón, whose own work has explored connections between cutting-edge jazz and traditional Puerto Rican idioms, broadens the palette of Path of Seven Colors with his beautifully centered tone and flawless melodic execution at all speeds. Nick Dunston adds bottom on upright bass while driving the rhythm and filling an ensemble role with subtle notated parts, bowed passages, and other curveballs. Schwartz, the Danish-born, Brooklyn-based master of traditional Haitian drums, returns on tanbou and also joins the choral circle for spellbinding vocal chants in Haitian Creole with Brevil, Sirene Dantor Rene, and Fanfan Jean-Guy Rene (who plays tanbou as well). Smith joins the Creole chanting circle himself, as can be seen in Mimi Chakarova’s beautiful 50-minute documentary on the making of the album.

Mitchell’s piano provides harmonic density and dreamlike dissonance, locking in rhythmically at every juncture. He and Zenón improvise like fiends, the tanbou drums groove and ring out, the massed voices rise to sing Brevil’s gorgeous original melodies and traditional Haitian ones as well. Demanding and highly virtuosic in character, the music has a strong African imprint and an inescapably emotional pull — not least because this album release coincides with a new period of political dislocation in Haiti. Smith’s approach is ambitious yet humble and highly personal, a gesture of support to the Haitian people and a love letter to the musical culture they’ve made.