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Cross-Cultural Jamming With Bonnie Raitt
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Washington Post, Cross-Cultural Jamming With Bonnie Raitt >>
WEST AFRICA's Mali is often identified as a source point for Mississippi's Delta blues, so it wasn't that much of a stretch when well-known blues champion Bonnie Raitt teamed up with Malian Habib Koite on "Back Around," a track from her new album, "Silver Lining."
Still, the journey was an adventure. Raitt had spent time with Koite two years ago in Mali and when Koite and singer Oumou Sangare toured here last year, Raitt hosted their Los Angeles concert, somehow squeezing in a recording session between sound check and show time. While Raitt has explored cross-cultural connections before, this particular encounter was made more challenging by both a language barrier and genre unfamiliarity. Yet by groove's end, Raitt and Koite had transformed the retribution-themed "Back Around" into Afro-pop blues with a rustic Delta twist. "Habib's band doesn't play blues and had never heard this before," Raitt explains. "And they didn't know what I was singing [Mali's chief languages are French and Bambara]. So we just started jamming, and I'm sitting there playing this dark John Lee Hooker thing and Habib doesn't know what I'm singing about, so he's playing this sunny acoustic guitar part. . . . When I explained what the song was about, he said 'Sacre bleu!' "
Which is similar to Raitt's initial reaction to African music, particularly the jubilant rhythms and cascading guitar styles of artists like Ali Farka Toure and King Sunny Ade.
"That 'jump-up' music is the part of African music that first appealed to me," says Raitt, who fell in love with both Zimbabwean and South African music in the '80s, and became steeped in it through her drummer, Ricky Fataar, originally from Durban, South Africa. A longtime passion for "the indestructible beat of Soweto" is reflected in another of the album's cross-continental collaborations, a cover of Oliver Mtukudzi's Afro-pop gospel gem, "Hear Me Lord."
Fans who have followed Raitt's career since her emergence from Boston's folk and blues club scene in the early '70s will also get a kick out of "Gnawin' on It," a ribald paean to sexual desire featuring a frenetic slide guitar duel between Raitt and Roy Rogers. "Of all the tracks I've ever cut, 'Gnawin on It' is my favorite, Raitt says. "To make music that's as sexy as what you're singing about, so when you're playing it you're feeling exactly like what you're singing about -- that's 'Feeling of Falling' and 'Spit of Love' and this one."
On her first tour in four years, Raitt will unveil many of the other great songs on "Silver Lining." Their inclusion on the album, she explains, is integral to her tour planning.
"Every time it's time to make a record, I just gather the songs that are my favorites at the time and look at two things. First, what grooves do I want to play for the next three years on the road that I don't already have? Second, they have to say something that can warrant me singing these lyrics over and over again down the years."
One exception might be "Wounded Heart," an aching love ballad by Jude Johnstone, the latest in a long line of songwriters discovered by Raitt.
"It's absolutely the saddest song I've ever sung," she says. In the studio, "I could only sing it once and if you listen closely at the end of it, you could tell I wasn't going to be able to make another note. I love Jude's writing and that's one of the most exquisite songs I've ever heard."
It's also one of Raitt's most exquisite performances, on a par with "I Can't Make You Love Me."
"Silver Lining" is a typically heady mix of blues-rock, New Orleans boogie and songwriter spotlights (including David Gray, who contributes the title track). Unlike Raitt's '90s albums, however, it's also a showcase for her touring band, with few guests. The crucial rhythm section of Fataar and James "Hutch" Hutchinson has anchored Raitt's sound since her 1989 comeback triumph, "Nick of Time," while guitarist George Marinelli joined on 1994's "Longing in Their Hearts."
According to Raitt, "part of the reason this record sounds so seamless -- even though we're all over the map in terms of styles -- is that we have an affinity that's developed over the years and we share a versatility and a passion for the same kind of music."
Case in point: the group's newest member, keyboardist Jon Cleary, whose history is not unlike that of Raitt, who served her late '60s apprenticeship with blues veterans like Sippie Wallace, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Howlin' Wolf. Born in England, Cleary grew up loving classic American rhythm and blues, particularly that coming out of New Orleans. Cleary moved there at age 17, living behind the fabled Maple Leaf Bar.
In exchange for painting the bar, Cleary got to see all the bands for free and "free drinks while we worked -- only in New Orleans," he points out. Which is why it took Cleary six months to paint the bar, though he got to soak up the stylings of Tuesday regular James Booker and became a master of New Orleans piano, eventually filling in when Booker was late or had a night off.
Cleary's Crescent City influences can be heard on the new album's "Fool's Game" and "Monkey Business." As a special treat, Cleary and his band, the Absolute Monster Gentlemen, will open for Raitt before he does double duty in her band. His own band's new album was released yesterday and Raitt guests on it, as she does on Johnstone's upcoming album. In fact, though "Silver Lining" is her first album in four years, Raitt has appeared on 15 albums in the last two years, including offerings by Tony Bennett, Willie Nelson, Cesaria Evora, Paul Brady, Maria Muldaur and Washington's Jimmy Thackery.
"Am I the luckiest woman in the world? How did I get this lucky? I don't get it."
At 52, Raitt is projecting the same kind of drive as when she started her career more than 30 years ago.
"If someone had said you're going to dig 50 more than 30, I would have said, yeah, right! But it's true! Ever since I turned 50, this has been the most terrific time of my life. I feel like I have all the wisdom and experience and job security and opportunity and validation so that the world is my oyster, and I still have the passion and energy as when I was 21. It's really like getting away from home for the first time, only this time they hand you the keys."
04/19/03
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