Search - Jean-Paul Bourelly :: Boom Bop

The Chicago-born, Haitian-American guitarist Jean-Paul Bourelly has traveled in many musical words: from jazz and rock to world music. On Boom Bop, Bourelly makes African ambient music that's equally at home on the Niger and Mississippi Rivers. Bourelly, a former sideman with Miles Davis, Rod Stewart, and Roy Haynes, is joined by jazz legends tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp, alto sax wizard Henry Threadgill, bassist Reggie Washington, and the Senegalese master drummer and griot Abdourahmane Diop. Beyond the standard jazz- or rock-band breakdown of instruments, though, there's more. Big Royal Talamacus plays "filtered boom bass," Samba Sock plays boograboo, Slaka plays the djembe, and Slam T. Wig hammers on the standard drum kit. Bourelly's Jimi Hendrix-tinted electric guitar lines beautifully counterpoint Diop's impassioned vocals and ancestral rhythms on "New Afro Blu." Elsewhere, Bourelly grooves with funky backbeats, as on "Silent Rain," which is laced wonderfully with Threadgill's lyrical lines, but the guitarist's down-home, acoustic sound isn't lost on this multidimensional session, appearing in full on "Root One" to round out what's likely his most diverse album ever. --Eugene Holley Jr.