MELVIN GIBBS ISN’T SIMPLY CONTENT to let 200-plus sideman recordings and gigs for David Byrne, John Scofield, and Henry Rollins speak for him. Instead, he’s thinking globally—literally—with the latest release from his band, Elevated Entity. Ancients Speak lands with equal depth as both a wildly ambitious genre-blending album and a cultural and sociological lesson. Gibbs went to traditional candomblé houses in Brazil to track vocalists, rappers, and percussionists, took the stew back to New York, sliced and diced it, and then slathered it with gospel, American rap, the “sky church music” guitar of Earth, Wind & Fire’s Pete Cosey and P-Funk’s Blackbyrd McKnight, and plenty more. “Growing up in New York City, you essentially do ‘world music’ without the name,” Gibbs explains. “If you can get energies to meld—even if the musicians are from different geographic points—you get unity.”
What originally inspired this CD, and what does ‘Ancients Speak’ mean to you?
On a trip to Costa Rica, I went to a town in the interior where most of the national soccer team’s players come from— the “Black” town. I saw a woman who looked exactly like one of my aunts. It brought home the fact that due to the way Africans arrived in the U.S., I could have relatives anywhere in the Western Hemisphere— Jamaica, Cuba, Brazil, wherever.
Africans as a family are scattered and divided in this part of the world, but there’s a common cultural thread that goes back to Africa. Joining that cultural thread is letting the “ancients” speak. Letting the ancients speak also refers to generations communicating, so I have great players from the ’70s dialoguing with drum programs and traditional songs combined with digital sound design techniques.
As a producer, how did you view the role of the bass in this project?I see it as an Americanized version of the Ilu, the lowest or “mother” drum in the Yoruba music of southwest Nigeria. In Brazil they use the word “batteria” for drum groups. I see the bass on the record as a “battery,” an energy provider and a basis for physical movement. Dance is an essential part of African spirituality. Also, the Yoruba aesthetic is based on cool; it’s very intricate, but not about flash per se. That’s one reason I did the bass virtuoso thing on the “coolest” song and kept on rhythm and rhythmic modulation. The intricacy occurs in the dialogue between the different low-end instruments.
For bassists who want to go further into the world of music this album encapsulates, what would you suggest as a course of study?Well, first of all buy the album! [Laughs.] Then check out my blog at tinyurl.com/bf2qq2.
CAN BE HEARD ON
Melvin Gibbs’s Elevated Entity, Ancients Speak [2009, Livewired Music]; Harriet Tubman Double Trio, Ascension [2009, Karl; August 2009 release]; Arto Lindsay, Salt [2004, Righteous Babe]
GEAR
Basses Original Tobias Signature Series 6-string, MTD American 5- string, MTD Kingston 5
Live rig Mesa-Boogie Titan V12 head & 2x15 Deep Powerhouse Cabinet
Effects Mesa Boogie V Twin, Electro- Harmonix Big Muff/Metal Muff, DigiTech Jimi Hendrix Experience, Big Briar Moogerfooger MF 102 Ring Modulator, Big Briar Moogerfooger MF 101 Low Pass Filter, Big Briar Moogerfooger CP-251 Control Processor
Studio Avalon U5 DI, Camel Audio Camel Phat and Audio Damage Fuzz Plus digital plug-ins