BST 84363

Wayne Shorter - Odyssey Of Iska

Released - July 1971

Recording and Session Information

A&R Studios, NYC, August 26, 1970
Wayne Shorter, soprano, tenor sax; David Friedman, vibes, marimba; Gene Bertoncini, guitar; Ron Carter, Cecil McBee, bass; Billy Hart, Alphonse Mouzon, drums; Frank Cuomo, drums, percussion.

6781 tk.3 Wind
6782 tk.5 Storm
6783 tk.10 Calm
6784 tk.12 De Pois Amour, O Vazio (After Love, Emptiness)
6785 tk.18 Joy

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Wind	Wayne Shorter	August 26 1970
Storm	Wayne Shorter	August 26 1970
Calm	Wayne Shorter	August 26 1970
Side Two
Depois do Amor, o Vazio (After Love, Emptiness)	Bobby Thomas	August 26 1970
Joy	Wayne Shorter	August 26 1970

Liner Notes

Iska is the wind that passes. leaving no trace...

Imagine — the wind having been born with a formless soul that travels through time and space — with a life of its own; seeking life, encountering the realities and fantasies of man and his endless journey — the wind — so vast in scope, so boundless as to suggest infinity in absolute form taking all that exists, (past, present and future), on a once in a lifetime odyssey...

Perhaps you can relate the enclosed to the journey of your own soul; your body serving as the ship's hull, weathering the barriers of ignorance, hate, greed and other known evils, (hang ups, drags — whatever). Fortunately, Iska does not linger, like a brooding defeatest wringing dry the self-pity rational, until stagnation sets in as a prelude to final decay! Fortunately, Iska fights with the ferocity of a wild boar; surrendering only to the urge to move on, altering its future...leaving no tracks —

A storm speaks for itself...you won't need much to imagine a storm — but whatever a storm needs to be one—imagine! Adversity! Pig-headness! Antagonism at it's worst...known and unknown fears...an evil world's mind polluted people —when the storm reaches its meanest, there isn't time to pray! Meanwhile, there's the serpent's shadow; threatening, challenging, demanding submission—unconditional and total denial of faith and belief in the good design for resurrection and salvation...

Now, a great being descends upon the face of Iska bringing all confusion, turmoil and chaos to a gentle halting which settles with the contentment of calm — that pause which is so necessary when God speaks...to know one is not alone...

"To know God is to know one is not alone

To know one is not alone is to know woman". "Earth, flower, sun, water. They live linked in a rhythm ever so steady—one feeding the other, helping passengers to survive on terra firma. After the hate, the war, the greed and the ignorance have all been used, what is there left for food? Might not there be time left for one to love another without draining that magic from its source? (De Pois Do Amor, O vazio.) What Iska could tell us about the nature of love would be better left untold. A man called Jesus has spoken strongly on the subject of love; poets, philosophers and playwrights all had their say... anything added here would seem superfluous —

And then there's that elusive thing...you travel on and on. It takes a while to get there; some try during a lifetime and never quite arrive...some try to manufacture it in one form or another; the manifestations of which, are often shattering! Holidays, church sermons, drugs, mass entertainment perhaps all lead to some temporary feeling of happiness — but to arrive at something more is where the wind wants to go...some call that place — joy! Some find it with companions...some find it alone. Can't weigh it or measure it — you do it...

With Iska, that something more is all the joy anyone ever experienced. Iska knows there is no possessing joy — the person who finds it alone should be able to give it to someone else with great ease—the enclosed speaks of such generosity...let us speak of ioy — happiness — exultation!

Let us speak of music...it is as all things are, a necessary indulgence — to give food and sustenance to the travelers as they move on through all their odysseys.

Iska is the wind that passes; leaving no trace...

WAYNE SHORTER

To study the evolution of Wayne Shorter as an individualist in music, compositionally or improvisationally, is to follow, in large measure, the path pursued by jazz as a whole during the past five or six years.

One uses the word iazz reluctantly in times like these, for clearly the idiom as we have known it, once a central rhythmic and harmonic facet of Shorter's identity, now has become one of many elements that have reached far beyond the purlieus of any one pigeonholed music. To put it in more basic terms, jazz is no longer his sole bag; it is rather one of many tools in a larger and more capacious bag that is cosmic in its scope.

Shorter began recording for Blue Note as a leader in his own right in 1964, the same year during which he began his apocalyptic six-year sojourn in the Miles Davis Combo.

What was the effect of that phenomenally productive relationship? Did Shorter influence Davis, or was it the masterful impact of Miles that made a profound impression on Wayne? Listen to the music of both men, yesterday and today, one cannot but infer that there was a completely free two-way flow of ideas, and that during that period, until Shorter quit in 1970 to seek new goals of his own, both men reached hitherto unenvisioned horizons, sought and found new freedoms.

Odyssey Of Iska offers a wide-ranging picture of Shorter's present directions. The five works are, in effect, a suite. Although one of them is not his own composition, it has, as Wayne points out, "a thought that seems to connect it to the others."

"Iska',' he explains, His the wind. It's like a breeze that comes and goes without leaving any trace. It's Nigerian— not exactly a Nigerian word, but a poetic expression. It represents the transition of each man's soul as it passes through life; a pictorial-musical journey symbolizing the lifetime and whatever happens after: "The make-up of the personnel, unlike anything used in prior Shorter albums, gives him limitless space; as the sole horn, he is cushioned by the vibes or marimba of Dave Friedman and buttressed by a sort of double rhythm section.

Employing two such formidable bassists as Ron Carter (his longtime Davis colleague) and Cecil McBee, he put their talents to ingeniously interwoven use: "I had Ron playing most of the lower bass sounds, and the longer sounds— in fact, even if they were higher, they were longer—while Cecil played most of the shorter, choppy, faster rhythmic patterns. He was watching where Ron would move, and then he'd just run across whatever Ron would do."

The three percussionists also were delegated to special roles. The regular drum part was played by Al Mouzon, whose Celebration Of Life brings De Pois Do Amor, O Vazio to a mind-shaking climax. Frank Cuomo and Billy Hart play auxiliary roles; it is the former who supplies the oriental jingling sounds that decorate the opening passages in Wind.

Responding to a comment that Odyssey Of Sika seemed to represent another step in his evolution, Wayne replied: "Yes, I'm trying to get what you might call more of a sheer sound, instead of a hard and solid instrumentation; the vibes and guitar helped me along in that direction. I like the way Gene Bertoncini handled his role; rather than just coming out like a rhythm guitar, he added a special quality to the overall sound".

Though Wayne is heard principally on soprano, an instrument on which he began doubling during the Davis years, his tenor remains a consummately expressive voice; one that reminds us again, in Joy, of the Coltrane legacy. This mood contrasts starkly with the understated beauty of Calm, just as the steady pulse with which Storm begins is directly opposed to the free sense of quasi-timelessness-weightlessness that predominates during much of the preceding Wind.

There is a curious history behind the Brazilian-title song that opens the second side. "Actually," Wayne says, "it was composed by Bobby Thomas, the drummer on the David Frost show; he wrote it three years ago and he's just now getting a record out on it. You may have heard it, but only briefly; Billy Taylor just plays a few notes of it before the segue into a commercial." Given the present setting, the theme becomes a point of departure for a series of unrestrictedly imaginative flights by Shorter, Bertocini and Friedman.

As this album was prepared for release, another major event in Wayne's career was about to take formal shape. He was due to go on his first tour, probably including a European sojourn, with a new group called Weather Forecast in which he, Joe Zawinul and bassist Miroslav Vitous are the principal figures, along with Al Mouzon, his colleague in this album.

In that group, as in the present context, his objective has been the achievement of a creative realignment. think the time has come," he says. "for more content, from the compositional standpoint, but at the same time we need not be restrictive in the sense of adhering to the traditional song form like, say, Burt Bacharach or the Beatles. We have to rearrange the concept of melodic, harmonic and rhythmic ideas, as they have been dealt with in the past, and come up with something fresh. We've been working hard on it."

This self-assessment could as well be applied to the sense of searching and finding that he and each of his sidemen invested in Odyssey Of Iska, itself one of the most adventurous voyages of discovery in Shorter's burgeoning career.

-LEONARD FEATHER