The bassist Marcus Miller’s latest album Afrodeezia is a project all about the grand narrative. Inspired by his role as a Unesco Artist for Peace, it’s a sonic exploration of the myriad musical forms that African slaves took with them to the New World, featuring musicians from Mali, Ghana, Brazil, the Caribbean and the Mississippi Delta, recorded on various locations on the slave route.
Like many of Miller’s solo recordings, the record suffers from his insistence on using the bass as a lead instrument, which is rather like using a tuba as a drum kit. Miller can be a quietly thrilling presence when rumbling and slithering around the low-end of his instrument, but his bass just sounds like a banjo when played in the higher frets.
However, live on stage, any reservations about Miller’s methodology quickly vanish, largely due to the way he and his band focus on narrative. Instead of aimless shredding, each band member is able to improvise coherently, each given time to take us on a journey.
On B’s River, Adam Agati sounds as if he’s slowly learning the guitar throughout the course of his solo, starting like a ruminative beginner and concluding like Hendrix. On a version of Jean Pierre, pianist Brett Williams plays a quizzical Monk-inspired workout that suits Miles Davis’s jerky composition. On Gorée – a song inspired by a slave transit prison off the coast of Senegal – Alex Han starts with a hymnal soprano sax lament before reaching a suitably furious finale. Best of all is the veteran percussionist Mino Cinelu, who makes congas talk, creates magic on a Cuban cajón box and plays the funkiest triangle solo you’ll ever hear.
Special mention to the support act, trombonist Dennis Rollins’s Velocity, an explosive trio, featuring the staggering Ross Stanley on Hammond organ, that are as tight and punchy as Miller’s septet are expansive and slow-burning. Both acts, in their own way, are terrific storytellers.
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At Corn Exchange, Cambridge, on 27 October and Town Hall, Birmingham on 28 October.
