Music: Don't Call It Fusion

But who says you can't play Latin jazz on a tabla or make the dreaded Eleanor Rigby swing?

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"We're coming up on the new millennium. It's time to tamper with things," says Christian McBride, a 27-year-old bass player who has recorded with everyone from Betty Carter to Diana Krall. A Family Affair (Verve), his third album as a leader, was released last summer. It includes some smart electric tunes (though listeners who actually lived through the 1970s may not be eager to reacquaint themselves with the sound of Moog synthesizers) but reaches its peak with an acoustic, rhythmically virtuosic version of the Sly Stone title song that somehow manages to swing while also suggesting the original funk beat. McBride says he's trying to provoke: "How many more concept albums can you handle? Such and Such plays the music of Gershwin--a lot of that is getting so tired." He points out that when it comes to pop, his generation grew up listening not to Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole but to Stone and Michael Jackson; it's only natural that, having already explored the standard standards (i.e., their grandparents' pop), adventurous young musicians would now want to explore music they themselves once made out to.

Another kind of agenda is advanced by Danilo Perez's Central Avenue (Impulse!), one of the fall's most passionate and enjoyable albums. Perez wants to broaden the Latin jazz palette beyond Cuba to embrace the entire hemisphere. And why stop there? In one cut, the 32-year-old pianist works in motifs from his native Panama as well as Brazil, Cuba, the Middle East (via Spain) and, thanks to the contributions of a tabla player, India. Perez sees a pendulum effect at work: after a period of retrenchment, jazz, as it often has been in the past, is in a more acquisitive mood. "It's like religion," Perez says. "We are all looking for the oneness in music. To me that's the force that moves an artist." Playfulness and wit seem to get a few licks in too, all of which may even give fusion a reputable name.

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