The publicity notes for Day’s debut album, which was actually recorded five
years ago in New York, describe it as ‘a multi-layered yet minimalistic
statement, a subtly hued tone poem.’ Indeed, the impressionistic,
highly-suggestive vocals and instrumentation are as evocative as Debussy’s
‘Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune’. Although, the diverse textures and energy
of the music make a comparison with Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie more accurate in
spirit of course, not in size or ambition. Many of the sound effects for this
is not absolute music, not pure jazz remind me of the soundtrack to
black-and-white Hollywood films. Intriguingly, the title of Messiaen’s massive
paean to spirituality is made up of two Sanskrit words: ‘Turanga’ denotes time,
surging ever onward, held back by ‘Lila’, which signifies ‘play’‚ articulating
the flow of time with drama. Franz A. Matzner writes of the unusual and
unorthodox line-up of voice, saxophones and bass: ‘The absence of both piano
and drums liberates Day from the temporally segmented nature of percussive
sound...’ Day has removed ‘Turanga’ from her compositions, and left ‘Lila’,
articulating the flow of time with drama. The whole album is a playful
experiment in jazz, and is, as Matzner says, ‘a highly complex and astute
creation.’
‘Lila’ happens to be the title of the first track. It begins with the
saxophones and bass playing gently, setting the nostalgic mood like the
beginning of a film, suggesting a kitchen or a domestic scene. The instruments
simmer, like vegetables boiling in a pan on the stove, threatening to boil. Day
said that she decided to sing it as a lullaby. Her voice enters softly. She is
crooning a story to her child, maybe a fairy-tale, complete with sound effects,
sending him off to sleep. Then, without warning, it becomes alarmingly hard and
loud like a shout, a yell, a sudden deep masculine presence. It is shocking
that it should come from the same place as the delicate, charming voice that
began. She exhibits an almost schizophrenic ability to impersonate different
voices. It is as if Day is singing a musical melodrama for two or more voices.
What I could have sworn was a muted trumpet whines an impression of a train‚s
whistle, or a kettle boiling, loudening into a fierce hum, like a fly buzzing
against the windowpane ˆ but it is her voice. She dips low, deep, and then back
to gentleness, fluctuating between naïve sweetness and a knowledgeable maturity
the two expressions somehow combined in her face on the cover of the CD. The
voice is emotionally uncompromising, stripped bare of sentimentality or
decoration, like a naked violin.
Like watching a film, you lose your sense of time, becoming involved in the time
of what you are listening to the song restructures time according to its own
logic. As Matzner says, the instrumentation is ‘...tremendously effective in
framing Day’s highly idiosyncratic approach [...] Instead of dictating a
rhythmic or melodic path for Day to navigate, the sax section [...] encases Day
in a tonally fluid, textural space.’ It is a space in which Day has freedom to
experiment, where you have a thrilling sense that anything can happen,
different to ‘the standard jazz atmosphere evoked by such aural cues as snare
and ride, chord progressions...’ The effect is ‘a different feel, a floating
sensation.’ Day said herself in interview, ‘I needed a bassist to be the focal
point as far as I was concerned in the music because the bass strikes me more
as a heartbeat.’ This choice produces a more intimate, natural atmosphere; you
are not so aware of the studio, or of the structure of the music, as you might
be with drums and piano. It is more organic, all voices and pulse. Day wanted to
move away from the ‘controlled, studio-driven method’ into something freer. In
her phrasing, tempo, pitch, rhythm, mood, and melody, Day embodies Mahler’s
principle of ‘continuous variation’‚ and it is in this atypical environment
that she has such room to manoeuvre.
The impressionistic I am almost tempted to say filmic, because of the images
it conjures up aspect of her music, is most evident in ‘Free Jam‚’ the last
track, one of Day’s three original compositions balancing the three standards.
Day said of this song that it was ‘something that I came up with sitting on the
stoop outside of my building.’ It is eight minutes and fifteen seconds of
surrealistic experimentation. Matzner calls it ‘an interesting historical journey
through the history of jazz.’ He points out that the beat is kept with the
voice, and ‘all the different elements of skat singing and different jazz
singing [are] all mixed together in one place...’ ‘Free Jam’ is the musical
equivalent of sitting on the stoop outside of Day’s apartment building; the
noise and atmosphere translated, and transformed into music. ‘...I wanted [...]
to mirror conversations in the street, traffic sounds, everything that makes me
think of music. When people speak to me, I hear music, so that is what I wanted
to have through this.’ It is an experimental, jazz tone poem, based on a
non-musical thing; it has its roots in the real world. Unlike Miles Davis’ Sketches
of Spain’
the music is written to sound like something, or give the impression of
something else. It is not only inspired by something extra-musical, but it is
designed to sound like it as well.
Kid Lucky, the guest vocal instrumentalist, keeps the beat. Day whines like the
siren of a police car. You can hear people going up and down stairs, knocking
and banging on doors, strolling along the pavement. A radio plays from an open
window. A window creaks open or shut. A ship’s fog-horn blasts in the harbour,
or it’s a car’s horn honking in the street. A car door slams shut. A
conversation. An argument. The day changes and quietens to a lull, the hot
afternoon, evening, noisy again, the daily rhythm, rise and fall of sounds.
Street vendors. Dancing. Animals. A telephone. The idea of someone watching. A
voice calls up from the street to a window. A piece of furniture is moved
heavily, knocking against the door-frame, scraping across the floor. Someone is
singing to them self, trying to remember the words or the tune. A city-scene
like a John Ashbery poem, letting the composition be interrupted by what happens
around her, what occurs to her, including it all. A baby crying. It correlates
to something tangible, but it is also a thing in itself: Day is singing for the
sake of singing, they are playing just to play. This piece, like the album, is
a balancing act between improvised polyphony and cacophony, between tradition
and innovation, the orthodox and idiosyncratic, and between emotions like
melancholy and exuberance.
Day says she ‘came up with’ the track: she is a singer, a songwriter, but also
a conceptualist. She has strong, original ideas about the music she wants to
make and how she wants to make it. The versatility and open mind with which she
approaches all of these songs is a consequence of the ‘circuitous route’, as
she describes it, that she made her way to jazz. Day went from form to form. ‘I
went from country music to singing madrigals, to singing folk, to opera, and
then to jazz.’ Although this is her debut album, Day is an accomplished singer,
comfortable in many styles. When listening to her sing, her voice often strays
out of what you might consider jazz singing into all of these forms and more.
At one point, she sounds like an Arabic muezzin. She is not afraid to use
whatever means necessary to achieve her goal of ‘expressive expansion’, of
creating a form which will take whatever she puts in it. Day is not vain. She
is like an actress not afraid to look ugly, to break out of the accepted role.
Day is never predictable, never boring, and it is not merely wilful perversity:
there is a logic to it. You are compelled to keep listening. The publicity
notes claim rightly, though tritely, that ‘Her phrasing has few limitations as
she chases her own tale by leaps and bounds through gray skies, toward greener
pastures.’
Day recounts the story of her first meeting with Marion Brown the legendary
saxophonist, who accompanies her here at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music,
where she listened to him play for the first time. After the concert, she
grabbed him by the hand and took him up to one of the rehearsal rooms, where
she sang Jobim’s ‘Dindi’ for him, included on the album at Brown’s insistence.
‘...so he sat there and listened and at one point he jumped out of his chair
and then I said, “Are you OK?” [...] “Yes, I’m doing just fine, thank you so
much.” And he sat back down and he said, “Please continue.” I did.’
Interestingly, for more than one reason, Brown writes in the liner notes, ‘The
first time I heard her was at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, where she
performed “Lover Man” and stole my heart with her sound. The next time I heard
her was at my house. She sang “Dindi” by Antonio Carlos Jobim for me and showed
off her amazing vocal gymnastics. [...] When she reached the top of her range,
I wondered where she’d go next. She dropped three octaves and sang a bass note
that made me jump out of my seat.’ In the middle of a subtle lyric, Day will
unexpectedly produce a startling, disconcertingly gruff bass note, a holler, as
if Louis Armstrong has just walked into the studio, which could sound affected
to some.
But the voice is what you remember, what makes you return. It is as beautiful
and uncanny as Yma Sumac. But this very originality provokes the question of
whether it is a novelty act. As remarkable as her talent is, it distracts from
the emotional content of the song. You concentrate on the detail, the surface,
as on a fine brushstroke, and are not moved, as in the abstract, acapella
‘Lover Man’. ‘That song is me, if that makes sense. The music has to appeal for
me first with a song. It has to reach me in three different places, two of
which I will mention to a gentleman. It has to reach me in my heart. It has
to reach me intellectually. And the other spot, I will not mention. And then
the lyrics come in. And if the lyrics are true, then I can sing the song.’
Contrary to what Day says, which encourages me to listen again, the song seems
more an avant garde experiment than a confession. She is singing without
emotion. She is in total control of her voice, and she controls the
disturbances that are meant to emulate disturbed emotions. Matzner calls it ‘an
abstract dirge [...] a frozen plea from another plane’, adding that ‘...her
experimentation [is] nourished by the depth of the original compositions.’ To
me it remains distant and cold. Is it done for effect? Is she showing off? Does
the content of the song require or fit with this form?
The unfortunately-titled, ‘Our bit of piddling’, Brown and Day’s audition tape,
highlights this tension between self-indulgence and playfulness. Day is like a
talented child plinking away on the piano for the sheer pleasure of the sounds
she can make. It can grab or irritate the listener according to his or her
taste and/or mood. She is testing the acrobatic virtuosity of her voice,
swinging like a trapeze artist in the circus tent, performing flips and
somersaults that you are amazed she can pull off without falling, going higher
and higher, then swooping lower. It takes your breath away. But the occasional
shrillness of her voice, like a shriek from the crowd, is sometimes too much.
It exerts a strain on the listener, which is repaid by the pleasure you get
from the performance. You are impressed, but it requires a healthy ear as
watching a trapeze artist perform without a net requires a healthy heart. It is
a warm, honest, witty and intimate recording, showing Day relaxed and having
fun, forming the word ‘Marion’ as expertly as a smoke ring, laughing at her
whim. Day moans, hums, croons, screams, whistles, howls, wails, chants,
harmonises, bellows and talks. What makes listening to this album so exciting
is Day’s protean ability to move from form to form, feminine to masculine,
pitch to pitch, and between emotions with such ease.
©
Paul Rowland 2003
