A year in five stages

Five concerts this year, and a different band at nearly every one of them.
Eight people on stage in May. Three in July. Looking back at the photographs,
the thing I did not expect is how little the music minded.

Vuotalo

January, and the year opened up at Vuotalo playing with the quintet. It was a
great way to start a year playing my favorite music with my team. It was an
exciting moment for me on this path as an artist.

Line-up: Baraka Issabu (piano, keyboards, vocals), Humphrey Mubba (bass guitar, vocals), Vilho Louhivuori (drums), Joni Viere (guitar), Jesse Vilhomaa (saxophone).

The Bachelor’s concert

May, and the largest version of this music there has ever been. Eight
players, with percussion and trombone, flute, and saxophones on both alto and
tenor. A bachelor’s concert is a strange occasion, because it is an examination
and a performance at the same time, and the room holds both the people who love
you and the people marking you. The Mapambazuko cycle went end to end
that night and held together as a whole, which is not something you can know
until you have played it that way.

Line-up: Baraka Issabu (piano, keyboards, vocals), Humphrey Mubba (bass, vocals), Fernando Salazar (guitar), Aarne Toivonen (drums), Kasheshi Makena (percussion, trombone), Constanza Garcia (flute), Dickson Uthui (alto saxophone), Olavi Stanek (tenor saxophone).

Espan Lava

Two months later I cut the band to three, and it was the trio’s first night
together. That decision looks reckless written down. Going from eight players to
three does not simplify the music, it moves the work: every line somebody else
had been holding is now yours, and a first night tells you quickly which parts
of a score are instructions and which are only hopes. The set was properly
engineered, and the recording from that night is still the clearest document of
what the trio sounds like.

Line-up: Baraka Issabu (piano, keyboards, vocals), Humphrey Mubba (bass, vocals), Aarne Toivonen (drums).

Live sound:
Jere Harjunniemi.

Fest Afrika

The end of the same month, at Telakka in Tampere, back to five. Coming to the
quintet straight from the trio is the part of the year I keep thinking about.
Having played the music with almost nothing, I knew what every line was actually
for, and I could hand pieces of it away without losing the thread. A pianist who
has spent years covering every register has to learn how to stop, and three
people on a stage in July is what taught me.

Line-up: Baraka Issabu (piano, keyboards, vocals), Humphrey Mubba (bass guitar, vocals), Vilho Louhivuori (drums), Joni Viere (guitar), Jesse Vilhomaa (saxophone).

Etno-Espa

August, and the same stage. Espan Lava is the venue and Etno-Espa is a
different festival on it, so five weeks after the trio played there with three
people we came back with five. Same boards, same sightlines, and a piece of
music that had been through both versions in between.

That is about as close to a controlled comparison as this work ever gets, and
what it showed me is that the trio was not a reduction and the quintet was not a
completion. They were two finished things.

Line-up: Baraka Issabu (piano, keyboards, vocals), Humphrey Mubba (bass guitar, vocals), Vilho Louhivuori (drums), Joni Viere (guitar), Jesse Vilhomaa (saxophone).

Both albums came out this year as well, African Child and
Mapambazuko (The Dawn), so the recording and the playing were happening
at the same time. That is a lot to hold inside twelve months, and I do not
entirely recommend it.

What I take from the photographs is that this music does not have a correct
size. It worked with eight and it worked with three, and on one stage it worked
both ways inside five weeks. The difference between those nights was not quality
but what each version made audible. What the music needed was the right people
in it rather than a particular number of them. Thank you to everyone who played,
engineered, programmed and turned up.