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Michael Shrieve — Drums of Compassion
(7d Media no#, 2024, CD / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2024-07-25

Drums of Compassion Cover art

Drums of Compassion represents a summing-up of sorts for Michael Shrieve, presenting the veteran drummer along with a host of the other outstanding musicians he’s worked with over the decades since his debut in Santana. It is far from a showcase for his own playing, however — in fact, there are a couple of tracks where he doesn’t even appear, handing the spotlight over to Airto Moreira and Zakir Hussain, who get a brief track each. Most of the other seven tracks are all-star extravaganzas bringing together such diverse players as Jeff Greinke, Jack DeJohnette, Babatunde Olatunji, Skerik, Pete Lockett, Amon Tobin, Trey Gunn, and many others. Aside from the personnel list, there’s not much information about how this album came to be. Obviously some parts of it were recorded some time ago (Olatunji died in 2003, for example), but it certainly functions as a coherent work. Shrieve’s aesthetic is to bring together people from the different percussive traditions of the world to form the underpinning of his music, then incorporating both acoustic and electronic sounds into an expansive soundscape. Beautiful ambient electronics provide a palette for African, Indian, and South American percussion, while melodies come from saxophones, oud, electric piano, Warr guitar, and more. Greinke and Moreira are the most frequent collaborators here, each appearing on four of the nine tracks (not the same four). Shrieve’s music achieves a wonderful balance between energy and serenity that is perfectly matched with the album title, which itself is an homage to Olatunji’s landmark 1960 release, Drums of Passion. This album effortlessly joins the sounds of jazz, various traditional musics, and ambient electronics into a celebration of human life and our ability to work together when we honor our differences rather than seeing them as a source of conflict.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Zakir Hussein, Michael Shrieve, Jack DeJohnette, Jeff Greinke, Trey Gunn, Airto Moreira

More info
http://michaelshrieve7d.bandcamp.com/album/drums-of-compassion

 

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