It seems to be a duo but they are much more than that: these musical soulmates are properly a band of at least five musicians. The relationship between Parlato and Loueke forms an expressive unity that is moving due to its dynamic minimalism and expressive richness. The politics of beauty, I think, brings together, on the one hand, an absolutely universal, common and affective discourse and, on the other, it raises the false problem of limits: a common, musical, immediate language, which in its endless nuances, moves. Music like this, submissive to its true purpose – to show its power with the sole discourse of its future – makes us forget the context that generates it: the meeting between a guitarist from Benin and a jazz singer from California.
I will try, briefly, to explain what happened. First of all, the elements that we can see at first glance: a repertoire crossed by a sound already matured by the guitarist Lionel Loueke, with a long career and inseparable from his own expression and his way of “being musical”, which is the aesthetic support of the proposal; The vocal rhythms, the singing, the harmonic speech, the effects of the guitar (mechanical and digital) and its relationship with improvisation – I do not say jazz because its proposal crosses some borders and exceeds the strictly jazzy – give body to the resulting sound. Additionally, it seems to be a duo but they are much more than that: these musical soulmates are properly a band of at least five musicians. Parlato and Loueke address the bass lines – with the voice, the guitar, melodically –, the rhythm section – ethnic percussion instruments, vocal noises, handclaps –, the texts of the songs – sometimes in duet, sometimes Parlato alone –, the jazz solos –of both–, and the different textures of the guitar –synthesizer sound, “mutated” beats or arpeggios, looped harmonies and rhythms–.
The tone of the proposal, on the other hand, is intimate in nature. An absolutely careful intensity from start to finish. Dynamics are a decisive resource since they constitute an expressive layer in themselves: the ostinato and repeated rhythmic and melodic motifs – as in soul or Funk – generate tension thanks to the nuances of intensity: the whisper and the breathing play a predominant role and through hearing we surrender to the accent of the rhythmic oscillation of the duo.
The music that a body gives off at the slightest movement, I sense, seems to have always been there. Before the words, without a doubt, since these seem to come from there. I think about translation and the absurd problem of languages. Music persists without the need for words, but these bring, even when we read them in silence, a vestige of their musicality: the words are the music but the music is not the words. Accents and rhythm are the true musicality of each person's languages and speech, where each one is inscribed – carved –, in turn, by their territory and their community. This reminds us of Parlato and Loueke. That in music translation is guaranteed since we automatically learn its rhythm without the need for any meaning: Rhythm is its semantics.
Loueke, the same migrant and gone through the experience of language estrangement, speaks French – the colonial French of Benin and that of France where he has resided –, Yoruba and Fon (commonly spoken in Benin), also English (he studied at Berklee and in Thelonious Jazz Institute) and adds, in his music, the sound ecosystem of his homeland. Through vocal rhythms they possibly sing to us a poetry without words that we can remember, lost in thought, while we wait for the green light of a traffic light –aunana aunana ea–.
The relationship between Parlato and Loueke forms an expressive unity that is moving due to its dynamic minimalism and expressive richness. The politics of beauty, I think, brings together, on the one hand, an absolutely universal, common and affective discourse and, on the other, it raises the false problem of limits: a common, musical, immediate language, which in its endless nuances, moves. Music like this, submissive to its true purpose – to show its power with the sole discourse of its future – makes us forget the context that generates it: the meeting between a guitarist from Benin and a jazz singer from California.