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The Supplicants (l-r): Sameer Gupta, David Ewell, Richard Howell, David Boyce. Paintings by Brian Mason. [email protected] Kosmic Reverie The Supplicants improv Yoshi's By Erica Pedersen The subdued announcer speaks: "Get ready to hear some fine music." The band files out and each of the four players assume position. Drummer Sameer Gupta sends a tinny, tremulous vibrato oncymbal into space, and David Ewell plucks sparse, low reverberations on his upright bass. Exposed and newly raw, a conversation begins. Flanking front stage, Richard Howell and David Boyce shift on their feet and settle into their saxophones waiting for the drum and bass to lay down the foundation for synergy. An audience waiting to hear The Supplicants can't know what to expect. Not even The Supplicants themselves know what inflections their Afro-Kosmic-Indian-Jazz improv quartet will take. One May '99 afternoon, the first time all four had ever met for a jazzy adventure of drum, acoustic bass, and sax-ophone, they recorded their debut album 1st Encounter. But whether one has ever hear that album or not doesn't matter; what happened the evening of March 25th would be of that night only. In the dark, the crowd is not what I expect. But tolerate my preconceptions insofar as they show how I was proved wrong. There's no denying that Yoshi's is upscale (as is perhaps befitting of the coliseum of West Coast jazz). Here, I imagined The Supplicants would meet the detached appreciation of jazz intellectuals, those who at home have the boxset of cable's recent jazz anthology, and are adamantly versed in the who's who of jazz's history and present. Nothing wrong with that. Still, I predicted that this crowd might revere jazz as a fine art form, make it a pinnacle in the science of music, and then forget to let themselves go to its immediate figure and forfeit subjective titila-tion for objective understanding. Clearly, I am too quick to cat-egorize. When Boyce stares into the white stage lights and shades his eyes with a free hand to better search the crowd, the collective he sees is the same one that, with quiet appreciation and fervent attention, helps make the music. Gupta hears the audience's intermittent claps and gusty whews that sprinkle the session. He calls the whole meeting of magnet hearts and minds "bliss." On stage, Howell and Boyce banter and complete the synch-ronomy with tangy trebles and moving mids. They warm up, primed to speak some common language, and take the initial drum and bass exploration to the next level. Every note that Howell makes on the sax corresponds with an honest, jerky movement of his snaking form. Bassist Ewell's neck relaxes and his head rolls back into the sound-scape; his fingers spider over the frets. Boyce is relentless on sax and fills each burgeoning measure with an effortless harmony. Couples lean in closer together, one woman dances alone in the center aisle, and 50 seated bodies bend forward. Together, The Supplicants are dynamic because each brings individual experience to the stage. Gupta throws himself head-long into a pile of cymbals, drums, and gongs for percussion's sake; Ewell is a bass sensation; Howell has jammed with the likes Chaka Khan and soul diva Etta James; and Boyce sites as influence jazz's long repertoire of genius. While no player takes center stage, Howell makes a key observa-tion in the downtime between movements, "I know all of this might be going over your heads. But hopefully it at least stirs something in you. That is our purpose, to serve." The assertion isn't cocky; the band's premise is service. When he came across the word in Franz Kafka's short story title "Conversa-tion with The Supplicant," Gupta knew at once "supplicant" cap-tured the band's intent. By defini-tion, a supplicant "humbly asks for something before God." Tonight that something is a collective response, and that God (a laden word I hesitate to preach on) is conciousness is motion. Thank Oakland's presenting organization, Jazz in Flight, for the experience. Every month, Jazz in Flight hosts a Monday night concert series at Yoshi's that's one part of a decade-long devotion to the Bay Area jazz scene. Jazz in Flight puts music out for the community, helps to establish new musicians, and en-courages rare musical alliances. Jazz in Flight is a switchboard not just for today's musicians, but also for tomorrow's. In 1993, the organization spearheaded Children In Flight, a series of workshops for children of all ages every Sunday afternoon at downtown Oakland's Alice Arts Center. Participants perform free to the public at the annual Eddie Moore Jazz Festival, and at their own Kwaanza Celebration each December. Don't take my word. It's worth hearing The Supplicants for yourself live every Wednesday at The Black Cat in San Francisco. Or, check out Jazz In Flight's rotating Monday night warrior. Either way and anyway, jazz in the Bay is here to stay. To learn more about Jazz in Flight, get in touch with Will Anderson at 763.4663 or check out www.jazzinflight.org. [ East Bay | Metroactive | Archives ]