Words by Justin Turford
The ever inspirational Olindo Records has now got a sister! To be precise a sister label entitled Música Infinita and she kicks off her new life with this barnstorming album of 1970’s funky Venezuelan Jazz-Rock.
Gerry Weil wasn’t actually born Venezuelan. In fact he is a native Austrian (he’s 81 now and still full of joie de vivre) and moved to Venezuela in 1957 when he was 17 years old but has become one of the most important composers in his adopted homeland with many of his songs regarded as standards in the jazz scene. Inspired directly by Miles Davis’s superlative album of jazz-rock fusion ‘Bitches Brew’, the avant-garde hippy culture of the late 60’s / early 70’s around the planet and scenes like the jazz-rock petri-dish around the US band Chicago (before they became the soft-rock behemoths of later years). It was a time of musical exploration and experimentation everywhere and young Venezuelan musicians were riding the same wave. Hendrix, the ‘Brown Power’ axis around bands like Santana, the interstellar vibrations of Alice Coltrane and Funkadelic and Sun Ra were guiding the wide-eyed to space. Or Woodstock, whichever was nearer.
It helped that Gerry owned the only Fender Rhodes in Venezuela and the pick of the best players in the country. Everyone wanted to get in on this recording and so in 1971, in a studio too small to fit all fifteen players in at the same time, ‘The Message’ was created and it’s a monster. Explosive brass à la Tower Of Power, filthy overdriven guitars and Gerry’s own impassioned gravelly voice imploring the spirits for love, peace and all those other great things the hippies dreamed of. As with much fusion there is a LOT going on. There’s a big band swing about album opener ‘The Joy Within Yourself’ and Gerry himself manages to sound like a an old man blues mixture of Richie Havens and Tom Waits at his most crazed. His nimble Rhodes playing is counterpointed by the luscious 1940’s style female choir and this in turn is swept aside by a fierce guitar solo by Vinicio Ludovic. It is bloody ambitious but it works!
The track ‘The Message’ was a surprise local hit when released on 45 and it’s a beauty. With it’s proto-rap, heavy heavy rhythm section and punchy brass arrangements, it sounds like a distorted Gil Scott-Heron anthem fronted by Joe Cocker. The raw and funky ‘The Bull’s Problem’ has a bit more of a Caribbean flavour to it with it’s loosely swung drums, congas and cowbell action, Gerry’s Rhodes playing really hitting the heights, duelling dangerously with both the bass and trumpet. This could have been released on Strata East Records such is it’s crack avant-garde groove.
All of the songs on‘The Message’ are worth your time and attention, this is a stellar first release for Música Infinita and we really can’t recommend it enough. Fifty years is a long time in music but this record hasn’t lost any of it’s verve and freshness. Maybe it is the raw, organic sound, perhaps it is the belief, energy and love that the band put into the recording sessions? Whatever it is, this snapshot of a hopeful time in a country far from here is a serotonin boost to the brain and food for the soul.