Bassist Rich Brown Explores Diverse Terrain with New Album

By Sharonne Cohen I Jul. 1, 2016

Bassit Rich Brown (shown here with saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa) is a valued collaborator as well as an innovative bandleader.
(Photo: Myles Regan@Regan Digital Media)

Toronto-based bassist Rich Brown’s latest album, Abeng, features not only complex, intricate writing and superb, highly emotive playing, but also a timely, powerful message about unity.

The name of Brown’s album (and band) is a tribute to the bassist’s Jamaican roots: An abeng is a traditional African instrument made from a hollowed-out cow horn, played by the Maroons (escaped African slaves who lived in Jamaica). The instrument was used to communicate messages and call the community together for social gatherings.

Brown likens the role of the abeng to that of the artist in society. In the album’s liner notes he writes of a heavy heart weighed down by “recurring instances of racism against me personally, and against all Black people,” filling him with anger, sadness and confusion. “The abeng is needed today … . People are being oppressed, abused, and even killed while our culture is appropriated.”

A self-taught electric bass player, Brown sought out jazz in his early teens. “I had no idea what jazz was, but I remember seeing some sort of news story or documentary about it,” he recalled. “They played an excerpt of a Louis Armstrong solo, and the narrator explained that the solo was completely improvised. That blew my mind. I started searching the radio daily for any jazz I could get my ears on.”

Growing up in the 1980s, Brown listened to r&b, funk and reggae, but he also gravitated toward jazz-fusion sounds. “It wasn’t until much later that I finally got into more traditional artists, like Bird and Coltrane,” he said.

As a youngster, Brown learned to play guitar and then transitioned to bass at the age of 17. As a teen, he would play along with pop songs on the radio for hours on end. When he attempted to play along with the weekly jazz program, however, Brown found himself completely lost.

“At that point I knew I had a hell of a lot of work to do,” he said. Brown began listening to Jaco Pastorius, Victor Bailey, Jimmy Haslip and Alain Caron, studying the chords and scales as well as the solos.

Around age 19, Brown heard Steve Coleman’s 1991 album Black Science and experienced an epiphany: “Stylistically, it was the music that played in my house as a kid, but the rhythms were even more structured than those I’d come to know and love playing progressive rock in the band I was in at the time. It was like some sort of spiritual homecoming.”

The versatile Brown has been active on Toronto’s music scene since 1992, contributing to more than over 40 recordings that range from jazz to funk, Latin, traditional Asian and Arabic music. He has also appeared as a musician in the feature film Glitter, the TV movie The Natalie Cole Story and the television series Soul Food.

In 1999 Brown joined Andy Milne’s band Dapp Theory, contributing to two of the band’s albums. “Andy was the keyboard player in Steve’s Five Elements group, and I think it was during my time with [Dapp Theory] that I started to find my voice as a bass player,” Brown said. “It definitely planted the initial seeds for me as a composer.”

In 2004 Brown formed the group rinsethealgorithm, with the goal of modernizing jazz as dance music. “The term ‘rinse’ is used in DJ culture,” he explained. “To accomplish a given task at a very high level is to ‘rinse’ it; the algorithm refers to that task.”

Rooted in the jazz tradition, Brown’s music is also influenced by the jazz-rock and jazz-funk of the past—including music by Miles Davis, Weather Report and John Scofield—as well as hip-hop, r&b, funk and the style known as broken beat. Overall, the sound is innovative and fresh, anchoring complex harmonic and melodic concepts in a groove-oriented rhythmic foundation.

The release of the group’s debut album Locutions (2008) was followed by Brown’s impactful solo bass recording Between Heaviness & Here (2014).

He has also done high-profile work as an accompanist, working with Donny McCaslin, Steve Coleman and Five Elements, James “Blood” Ulmer, Vernon Reid, Andy Narrell, Hermeto Pascoal and many others.

The catalyst for Abeng was an invitation by pianist Vijay Iyer to join the faculty at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 2012. “Working alongside Vijay and the other faculty members was very inspirational,” Brown recalled.

Nominated for a Juno award (Jazz Album of the Year: Solo), Abeng contains Brown’s most stimulating work to date. His collaborators on the disc include some of the top jazz players on the Toronto scene. Joining him are Luis Deniz (alto saxophone), Kevin Turcotte (trumpet), Kelly Jefferson (tenor saxophone), Larnell Lewis (drums) and Rosendo Chendy Leon (percussion). Piano duties are split between Chris Donnelly and Robi Botos, who also plays Fender Rhodes on one track.

Melodically and harmonically progressive, the eight original pieces showcase Brown’s signature grooves, memorable melodies and arrangements, continuing to draw on jazz-funk and jazz-rock influences as well as NYC-based artists he has worked with throughout his career (including Coleman, Rudresh Mahanthappa and Steve Lehman).

Brown creates music that is sophisticated yet accessible, challenging yet centered on groove. The compositions allow for creative ensemble playing while offering space for the individual players’ superlative solos.

The bassist said that the album’s overall message is a call for “a show of strength and unity” to challenge racism, ignorance and divisiveness.