FREDDIE HUBBARD — Sing Me a Song of Songmy (composed by Ilhan Mimaroglu) (review)

FREDDIE HUBBARD — Sing Me a Song of Songmy (composed by Ilhan Mimaroglu) album cover Album · 1971 · Third Stream Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
js
Actually, this isn’t really a Freddie Hubbard album, but his contributions to Ilhan Mimarogla’s composition are so strong and essential that it has, over the years, found its way into Freddie’s discography. Mimarogla gives Hubbard and his band free reign during much of this album and they respond with fierce energetic aggressive free bop that matches the harsh intensity of Mimaroglu’s texts and recitations about war. This album is one of those bizarre concoctions that seemed to thrive in the late 60s and early 70s. The combination of Mimaroglu’s atonal electronics, Hubbard’s crazy jazz and the theatre aspect of the poetry makes for music that is more reminiscent of an avant-garde art rock concept album than a composer’s piece.

Mimaroglu’s synthesizer and tape manipulated music was created during a brief golden age in electronic music. At this time, synthesizers were still difficult beasts that were unreliable for conventional music, but were perfect for the modern composer looking for new sounds. Electronic music will never be this wild and real again, digital control has made the modern synthesizer no more than an organ with fancy filters and envelopes. There are some moments on this album when Ilhan will bring the noise into one of Hubbard’s free jazz workouts. These moments are the highlight of the album, it sounds as if a chaotic jazz band just careened off the stage and fell into a beautiful nightmare.

This album is very much a product of its time, extremely creative and genre breaking, but also sometimes indulgent and almost kitsch, but it’s a good kitsch. Fortunately the poetry has aged well, its neither maudlin nor exploitive of its subject and is usually dry and realistic as much of it was composed by those who have endured war as either a victim or a soldier. This is definitely an avant-garde piece, but one that is probably easy to digest by those who like this sort of late 60s creative extravagance. For Hubbard fans, this is a unique side to one of the greatest trumpeters ever, and as an added bonus, he also takes on the role of harsh poetry reciter on one cut.
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