Inana
(Pi Recordings PI41)

Another day, another quarter-tone trumpeter! That’s a reason for rejoicing.

In fact, the Iraqi/American Amir ElSaffar’s music is nothing like the Lebanese/French Ibrahim Maalouf’s, reviewed earlier this week, though it does share some Middle Eastern influences. While Maalouf makes a pop-friendly world jazz with rock overtones, ElSaffar makes a strongly spiritual jazz which incorporates other musical traditions in a grander tradition, the tradition of Randy Weston, perhaps, or the AACM.

The fact that this trumpeter shares record labels with Henry Threadgill tells us all we need to know about quality and adventurousness. One can almost glimpse the silhouettes of the great musicians stretching back in time, back and back down the centuries.

For not only does this music have a wonderful, dusty, ancient quality to it, while also being thoroughly modern and forward-pushing, but this particular recording celebrates an ancient goddess. In Greek and Roman times she might have been called Aphrodite or Venus, but to the Babylonians she was Ishtar, later Astarte, and to the Sumerians she was Inana.

ElSaffar, who in addition to trumpet also adds vocals and the Perisan hammered dulcimer, the santour, is joined by Ole Mathiesen on soprano and tenor saxophones, Zafer Tawil on oud and percussion, Tareq Abboushi on buzuq (an Arabic lute related to the bouzouki), Carlo DeRosa on bass and Nasheet Waits on drums.

There is a rich earthiness to the sound, especially when the stringed instruments are dominant, but the horns add another layer of rich timbres and harmonies, and provide some of the most explosive moments.

Listen to them in unison on Inana’s Dance (IV) with the band churning behind, and then thrill to Mathisen’s tenor solo as it builds and builds in complexity and intensity, being joined and then supplanted by ElSaffar in equally transcendent mode.

The layering of drums and bass, then oud and buzuq, then saxophone and trumpet is just breathtaking in its richness, like viewing a skyline of juxtaposing roofs through a wrought iron grill and all that through patterned gauze. There are fascinating patterns and designs  at each level, and each enhances the next.

And such great stories are here – of battles and clashes, of seduction and opulence, of demons and gods. Journey To The Underworld is another real highlight, though in fact this album is highlights from beginning to end.

This disc was released in the States in November and made it on to quite a few end of year best of 2011 lists. If I’d managed to get on to it before the new year, it would certainly have been high on mine.