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In this issue's Alumni section:
Books: Working Poor - Music: Sax Appeal - Open Book: The College of Conversation - Off the Shelf - Chapter & Verse

Sax Appeal

Since leaving Harvard in 1984 to see if he could make it as a tenor saxophonist, Don Braden '85 has had a surefooted career. He's played with singer Betty Carter, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, and drummer Roy Haynes; released albums on two major labels, Sony and BMG; and even been a musical consultant for television, on The Cosby Show. In short, his newest release, The Fire Within, is the work of an accomplished professional. Still, there's often a nervous or tentative quality to much of this music.

Braden performs with his working band of two and a half years--pianist Darrell Grant, bassist Dwayne Burno, and drummer Cecil Brooks III providing solid backup--on six of the 10 tracks, four of them originals. The quality of his compositions ranges from "Incendiary," with its awkward and halting rhythms, to "Where There's Smoke," a very smooth, swinging ballad. On the whole, his pieces are workmanlike but make fine launching pads for his blistering solos.

The Fire Within, Don Braden, tenor saxophone. BMG Classics 02096 63297-2, $17.99.

Warrior Sisters: The New Adventures of African and Asian Womyn Warriors, Fred Ho '79, composer and conductor; Ann T. Greene, book and libretto; The Afro Asian Music Ensemble and Singers. Koch Jazz 7899, $24.99.

Purchase CDs mentioned in this article

Braden splits his time on the remaining four tracks between two other rhythm sections. One of them, the All-Star Trio, was supposed to include pianist Kenny Kirkland, but instead features only Chris-tian McBride on bass and Jeff "Tain" Watts on the drums. Kirkland, sadly, died one week before the session date; Braden declined to replace him with another pianist and dedicated the album to Kirkland's memory. The second ensemble, the Julian Joseph Trio, joins Braden to perform Joseph's tribute composition "Doctone" (Kirkland's nickname). It's the most interesting musical selection on the album and begins with a kind of fantasia for bass, played with verve by Orlando LaFleming.

Braden and his sidemen have great facility, but their improvisational work is less impressive. Braden himself often relies on his considerable technique a bit too much. Take his version of "All or Nothing at All": it teems with notes, and contains some of the best soloing on the disk, but just as often lacks shape and destination, seeming to whirl and spin in place.

Braden's album suffers from its desire to please. I once had the opportunity to travel with pianist Chick Corea and gained an unexpected insight into his genius. After spending about 10 days in the sometimes stultifyingly 'nice' social culture of Japan, Corea said, "I almost want someone to curse at me." Corea's playing reflects this confrontational sensibility. He can be indifferent to an audience, and seems to like to shock them as much as seduce them. But Braden doesn't allow himself the full range of his expression. He would do well to let out some of his fire within.


Experimental composer and baritone sax player Fred Ho '79, on the other hand, couldn't be more brazen. His new opera, Warrior Sisters: The New Adventures of African and Asian Womyn Warriors, offers his trademark Asian-tinged instrumentations, soulful rhythms, wailing dissonances, and radical rhetoric. (The chorus chants "All Power to the People!" at one point, and a duet extols the virtues of "Black Revolutionary Love.") Warrior Sisters depicts three nineteenth-century revolutionaries--the Boxer Rebellion's Fa Mu Lan, the pre-Ghanaian Ashante empire's Nana Yaa Asantewa, and the Chinese-American feminist Sieh King King--who travel through time to the 1970s to help Black Liberation Army leader Assata Shakur escape prison.

Introductory vamps and abstract vocal lines are the rule, but Ho varies his rhythms nonstop. In the second scene of act one, for example, after establishing the goofy sound of a barbershop quartet, the sixties beat of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Were Made for Walking" takes over. Thanks to an excellent saxophone section that unfortunately doesn't include Ho, the swing is inspired; all the musicians sound like they're having great fun.

What I like most about Ho's recording is its amateur spirit. Though some of the singers are well trained, Ho pushes their technique to the limits, and often beyond. Anthony Alioto, as Governor Hodgson, has to sing so high that he stretches his voice taut as a rubberband. It's not a pleasant sound--almost like the voice of Kermit the Frog--but it is audacious direction and characterizes the pettiness of the British bureaucrat well.

As part of its twenty-fifth anniversary, the Office for the Arts asked alumni about their artistic experiences at Harvard. While Ho had warm things to say about the grant he received to write "Liberation Genesis" for the Harvard Jazz Band, he also stated that "Harvard...was very alienating for me. Its Eurocentrism and elitism were particularly infuriating, so I plunged myself into radical activism...." This, though, may also qualify as an artistic experience for Ho. His interest in jazz is born of his political views. "Music that's been called 'jazz' said a lot to me," he has said, "because it came out of the experience of an oppressed people." I find this idea alien (I like jazz because of the way it can make me feel), but I respect the ability to communicate zeal through art, no matter the source. Warrior Sisters, like much of Ho's work, is gutsy music with the passion of a cause.

~ Daniel Delgado


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