Joe Zawinul had moved from Cannonball Adderley onto Miles Davis. Than straight into founding the iconic fusion band Weather Report. He began a solo career in 1959. And during the same time as Weather Report,he released a fourth solo album entitled Zawinul. Weather Report broke up in 1986. And Zawinul was completely devoted to that group from its very beginning to its very end. In the same year he released his fifth solo album and first one in 16 years. It had a pan ethnic conceptual arc that was similar to Duke Ellington’s Afro Eurasian Eclipse. The album was called Dialects.
Zawinul stated on the CD reissue of Dialects that it was his favorite album because he felt (unlike a lot of musicians) that his concept for tone poems based on his world travel over the decades left itself better to him playing everything on it. That made Zawinul a non conformist in the jazz world of the time-celebrating electronics and new compositions at a time when the more neo conservative jazz movement of the Young Lions had taken a stronghold. When I got the CD during my days hanging out with musician/DJ Nigel Hall,the song that caught my attention most on the album was called “Zeebop”.
The song gets a complete cold start. That consists of what amounts to three heavily industrialized sounds. One is a pounding,percussive drum machine. The other is a flat,constant synthesizer tone. And all are topped of with a layer of white noise static that is mixed just as high as the drum machine. At first Zawinul’s melodic improvisations are on a steel drum sounding synth that is buried fairly deep in the mix. As the song goes along,several layers of synth brass accompany each other in call and response harmony. And it is that aspect of the song that continues right into its fade out.
“Zeebop” is the only song I’ve heard whose sound could be likened to a full electrical charge of sound through the body. Its not noisy rock theatrics or an ambient type atmosphere. Its meditative,tribal and highly Afrocentric. The sound of it all may be a bit frightening with its sonic intensity at first. Especially since its the only fusion number I’ve heard with pure static as a main element of its sound. This goes right along with the world fusion sound of the mid/late 80’s very well. It just happens to be,perhaps,the most intense and driving examples in terms of its sound sonic’s.
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