Jacques Coursil - Trails Of Tears '2020

Tracks list

Trumpeter, Jacques Coursils Trails of Tears is quite simply, a monumental
undertaking and a major work that ought to bring to light some of the earlier
work that comments on colonialism in America, such as the equally important
Gorée (Schemp, 1984), from Beaver Harris/Don Pullen 360˚ Experience; that
composition itself being a strident dirge about the history of slavery in the
western-most point of Africa, which was, at one time the centre of the slave
trade. It was from Gorée that white colonialists bought Africans as slaves,
transporting them from this point in West Africa to South America, notably
Brazil as well as to the Caribbean, and also to what is now the continental US.
Why is this preamble so important to Trails of Tears?

Well, for one, this album is a moving lament, a dirge that mirrors one of the
worst displacements of Native American people, hauntingly similar to the
displacement of the African Diaspora. Only this music describes the lament of a
people—the Cherokee, who were forced to leave their traditional homelands
in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee between 1830 and 1839, a slap in the face of
one of the most civilized, loyal Native Americans delivered from the so called
colonial government. The history of this heartbreaking migration comes vividly
alive in the remarkable and dramatic lamentation in seven parts. This is
Coursils musical Way of the Cross, one that unfolds like a sharp angular liturgy
that is sure to become part of the literature of the trumpet, something that has
not been added to music since Wynton Marsalis From the Plantation to the
Penitentiary (Blue Note, 2007) and, of course, Beaver Harris and Don Pullens
seminal work on vinyl.

The tears are heard from the beginning, on Nunna Daul Sunyi (the trails where we
wept). The dry-eyed weeping of the dramatis personae is offset by the viscosity
of the stream that emerges from Coursils horn. His unique deconstruction of the
language of the trumpet and subsequent recreation lies somewhere in between that
jungle growling rap of Bubber Miley and Rex Stewart, and Coursils own Creole
vocalizations, through uniquely pursed embouchure and ululating with tongue and
cheeks. Both seem inextricably locked in with mind body and soul. This gives his
work behind the horn a vivid and unheard of quality. His rhythmic attack is
magnificent and primordial, and he is in fine company with the likes of alto
saxophonist Mark Whitecage, keyboardist Jeff Baillard and pianist Bobby Few,
especially on his airy meandering in The Removal Act II, the concluding part of
the two-part suite that aurally paints the haunting uprooting of a people and
their dissipation as a tribe in exile. And then there is Gorée and The Middle
Passage, that bring the liturgy of this great lamentation to a merciless end.

Trails of Tears is the work of a musician with a magical, burnished horn, who
stands head and shoulders above most trumpeters practicing their craft today.

Tracklist: 
01. Jacques Coursil - Nunna Daul Sunyi (Le Chemin Où Nous Avons Pleuré)
(7:06)
02. Jacques Coursil - Tagaloo, Georgia (4:46)
03. Jacques Coursil - Tahlequah, Oklahoma (3:08)
04. Jacques Coursil - The Removal (Act I) (11:25)
05. Jacques Coursil - The Removal (Act II) (6:07)
06. Jacques Coursil - Gorée (4:33)
07. Jacques Coursil - The Middle Passage (2:43)

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