Chile

Chile was -increivle- (pronounced "een kray EEV lay") = incredible. I was on tour with an increivle guitarist named Fareed Haque (he is 1/2 Chilean). My favorite piece was an arrangement of Herbie Hancock's Canteloupe Island — a funky jazz tune which I arranged as a rap tune. The crowd went nuts every night!! :-)

Wanna "hear the lyrics? Ok here goes:

"Canteloupe Island"
(adaptation + lyrics by Kenwood Dennard)

This arrangement starts out with a drum solo

Rapper: (ooot ooooa oooa oooooa)
Audience: (oooa oooa oooa oooa ) 4x

(Yo voy traerte a Canteloupe Island
In order that you can keep on smilin') 4x

Let me take you to a place you never been before
but just the same it's the same high place
with a beat a beat that's so unique U GO
when you rockin' right-a-outta yo seat
same ship new day gonna take you there freak-
t'the beat without a care
-I got rhythms you never even felt before
all up in y'body get on the floor. D.C. ......

(Yaaaaaaa ya ya yaaaa yaaaaa.) 4x

Rapper: (oooa oooa oooa oooa)
Audience: (oooa oooa oooa oooa) 4x

I worked with Fareed with Joe Zawinul in 1996.

Well back to Chile: I was working with five people in the line up: Leny Andrade, a famous and loving and brilliant and strict vocalist Javon Jackson , and famous "young lion" of the bebop world. Larry Kohut on upright, excellent upright man, and Willie Pickens, a virtuosic and seasoned keyboardist. The repetoire on this Chilean tour with Fareed Haque was primarily standard jazz repetoire which all the musicians know collectively: The scenario is as follows in a nut shell:The band leader would ask if everybody knew a given tune, and if nobody said "no", we would do the tune...

That was totally different from a beautiful musical situation I found myself in in July 1998... That was with the band "Dreams Come True", they were the famous pop band from Japan... They had lots of specific repetoire I was not familiar with, and they needed it to be perfect like the record... Because of my spontaneous jazz background, I found it challenging to sit and memorize all that specific music, but I did it and in the end it was EXTREMELY rewarding! That was one and a half years ago... I did memorize that music — "MASA AND MIWA of DREAMS COME TRUE" yyaaaaay! That was a totally different situation.

I find it lots of fun usually in a jazz situation, to make up the music spontaneously as we go along — by listening and reacting quickly... Also not too long ago I recorded with the group Niacin! If you haven't heard it I recommend our c.d. 'HIGH BIAS" featuring Billy Sheehan, Jon Novello, Dennis Chambers and Chick Corea- now there was a situation where I had to memorize some real complicated music in only one or two days!- Kevin Trudeau's Mega Memory system has helped! And so, Groovagitilizers, there is a retrospective on my 1998 trip to Chile!