Mbókò is the ECM debut as a leader of the Cuban pianist and composer David Virelles, born and raised in Santiago de Cuba and based in New York. Its subtitle, Sacred Music for Piano, Two Basses, Drum Set and Biankoméko Abakuá, names both the line-up and the source. Ten original pieces draw on the ritual music of the Abakuá, a male initiation society in Cuba with West African roots, and turn its rhythms and symbols into contemporary composition.
The title can mean "fundament", "sugar cane" or "The Voice", the voice of a spirit in Abakuá belief. At the centre of the music is Román Díaz, who plays the four-drum biankoméko ensemble and sings, and whom Virelles calls "a title-holder in this tradition". The booklet credits Díaz and Ivor Miller as cultural resources. Around Díaz are Marcus Gilmore on drum set and two double bassists, Thomas Morgan and Robert Hurst. Virelles had moved to Canada in 2001 and to New York in 2009, studied composition with Henry Threadgill, and appeared on ECM with Tomasz Stańko and Chris Potter. The album was recorded in December 2013 at Avatar Studios, New York, with James Farber as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer.
Virelles has said he is "not necessarily a participant" in these religions, and describes his work as retranslating elements of their symbolic music "for here and now". The two basses work less as counterpoint than as a single drone, and much of the melodic weight falls on the drums. Seven, Through The Divination Horn is angular and dense with polyrhythm. Stories Waiting To Be Told begins with fragments of piano melody set against silence, and The Highest One is sparer and more lyrical.
In The New York Times, Nate Chinen heard "a feeling of dusky enigma in these compositions, but also a gripping suspense". John Fordham of The Guardian wrote that Virelles explores Afro-Cuban sacred and ritual music "through imaginative fusions with contemporary materials". JazzTimes made it an Editor's Pick, and DownBeat gave it four and a half stars, with Peter Margasak placing the heart of the music in the exchanges between Virelles and Díaz.
This is the CD edition, ECM 2386, first released on 10 October 2014.
