Another of Berendt's meetings, SABA 1967. George Gruntz, the Basel pianist who would later run the Berlin Jazz Festival for twenty years, with Sahib Shihab on saxophones and Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, and a group of Tunisian musicians: a bendir and darbuka drum ensemble and Salah El Mahdi on ney flute. The title turns Dizzy Gillespie's tune on its head.
UK Vibe, reviewing the Nicola Conte compilation that includes Djerbi, points out that the famous names are not the point: it is the lesser-known Tunisian drummers and the ney, as rooted in Sufi tradition as in jazz, that make the track special. RateYourMusic files the record under Arabic jazz and avant-garde jazz, and Gruntz made a companion the same year, Drums and Folklore: From Sticksland with Love.
The Jazz Meets series that SABA/MPS ran from 1965 into the 1970s (Japan, India, Indonesia, Spain, Tunisia) is where Berendt coined the phrase world music for what he was doing. This is the North African entry, made two years before Gruntz's better-known work with the Concert Jazz Band.
Japanese CD edition from Solid's MPS series.
