Carlos Henriquez – Bass

I was not watching the Marsalis bands for a while as he kind of lost me when he started getting all ‘traddy’ before I was ready to let go of the really Modern stuff he had been playing up until the 90s but I have been rediscovering his more recent recordings lately and found this gem yesterday. I was listening to this track and wanted to have a closer look because of the incredible time changes that were happening (Prog Jazz Fusion?). What was fascinating was the fact that the actual pulse is almost static throughout and the time changes all amount to a different way of dividing up the beats. If you listen to this without the chart in front of you, you will think it is a lot hard to play than it actually is. The only real challenge is those few furious bars (8 or 16) where Henriquez plays double time. Otherwise, just watch the time signatures and keep the tempo steady.

The track is called ‘Supercapitalism’ and it appears on the 2010 Wynton Marsalis album, ‘From The Plantation To The Penitentiary’. An incredible bit of writing and a stunning vocal from Jennifer Sanon (a new voice to me).