Bit by bit, the Museum of Contemporary Art is becoming indispensable to music in Chicago.
Earlier this year, the MCA presented a glorious tribute to the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a revered Chicago organization that never had been honored so prominently in its hometown.
And over the weekend, the MCA’s fifth annual Summer Solstice Celebration brought jazz, blues, Latin and other musical idioms to practically every corner of the sprawling museum. To see concertgoers of all ages and ethnicities flitting from one show to the next was to understand how a shrewdly programmed arts marathon can energize an audience and an institution.
The 24-hour soiree, which opened Friday evening and included everything from interactive sound sculpture to site-specific dance, culminated with a robust performance by South African musicians Hugh Masekela and Sibongile Khumalo on Saturday afternoon.
In some ways, Masekela and Khumalo recalled the pairing of Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald on several indelible recordings of the late 1950s. Granted, Masekela may not command Satchmo’s golden tone and infallible technique (who does?), nor are Khumalo’s impressive scat passages quite as miraculous as Fitzgerald’s (whose are?).
But the sheer size of their sound and the upbeat, life-affirming quality of their duets suggested that Masekela and Khumalo drew ample inspiration from the Armstrong-Fitzgerald precedent. Like their models, Masekela and Khumalo redefined easily accessible tunes with sophisticated improvisational techniques, thereby seamlessly bridging the worlds of Afro-pop and mainstream jazz.
Khumalo, who’s less familiar in the United States than Masekela, commands an enormous, wide-open sound. Yet she can manipulate it with more dexterity than one typically encounters from an instrument of such heft.
Like most of the best scat singers, she unreeled phrases with the aplomb of a skilled jazz trumpeter. Her slightly grainy, plushly textured tone made matters all the more interesting.
Khumalo also established links between seemingly unrelated musical genres, switching from one to the next without missing half a beat. How she managed to fit a long segment of Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” into the chord changes of a traditional South African folk tune remains something of a mystery.
Masekela’s distinctive mixture of jazz instrumentals, fiery oratory and songs of protest played as effectively as ever. In fact, the man outdid himself in one extended work, which he dedicated to laborers who died in the horrific diamond mines of his native South Africa.
If Masekela’s flugelhorn playing showed more technical gaffes than one might have expected from a player of his stature, perhaps these flaws were secondary to the deeper message of his set. To this day, Masekela reminds audiences around the world of the grim realities of South African apartheid. Even in its aftermath, Masekela seems to be saying, the story must not be forgotten.
On a lighter note, Masekela’s show was preceded by Chicagoan Angel Melendez leading a large, first-rate Afro-Cuban dance band. Though the use of electric keyboard ran counter to a musical tradition based on acoustic instruments, otherwise the Melendez organization proved authentic. Its emphasis on moderate tempos, crystal-clear instrumental textures and gently swaying rhythms must have made at least a few listeners wish there were a dance floor nearby.
At least the audience had the pleasure of watching the Chicago Latin Street Dance Company perform in front of the band, its spinning couples exulting in complex, Afro-Caribbean clave rhythms.
