There’s cultural appropriation, and then there’s cultural homage. This album is firmly the latter.
The drums are undoubtedly jazz but carry a tribal cadence. The brass ranges from smooth to harsh and everything in between. The piano is perfectly scattered. The bass is a human walking, standing still, sitting, sleeping, just being. The strings are scarce and jagged. The overall feel is walking through a city in Africa, taking in the colors, the smells, the sounds, and being very deliberate about absorbing every grain of the culture.
I’m not going to break this down track by track because the album is a cohesive experience. There are only two tracks, “Africa” and “Mikrokosmos”, and listening front to back you could easily mistake it for one continuous song. The transitions are seamless, and the momentum never lets monotony find a foothold.
Maybe Gaslini studied music in Africa and this is his account of it. I don’t know, but I’d be genuinely shocked to learn this record isn’t a journal of experience. It has that feeling, lived-in, deliberate, reverent.
I’ve never seen it in the US, but if you do come across it, passing on it would be a journey lost.