The results are spectacular, with fiery improvisations, thrilling rhythms, and the kind of musical communication that’s sadly rare.
Chris Nickson hears how the Sudani Project Happened
fRoots, Root Salad
The Gnawa-Jazz fusion, which also does not neglect a hommage to Missisippi Blues, is simply ingenious.
Klaus Schönenberg
Africa Iwalewa
A distinctly jazz oriented, at times swinging, but mostly deeply spiritual mix of fiery music that must be heard to be fully appreciated.
Michael G. Nastos
All Music Guide
Sudani is the ambitious, genre-spanning project of New York alto saxophonist patrick brennan in collaboration with Chicago-born drummer Nirankar Khalsa and a number of Gnawan musicians, recorded live in Morocco with a stereo mic and portable DAT.
Pete Gershon
Signal to Noise
A soulful blend of jazz, blues and North African musical traditions.
Robert Seiden
Rhythm
Both musics stem from African bases of radically different sorts, but from a purely musical point of view, they meet on a common ground of improvisatory abandon.
Robert Seiden
Jazz Times
You need a lot of patience to listen through the whole CD. it whirls with its pronounced lack of recognizable melodic material, and its much too much free form, hectic, manic and unstructured.
Børge Blume-Jensen
Djembe
Some of the finest call-and-response patterns on record.
James D. Armstrong, Jr.
Jazz Now
Both are innovators within their respective cultural traditions.
Abdul Moimême
Flirt
I guess you just had to be there.
David Lewis
Cadence
Brennan believes after outsiders brought centuries of colonialism and slavery to Morocco and all of Africa, this recording project is a small opportunity to give something back.
Stephen Snyder
PRI’s The World
One for cranking up the volume, running around the house and punching the air shouting “Yes!” to.
Ian Anderson
fRoots
Here, something creatively new did not develop, but was simply Gnawa music with a jazz musician as guest.
Hans-Jürgen Lenhart
JazzThetik
This is an outstanding work lucidly played; well organized; and intelligent.
Tim Price
Saxophone Journal
BEST CDs of 2000.
Michael G. Nastos
World Socialist Website
We’d just call him a copycat.
Richard Cook & Brian Morton
The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD