Sweet Tooth

Here's a heady blend of ancestral Native American and Canadian First Nations culture and the emotive energy of contemporary free jazz. Composer, bassist and singer Obomsawin's family, the source of some of her material, are descendants of the Wabanaki Confederacy of tribes, extending from present-day Canada down through the states of Maine (where Mali was raised), New Hampshire and Vermont.

The ‘family song’ in the Abenaki language on opening track ‘Odana’ segues to a free-ranging original composition with three horn and reed players, drums and guitar, along with Obomsawin's bass, the result delightfully evocative of Ornette Coleman's visionary ensembles from the 1960s. In the second of this suite's three movements, Obomsawin cannily deconstructs a hymn imposed by 17th-century Jesuit missionaries, interpolating a mourning song from the Passamaquoddy tribe. The pairing of bass with a prerecorded tribal storyteller on ‘Pedegwajois’ parallels the work of Wabanaki pianist Jeremy Dutcher with wax cylinder recordings of his ancestors. An impelling chant from the Penobscot tribe on the final track, ‘Blood Quantum’, follows an alluring amalgam of rock, blues and jazz worthy of the late drummer and bandleader Ronald Shannon Jackson.