Kosen Rufu

Album review

A reunion of sorts for several Herbie Hancock band alumni of the 1970s, Mike Clark's 2023 album Kosen Rufu finds the drummer joining forces with trumpeter Eddie Henderson and percussionist Bill Summers. All three musicians played key roles in Hancock's career at different times. An acolyte of Miles Davis, Henderson was a member of Hancock's landmark avant-garde fusion Mwandishi sextet, the group that preceded the Headhunters. Similarly, Clark replaced founding Headhunters drummer Harvey Mason in 1974, just after the release of the group's influential self-titled debut -- a period that also featured Summers. Throughout the rest of the decade, Henderson would bring members of the Headhunters together for his own projects, with Clark appearing on 1976's Heritage and Summers on 1978's Mahal. All of which is to say, there is a deep shared history between all three players, rooted in the exploratory jazz that Hancock championed. Joining them are several like-minded players who bring their own varied experiences to the proceedings, including legendary West Coast bassist Henry "The Skipper" Franklin, keyboardist Wayne Horvitz, and tenor saxophonist Skerik. While there are certainly moments that evoke the Headhunters' funk-inflected style, the album is more akin to the edgy, acoustic, post-bop and free jazz of Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy, the latter of whose "Hat and Beard" Clark and company tackle here with puckish, atonal aplomb. More evocative of the Headhunters' sound is "MC's Thing," a woozy, loping number where Skerik and Henderson share bluesy asides. There's also Horvitz' dreamy organ number "One for Mganga," where Summers sprinkles chimes, bells, and other sundry percussion against Clark and Franklin's clipped go-go groove while Henderson and Skerik squeal and coo into the harmonic atmosphere. We also get Franklin's "Olivia," a hard-swinging number in the tradition of Miles Davis' late-'60s quintet which is marked by moments of tonally open-ended, paint-spattered intensity from Henderson. When Clark, Henderson, and Summers first worked with Hancock they were all in their twenties and early thirties, young mavericks ready to explore the edges of the jazz universe. On Kosen Rufu, they are veterans, elder statesmen of the fusion age, yet they sound as inspired and ready to jump into the jazz unknown as ever.

© Matt Collar /TiVo