Pulling Up Roots

AUDIO

Omar Sosa
"Para Ella"
(excerpt)

Omar Sosa
"Ojos Locos"
(excerpt)

(Files require RealPlayer)

I'm moving to Europe because I want to be close to Africa," says pianist Omar Sosa over the phone from a Paris hotel room. The Cuban-born Sosa is in the midst of a European tour supporting his latest CD on Ota Records, Inside, and he's talking about his recent move to Barcelona from the Bay Area, where he lived and worked for several years. "I want to be close to Europe, I want to be close to New York, I want to be in what I call the middle of the world. But mostly I want to be close to Africa, because for me, the mother is Africa. I have a mother, my real mother, mi mama, and I have another mother in my religion, but the big mother for all the black people in the world is Africa."

Sosa is likely making a smart move. Scott Price, Sosa's manager, producer, and Ota Records partner, says that Sosa's albums (he has recorded six so far) have been received much more enthusiastically in Europe, in part because "there's a larger young audience for progressive and sort of 'hip' jazz than there is here in the States." And Sosa, who lovingly refers to the Bay Area as his "second country," can't be faulted when he also notes that "it's a small scene, though." Since Sosa's arrival here from Ecuador in 1995, he has injected the local music scene -- in particular the local Latin jazz and salsa scene -- with an incalculable amount of virtuoso playing ability and startling originality.

A pianist of seemingly boundless energy and technique, Sosa's most striking aspect is perhaps his enormous stylistic range, which springs from his unique worldview and diverse background. Born in Camaguay, Cuba, he was trained as a percussionist at the prestigious National Music School in Havana. When he couldn't find his first-choice instrument -- marimba -- he began to focus on the piano. Having studied everything from Afro-Cuban folklore to European classical music (interestingly, he says now that he never expected to play jazz, because "in Cuba there's a lot of competition"), Sosa began to work with several popular Cuban pop singers in the late '80s, and even helped jump-start a Cuban hip-hop scene in the early '90s through his collaboration with Cuban rapper Ofil. Moving to Ecuador in 1993, he formed a jazz fusion band, Entrenoz, and then landed in the Bay Area almost by accident after a visit in 1995.

Quickly connecting with some of the Bay Area's best Latin jazz and salsa musicians, he played steadily on the local salsa circuit with Fito Reinoso's Ritmo y Armonia and with percussionist Jesus Diaz before striking out on his own to record six of his own albums. Marvels of cross-cultural pollination, Sosa's albums -- most notably Spirit of the Roots and Free Roots, parts one and two of a planned "Roots Trilogy" -- mesh Afro-Cuban piano styles with a jazz sensibility, as well as liberal doses of hip hop and funk, all infused with his own distinctly personal compositional style.

All of which means that Sosa isn't boasting when he talks about merging the many different cultures that nurture and inspire him. "For me," he says, "the world goes in one fusion between different cultures. This is my vision about the future. This is why I try to do the music like I do: Afro-Ecuadorian music, Afro-Venezuelan music, Afro-Cuban music, Afro-American music. Because for me the world is like that, it's one big place with so many different types of variety." These far-flung influences sometimes bubble to the surface in surprising ways -- like the touches of an Afro-Ecuadorian choir and the spoken word rapping of Will Power on Spirit of the Roots -- but also stem from someone clearly enamored of the jazz tradition. "This is what I feel about jazz: Jazz is freedom," he says. "If you like jazz in this life, you are a jazz man. Even if you do music or no."

As a boy in Cuba, Sosa's father played Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole records every Sunday. But the son's love for jazz didn't really flower until later, when he was exposed to the music of Thelonious Monk. "I started to really love jazz when I found Monk. When I found his music I say 'Wow! This is the guy!' This is what I expected about music, not only about jazz, but about music, because it's freedom. Play whatever you want, no matter what! Because so many people start thinking 'OK, this phrase don't go here. These changes don't go here.' But this is stupid shit, man! Because what is good and what is bad? It's nothing, man. It's whatever you feel!" Sosa's angular phrasing, as well as his sometimes dissonant and percussive soloing style, are clearly indebted to the revolutionary jazz pianist, as they are to another icon of the jazz avant-garde, Cecil Taylor, whom Sosa appreciatively calls "another crazy motherfucker!"

But Sosa's appeal isn't all dissonance and bombast, a point that is beautifully demonstrated on Inside. A delicate and reflective solo piano recording captured in manager Price's living room over two days last December, it finds Sosa in an impressionistic, introspective mood. At times, it's almost reminiscent of Bill Evans' playing, as on the beautiful opener "Para Ella." But it never fails to be almost achingly personal and unpredictable, as on "Ojos Locos" when Sosa reaches inside the piano to pluck strings like a harp. For Sosa, the album marks what was a somewhat trying time for him. "You know, it was simple, I was... I don't want to say depressed, but I start thinking about many things, I start reflecting, about moving out of the country, to Europe, and for me the music is a spiritual thing, you need to express what you have inside of you, so this is the point behind this album."