Music from the Sacred Grounds
Nick Naffin Group
Northern Breeze
1995
10 tracks
Although a relative newcomer to Canada, guitarist Nick Naffin has been around the international jazz scene for enough years to establish a distinctive personal style. His CD release, Music from the Sacred Grounds, is a focussed representation of what Nick Naffin has become as a musician — as an artist. Music from the Sacred Grounds is an interesting and evocative work which defies classification.
While Naffin’s compositions are clearly jazz based, they incorporate elements of Latin tempos, rock, that music which is elusively called "roots"or "world beat", and have a clear relationship to the broad genre of "new age" music which is rarely, if ever, called jazz. The blend is seamless and innovative, bringing to this music a quality that sets it apart.
While a lot of so-called "new age" music tends to work well only if used in a background and meditative sense, the music of the Nick Naffin Group seems to change and grow with volume. As background music, this selection of Naffin compositions is comfortable and pleasing, whether as a backdrop to conversation or as an aid to meditation. Listened to more closely and quite a bit louder, the music is vital and exciting and has a distinctive edge to it.
More than seeming related to any contemporary music, the sound here reaches back in time to the late sixties and some of the more experimental recordings of artists such as Paul Horn or, more commercially, the Mystic Moods Orchestra. In fact, much of this music has a very visual feel to it that makes it easier perhaps to compare it to works like Spirit of the Land, a book by Canadian photographer Courtney Milne. Like Milne’s book, this CD contains a series of representations not just of sacred grounds but of the spirituality which arises out of them.
The spiritual base upon which this music rests is underlined by the title of the CD and by inclusion in the liner notes of quotations by James A.Swan, Henry David Thoreau, and Theodor Schwenk, all extolling a mystical relationship with the earth expressed as a musical metaphor, especially in sacred places.
I was especially attracted to "Edith in the Rain" and "Fundance" for their vitality and to "Ear of the Beholder" for its graceful elegance. Like "Edith in the Rain", . "Mohave" rocks, literally and figuratively. The title tune feels much sparser than many of the other pieces and is a bit more academic than it needs to be.
Over all, Music from the Sacred Grounds is an intelligent, well articulated expression of a spiritual place where many of us want to be as this century nears its end. It is definitely music worth owning and listening to more than once.
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Review written: 1997
Page last modified: February 14, 2004
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