Joe Bowden – Music is Life

The Nova Scotian drummer Joe Bowden (based in Toronto) offers with Music is Life (he is so right!) his sixth opus in about thirteen years. Solidly accompanied by Warren Wolf on vibraphone, Manuel Valera on piano, Rich Brown on bass, and Mike Downes on double bass, Bowden explores the possibilities of music rooted in rhythmic complexity that does not overshadow the clarity of the upper lines, which are more motivic than fully melodic. A certain economy of lyricism that doesn’t deter the desire for a framework exuding optimistic energy, all this with modern harmonies inherited from Hard Bop and Post Bop.

The groove draws from funk, though the sonic aura filling the headphones is rarely typically indebted to that quintessentially black music. With Bowden, this kind of rooting is more distilled into a spirit of intrinsic jazz fusion than characterised expression, to which the synth sound adds a good dose of wit.

That said, and surely, Music is Life strikes a vital chord and knows how to please those who love jazz that is as intuitive and spontaneous as it is knowledgeable.