Kickstarter

Hi everyone!

We are one week away from the big day. Pucusana will be released to the world! We are so excited and it is all possible thanks to your contributions.

Your gifts are being arranged as we speak and will be mailed, emailed or phoned in the week after the CD release. Everyone's name is being added to a special section of the new website as a thank you.

You may be intereseted to know that our publicists DL MEDIA have been hard at work. Among other things, we are going to be the "editor's pick Cd" in the August online edition of Downbeat Magazine. that should drive some traffic to the new website which will be up and running in the next few days.

Here is a transcript of the press release that I promised to share with you:

Gabriel AlegrÌa & The Afro-Peruvian Sextet
Fuse Music From The Coast Of Peru With Modern Jazz
on Forthcoming August 6 Release, Pucusana
Album Features Keyboardists Russell Ferrante and Arturo O'Farril

The growling clarion call evokes old jazz, Louis Armstrong, and New Orleans, but the cries
in Spanish, the percussion, and the gentle, looping groove takes us to a different place. Both
familiar and fresh, those first bars on Peruvian trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Gabriel
AlegrÌa's Pucusana, are also a declaration of principle of Afro-Peruvian jazz music.
"Taita Guaranguito," is a traditional Afro-Peruvian folk song, smartly reinterpreted as a jazz
piece. In fusion, the sum is often less than the parts. Here, it's a celebration of a common
spirit. "What we discovered over the years working in this music, is that there is a certain similar
energy between pre-1940s jazz and Afro-Peruvian music," says AlegrÌa. "There is a connection,
something about their spirit, so when you [bring them together], it feels really natural. We don't
play in a traditional jazz style, but it's not about harmonies or a certain rhythm. It's about the
intention in the playing. There is a joy, a positive energy, that is present in the jazz esthetic of
musicians like Louis Armstrong.†

This same esthetic is also present in Afro-Peruvian music."
"If you go to a traditional peña (a gathering where Afro-Peruvian music is played) or a jarana (a
musical party, typically in someone's home) in Lima, you'll see there the energy you see in the
old films about jazz, that energy of the audience participating, shouting, really connecting with the
musician," says AlegrÌa.†

"Even though our sound is modern, when you see the band perform,
what you get is very much the traditional Afro-Peruvian energy. The audience is really part of
what we do. There is a lot of shouting encouragement. There are specific hand clap patterns
to various grooves that the audience does in traditional shows and we make sure the audience
knows these patterns and participates. The energy is always there, and that energy is very much
part of the Afro Peruvian tradition. We are just using it in a modern context."
Pucusana is AlegrÌa¥s second recording with his Afro-Peruvian Sextet which features the
leader on trumpet and flugelhorn and originals by AlegrÌa and saxophonist Laura Andrea
LeguÌa, as well as two traditional Afro-Peruvian songs and an innovative reading of Rogers and
Hammerstein's "My Favorite Things" arranged by AlegrÌa. But while he has done most of the
writing and arranging, AlegrÌa gives its members much credit for the final result.

"Our percussionist, Freddy "Huevito" LobatÛn is the super star of our band," says AlegrÌa.† "He
provides us with the all-important connection to the Afro-Peruvian tradition. Guitarist Yuri
Ju·rez employs the vocabulary of traditional criollo music in a contemporary harmonic setting,
and our drummer Hugo Alcazar is the pioneer of drumming in Afro-Peruvian jazz music. All of
the patterns he plays on the drum kit are derived from individual percussion parts played by
traditional instruments. The sound we generate in the group is very much a collective effort and a
coming together of very distinct personalities."

And for Pucusana, Alegria also got the support of keyboardists and composers Russell Ferrante
(who appears on "Taita Guaranguito," "Pucusana," "Piso 19," and "Mono De Nazca") and Arturo
O'Farril, who contributes on "My Favorite Things."

Gabriel Alegria was born in 1970 into an important artistic family in Lima, Per˙. His grandfather
Ciro AlegrÌa was an influential novelist, journalist and politician in the 1940s and 50s.† His father,
Alonso is Per˙'s most acclaimed playwright and theater director. He discovered jazz by listening
to records, and then got involved as a player at the National Conservatory, where Martin Joseph,
an English jazz pianist, was leading a workshop. Since, he has received a master's degree from
the City University of New York and a doctorate in jazz studies from the University of Southern
"The first trumpeter I discovered was Miles Davis and the electric things he was doing in the
1980s -- and then I went backwards, finding what he and others had done before. That's how I
Not surprisingly, echoes of Miles Davis can be heard throughout Pucusana, most notably
in "Mono de Nazca," an original piece that features AlegrÌa playing with a Harmon mute over
a traditional festejo rhythm. The juxtaposition creates a curious sort of Miles-in-Lima effect.
AlegrÌa muses "Miles is a big point of reference for me - his spirit, his willingness to explore ideas,
to go forward. Everything that we can do to acknowledge Miles, we do."

Throughout Pucusana, the music has a distinct, sensual bouncy groove of Afro-Peruvian
music. "In this album we use variations of two rhythms: the festejo and the landÛ. All the
fast songs in the album - "Mono de Nazca," "Pucusana," "Piso 19" --† are festejos.† "Taita
Guaranguito," and "Toro Mata," another traditional piece, are landÛs. It's a slower groove."
Being firmly rooted in Africa, explains AlegrÌa, Afro-Peruvian music has no clave, the underlying
five beat pattern in much Afro-Cuban and Afro-Caribbean music. Instead the styles within Afro-
Peruvian music have many variations but, like the African-rooted American jazz music, no clave.
"It's like we are having a conversation about jazz and you say: 'Is that swing? And that slow
groove, is that swing too? And that's medium swing?' This is exactly the same," explains
AlegrÌa. "It's not a rule that you have to play festejos exactly the same every time. It has many,
many, many variants just as there are variants of swing patterns in a ride cymbal for a drummer.
So all the songs in Pucusana that are in festejo patterns are all different. Even 'My Favorite
Things' is done as a festejo, but it's in a minor mode, slightly slower than a regular festejo in
major." Also, "Piso 19," anchored in a festejo groove, at one point breaks into double time swing
and features very effective straight ahead blowing.

AlegrÌa has worked with The Peruvian National Symphony and artists such as Maria Schneider,
Placido Domingo, Kenny Werner, Ingrid Jensen, Tierney Sutton, Natalie Cole, Bill Watrous, John
But with Pucusana, he firmly establishes himself as an artist to watch in one of the most
important trends in contemporary jazz: The development around the world of a fusion of jazz
and indigenous styles. It's a variant that draws from the essential elements and practices in jazz
while also incorporating some of the repertoire, vocabulary and instruments of the local music.
"For me this music is the result of an evolution over time, " says AlegrÌa. "Growing up, while at
the conservatory, there was a group of us in that jazz workshop, listening to Afro-Peruvian music,
artists like [singer] Eva AyllÛn and some World Music experiments like [the group] Hijos del
Sol.† Those were our reference points - and then [those in that group] we have gone in different
directions, using jazz language in very specific ways. "We've been working on this since the late
80s and it has taken awhile, there's been a lot of trial and error, but now we have a defined sound
that we are proud to call Afro-Peruvian jazz music."

Upcoming Gabriel AlegrÌa- Afro Peruvian Sextet Events:
Friday, August 6 - Tutuma Social Club, New York, NY - 8 PM, 10:30 PM
Saturday, August 7 - Litchfield Jazz Festival, Litchfield, CT - 12 PM
Saturday, August 7 - Tutuma Social Club, New York, NY - 8 PM, 10:30 PM
Sunday, August 8 - Tutuma Social Club, New York, NY - 7 PM
Gabriel AlegrÌa ∑ Pucusana
Saponegro Records
Print/Online Release Date: August 6, 2010
Radio Release Date: August 31, 2010
Please visit http://www.gabrielalegria.com
†
For media information, please contact:
DL Media ∑ (610) 667-0501
Jordy Freed ∑ jordy@jazzpublicity.com