Luis Gasca: "The Little Giant"

Purchased back in my hometown of Omaha over the holiday break, this is a lovely little album, recorded right in that period where quote-unquote “Latin music” was making a transition between its earlier regional forms to a more universal groove that incorporated a number of disparate musical elements.  There’s a bit of breezy bossa nova here, thundering Afro-Cuban- and NuYorican-influenced percussion hurricanes there, and even a touch of avant-garde jazz, due mostly to the presence of Joe Henderson on sax.  There are interpretations of Mongo Santamaria’s “Afro-Blue” and the traditional “Motherless Child,” the former of which plays it relatively safe and occupies the same space as its original counterpart, while the latter is a radical re-arrangement of the standard tune, sounding less like the gospel field holler it started out as and instead coming off like the melodic and percussive result of spending a Friday night in Havana, the next night in San Juan, then flying back to New York and going straight to Spanish Harlem on Sunday morning.  There are other gems here also, like Moacir Santos’ trance-like “Cosia No. 2” and Hubert Laws’ Afro-Latin groover “Just A Little Bit.”  Gasca himself is in great form, playing flugelhorn alongside a host of renowned NYC session musicians like Chuck Rainey, Richard Davis, Steve Berrios and Marty Sheller, among many others.  This LP serves as a bridge between two worlds—the older, more provincial tendencies of pre-1960’s music met with the heady, freer possibilities of the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s, where albums like this laid the groundwork for a newer, bolder era.