A Second Slice of Roy Hargrove's Crisol

Out Friday: A previously unissued studio recording from 1998

Roy Hargrove’s Afro-Cuban conversion experience happened at the 1996 Havana Jazz Festival.

After performing as a headliner with his group, the trumpet player and composer made nightly rounds, sitting in with dance bands and at jam sessions at the Riveria hotel and across the city. In the informal settings, Hargrove mixed it up with the legendary pianist Chucho Valdes and some of Cuba’s dazzling young talents, many of them still students. He was no stranger to Latin music, having played in merengue bands coming up, but, as he told a New York Times critic afterward, he was awestruck by the timekeeping intensity he felt from the Cubans: “The rhythms here are so deep it's already left an impression on me; it has definitely changed the way I play."

Hargrove acted on this inspiration right away. The following year he assembled a group he called Crisol (loosely, “melting pot”) that included several of Cuba’s most incendiary (and therefore in-demand) percussionists -- Miguel “Angá” Diaz and Changuito (José Luis Quintana) — playing alongside such formidable improvisors as guitarist Russell Malone and saxophonist David Sanchez.

The resulting album, Habana (1997), blended elements of big band mambo, ‘60s hard bop and soul jazz into a roaring – and frequently danceable -- party. It brought Hargrove a Grammy award, and cemented his reputation as a fearless genre traveler.

Those who knew Valdes’ group Irakere and other Latin-jazz outfits hailed Habana as a welcome development; here was an artist going into the nuances of the son pulse, getting beyond the cliched dazzle that rendered other Latin-jazz smashups instantly corny. Both live and on record, Crisol was cruising an open road alive with possibilities and cross-pollinations; you wanted to hear this group evolve, see where it might go next.

Now, at last, we get that chance. On Friday, Verve will release Grand-Terre, a studio recording made in 1998 with the same Cuban percussionists and a slightly different band. It’s quite possibly the most significant Hargrove release since his premature death in 2018; it’s also Chapter Two in the life of a band that should have had a longer run.

Its blistering, heat-seeking moments underscore a truth known to many musicians who’ve endeavored to learn music based on the Afro-Cuban clave: It can take years to fully assimilate its nuances.

Hargrove got the Dizzy Gillespie/Chano Pozo fire right away, but there are moments on Habana when his phrases arrive overstuffed with compound bebop clauses. The solos on Grand-Terre show growth. Check out his chorus on the lovely, long-toned melody of “Audrey.” First he sneaks in, furtively looking toward the blues. Then his thinking shifts to groups of triads; he attacks the first note of each as though determined to show the drummers that they are not the only ones keeping time. That sparks an ongoing exchange with Diaz on conga drums. Hargrove leaves lots of space, letting Diaz lead; when he replies, it is with crisp single-note jabs that both align with the pulse and slash against it, integrating the exactitude of the clave into what rapidly becomes a group agitation.

Grand-Terre offers countless moments like this, fleeting indications of Hargrove’s evolution as improvisor and bandleader. Sometimes they’re arrangement features, as in the percussion exchanges that link the two-chord mambo “B and B” with the long tradition of danceband showdowns. Sometimes they’re compositional – check the horn voicings of “Priorities,” which evoke the Wayne Shorter-era Jazz Messengers in counterpoint to Julio Barreto’s incantational vocal.

Another revealing “tell”: Everything feels settled. Crisol’s first record was a soloist showcase; it draws its heat primarily from the leader and other jazz ninjas. Grand-Terre is equally exploratory, but because it happened after Hargrove and band had played together in all kinds of live situations, the grooves resonate differently – there’s poise and a distinct unity at work. This is less a what-if project and more of a band.

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I was at the Havana festival in 1996, with a team of musicians and journalists there to witness not just an incredible lineup but the first Carnival in Cuba in five years (there had been problems with the power grid that prevented public gatherings at night). From house parties to the nightly parades and concerts, there was a feeling of awakening everywhere we went. I got to hear the stupendous blind pianist Frank Emilio Flynn in multiple configurations -- playing solo at a swanky rooftop hotel bar, with his trio at a festival party, with his larger group, which included Hargrove’s rhythm team of Diaz and Quintana, in a sold-out concert.

Hargrove seemed to be everywhere — if you missed him in the early evening you could count on finding him at the Riveria jam session later on. I remember a bunch of us leaving the session on probably the fourth night; it had been an exhausting day of music, and at that point nobody from Hargrove’s band was there. It was probably 2 or 3 in the morning. As we walked the hotel’s long hallway, we heard that distinctive trumpet, lifting the band into a higher gear. Without saying a word, we turned around and headed back, magnetized by the sound. Roy Hargrove had that effect.