Neighborhoods

Though he was established as a cutting-edge jazz trumpeter and worked with such beyond-category artists as Bill Laswell and Brian Eno, Olu Dara successfully reinvented himself as a blues musician, leaning more towards pre-electric country-blues styles. NEIGHBORHOODS is aptly titled--listening to this is like taking a brief but exhilarating guided tour through Africa ("Massamba"), New Orleans ("I See The Light"), and the bluesier parts of the American South ("Herbman"). Dara is an artist who grasps the concept that various and seemingly disparate forms of music have more common ground than most people realize, and he communicates these "common grounds" with warmth and style.