ECM weekends • No.13: Codona “Codona”

Tracing ECM entries by the iconoclastic Don Cherry this and next weekend.

Codona was one of the most impressive and quietly innovative jazz combos of the late 1970s. Formed on behest of the sitarist / percussionist Colin Walcott (of Oregon + long-running association with Meredith Monk) and including Don Cherry and Naná Vasconcelos. Both well into their international stardom. The project name is the abbreviation of members’ forenames.

The material that they set out to play was more world music (pardon my language) than jazz. Let’s just call it global sounds… Impeccably tasteful, spacious and subtle these ethno-stylings are further cross-pollinated with a softer side of post-Coltrane modally-inflected idiom and Coleman-esque angularity. The lineage trajectory is made explicit with “Colemanwonder” - a show-stopping medley of covers drastically re-interpreting two compositions by Coleman and one by Stevie Wonder and featuring one of Cherry’s most eloquent tone ever recorded. Not that it’s always beneficial to his highly individual style, but in the context it works splendidly.

Apart from Cherry’s trumpet and flute the rest of the instrumental colour is decidedly non-Western and at the time fairly unusual for a jazz-adjacent ensemble. Walcott plays sitar, tabla, mbira and hammered dulcimer. Naná supplies his instantly recognizable berimbau and cuica. All three sing in meandering style of Cameroonian makossa – perhaps inspired by contemporaneous albums of Francis Bebey. I especially like “New Light” with tour-de-force dulcimer part by Walcott. Sort of like that Michael O’Shea self-titled record with Cherry’s dreamy trumpet lines on top. This one is really special. Surely one of ECM best moments.