Uncle Ho plays Hendrix

Nguyên Lê (git), Himiko Paganotti (voc), Illya Amar (vibes, malletkat),
Linley Marthe (b),
Chander Sardjoe (dr).
"The French-Vietnamese guitarist Nguyên Lê stands for the fact that globalization does not necessarily mean cultural egalitarianism, but can also create something new of its own quality, like hardly any other musician. Since he became the first exclusive ACT artist in 1993, after "Jazzpana", he has developed into the great ethnologist of jazz music, entirely in the spirit of the equally cosmopolitan thinking label founder Siggi Loch. There is hardly a musical region with its styles, idiosyncrasies and outstanding representatives that has not aroused his interest and that he has not transformed into one of his always self-contained cultural puzzles: Whether he devoted himself to Vietnamese stories, Far Eastern sounds ("Saiyuki", ACT 9483-2) or the Magreb ("Maghreb & Friends", ACT 9261-2) - especially on the four ACT albums with the enchanting singer Huong Thanh so far - or reinterpreted the classical trio format of jazz in the groundbreaking trio E_L_B with Peter Erskine and Michel Benita.

Perhaps his most successful, critically acclaimed fieldwork was 2002's album "Purple - Celebrating Jimi Hendrix" (ACT 9410-2), which approached the American guitar myth he has always revered from a universal jazz perspective. Lê follows up on this "work about a part of African-American culture," as he himself called this groundbreaking homage, with his new project, perhaps his most ambitious to date. "Songs of Freedom" is, in his words, "a tribute to the musicians who established pop culture in the seventies with their mythical songs. So mythical that they now belong to everyone on the planet and so global that they've become world music in the sense of music the world listens to."

With Nguyên Lê, they have truly become songs of freedom, Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" (from whose lyrics the album title is borrowed) as well as hits by Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton or the Beatles, whose "Eleanor Rigby" and "Come Together" frame the album - honor to whom honor is due. Lê takes the liberty to free these icons of pop and rock history from layers of dust like from gold leaf and to transfer them into the present and into the global village, with the help of his genius as well as his band reinforced with many outstanding guests from all over the world.

Illya Amar on marimba, vibraphone, and electronics, Linley Marthe on electric bass, and Stephane Galland join Lê to form the energetic, rhythmically propulsive, yet always loose and airy framework of these transformations. The singers Ousman Danedjo, Dhafer Youssef, David Linx, Himiko Paganotti, Julia Sarr and Youn Sun Nah, the percussionists Karim Ziad, Stephane and Prabhu Edouard, Hamid El Kasri, Keyvan Chemirani and the saxophonists Chris Speed and David Binney each give the songs their own personal signature. Lê arranges and uses these musicians masterfully in the appropriate, yet always surprising sound context. Several times he reaches out to his guests with short, self-composed intros and introduces them perfectly.

So here are no cover versions in the usual sense, here are well-familiar melodies with all respect introduced into new, pulsating streams of sound from all over the world. "Music is like a bird. Once set free, it flies into every sky. The earth becomes rounder and rounder, inviting all cultures to exchange and absorb each other. And so comes the freedom to make these songs his own: Still lovingly playing the original melodies, but with the boldness of his own arrangements that celebrate the kingdom of imagination and fantasy," says Nguyên Lê. That these poetic words are not too lofty, this album proves beyond doubt: Just listen to how the soul of Stevie Wonder's "I Wish" dives completely harmoniously into Caribbean-Asian soundscapes, how Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz" suddenly rolls not only over Californian but also Indian, Japanese and French roads, or how the band - led by the as always unrivaled precise, but here also unexpectedly rocking and irresistibly intense Youn Sun Nah - turns Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" into a rousing whirlwind.

"Come Together" is therefore not by chance the last title of the album, it stands for the program. On "Songs Of Freedom" Nguyên Lê brings together people and sounds of the most diverse origins in a captivating way and in a previously unheard range: West merges with East, North with South, great voices with individual instrumental virtuosity, the sounding heritage of the past with the sound of the future."(Source: ACT Music)