After adding Cuban-born conguero
Carlos "Patato" Valdes to his backing group on the recommendation of jazz DJ Sid Torin,
Herbie Mann mounted a State Department-sponsored tour of Africa that further expanded his musical horizons --
Flautista!, recorded live at New York City's Basin Street East in June 1959, captures the flutist's deepening immersion in global rhythms and harmonies, documenting a pan-cultural jazz aesthetic that points the way for the myriad world music efforts that followed in its wake. Favoring a subtle, thoughtful combination of bebop melodies and Afro-Cuban rhythms, the group -- also including
Valdes, vibraphonist
Johnny Rae, bassist
Knobby Totah, and percussionists
Santos Miranda and
Luis Mangual -- delivers a beautifully light yet hypnotically insistent performance that suffers from none of the awkwardness endemic among these kinds of early fusion efforts.
Mann even detours to the Far East for a cool, graceful rendition of the exotica staple "Caravan." Verve's 1998 reissue appends a pair of unreleased cuts, "Delilah" and "Basin Street Este." ~ Jason Ankeny