CD Review Moving musical melting pot

By Earle Hitchner

LARGO, Blue Gorilla/Mercury Records 314-536-877-2.

In 1892, Antonin Dvorak became director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. The Czech composer stayed three years, and in that period he absorbed American folk music, Native American melodies, and Negro spirituals, all of which influenced one of his masterworks, Symphony No. 9 in E minor, “From the New World.”

Both Rob Hyman, co-founder of the Philly-based rock band the Hooters, and Rick Chertoff, producer of best-selling albums by Cyndi Lauper and Joan Osborne, clearly admire the immigrant sweep of Dvorak’s symphony, its stranger-in-a-strange-land quality. The two decided to create a pop-rock-folk mosaic inspired particularly by the symphony’s famed second movement, “Largo,” played, as the term implies, at a slow, dignified tempo. (Dvorak himself drew inspiration for this second movement from the funeral of Minnehaha in “The Song of Hiawatha” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the first American poets to employ American themes in verse.)

The Chieftains, suggesting the seminal Irish influence on American traditional music, capture the stately beauty of the “Largo” theme in the album’s opening track. But the second cut, “Freedom Ride,” breaks out of that measured tempo with all the emancipating force of the train described in the song. Bluesman Taj Mahal sings lead with as much passion as any vocalist could muster, adding hoots and barks to simulate the rhythmic sound of a hard-charging locomotive. It is a tour de force, perfectly complemented by his own harmonica, the organ playing of Hyman, and the electric-guitar and hurdy-gurdy work of Eric Bazilian. Simply put, this is pop-rock music at its heart-pumping best.

“Gimme a Stone,” with David Forman and the Band’s Levon Helm alternating lead vocals, is ostensibly based on the biblical story of David and Goliath, but it also hints at the “tall” challenges awaiting many immigrants to America. It’s another rave-up here, bolstered by the Dixie Whistlers.

Appalachian music, sustained by Bazilian’s five-string banjo playing, forms the underpinnings of “Disorient Express,” which reveals the tawdry underbelly of that earlier “Freedom Ride” taken by Chinese immigrants toiling on America’s railroads.

A different immigrant ride surfaces in “Medallion,” named after the cabs driven by so many newly arrived immigrants, this time, Pakistani. The echo-ladened lead of Willie Nile conveys the frustration and resignation of a cabbie shortchanged by a fare and, in a sense, the American Dream, and the song aptly closes with “The Star Spangled Banner” sung to an effectively skewed melody by Forman.

The blues reappear on “White Man’s Melody,” sung with brooding brilliance by Cyndi Lauper, who’s a revelation here. The lines “He was looking in the mirror / He was putting on the paint / Said the hardest thing about this job / Is being what you ain’t” refer to Al Jolson, famous for the blackface he often wore while singing, but they also refer to the demands of assimilation for immigrants, the false face they sometimes have to put on to get by. Conversely, in “Before the Mountains,” doo-wop-style vocals by Forman, Johnny Stompinato, and Chertoff, as well as a closing coda lifted from the Isley Brothers’ 1959 R&B hit “Shout,” stress the inevitable absorption of American culture by immigrants trying to fit in.

It is these seeming contradictory impulses that make “Largo” so intriguing and thought-provoking.

The Chieftains add deft Irish traditional instrumentation to “An Uncommon Love,” sung by Joan Osborne, with Carole King, the song’s co-writer, providing harmony. Se_n Keane’s fiddling especially stands out on this unabashed ballad of love, which has all the earmarks of a deserved pop hit.

Derek Bell’s harp and Matt Molloy’s flute playing distinguishes the Chieftains’ reprise of the “Largo” theme on the album, which also features “Vishnu Largo” by Hyman on Hammond organ and “Garth Largo” by the Band’s Garth Hudson on a host of instruments. The latter has a surreal, sci-fi introduction on synthesizer that eventually gives way to a jazz-inflected version of Dvorak’s theme in which Garth and his wife, Maud, layer in Duke Ellington’s “Creole Love Call.” It’s a small triumph of imagination.

This entire album, what marketers haltingly call a “concept recording,” is a large triumph of imagination, far-reaching in its grasp of what makes America’s music so diverse and vital. Melting-pot music? You bet. And with an irresistible beat to boot. “Largo” is a brave New World amalgam of rock, pop, folk, blues, jazz, classical, and ethnic sounds that soars high above the ruck of mainstream music today.