Bill Bruford’s Earthworks - Bajo Del Sol (Live In Santiago, 2002)

This is from a great 2002 date in Santiago de Chile. Tim Garland wrote the song and is featured on bass clarinet, with Mark Hodgson on bass, Steve Hamilton on piano, and myself on traps. ‘Traps’ by the way is a diminutive of ‘contraptions’ which is probably what other musicians in the Vaudeville and Music Hall era of the early 20th century thought the guy with the sticks at the back of the ensemble was playing. Clanging cymbals, Chinese tom toms, blocks, bells, whistles, ratchets, thunder sheets and other contraptions were all part of his ever-changing traps set. This video Bajo del Sol has a strong Spanish flavour, reminiscent of something pianist Chick Corea might have written. Jazz has always been a messy fusion of this with that, and has probably survived this long precisely because of its ability to absorb, appropriate and morph into something like something else, but not exactly. How I’m coming to resent the 20th century hangover of the terms jazz and rock; two of the principal music genres of th