Bakithi Kumalo:

Transmigration.

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If the drum is the lifeblood of all music, then the bass is its pulse. You don't just hear the bass so much as you feel it--it courses through you on a visceral level and guides you through the more obvious melody. In the hands of a master, such as Stanley Clarke or Jaco Pastorius, the bass is a musical force with no peer. On Transmigration, Bukithi Kumalo proves himself to be such a master.

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While Transmigration is his third album, Kumalo is probably best known to American audiences for his work on Paul Simon's world beat-driven Graceland, where his swirling bass playfully danced with Simon's alliterative lyrics to help create one of the first commercially successful "world beat" albums. It's safe to say, I think, that Kumalo's work there has helped to establish much of Simon's signature sound since.

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On his previous solo efforts (San' Bonan and In Front of My Eyes), South African native Kumalo focused his efforts on the African textures that are his roots. With the aptly titled Transmigration, however, he draws on those roots, fleshes them out and gives them truly international wings. As a journey of the soul, as its title loosely implies it is, Transmigration is a tour de force of musical idioms united by the commonality of jazz and a determination to return to its wellspring.

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The journey that is Transmigration begins in the decidedly urban landscape of "Twilight Fire" and ends, appropriately enough, with the haunting "Africa". It's the stops along the way, though, that make the album a fully realized excursion. And throughout it all, Kumalo's bass effortlessly guides us through the various landscapes, speaking to us in a commanding way not heard since Stanley Clarke's heyday. Kumalo's thumb-slapping style lends itself naturally to pieces like "Looking Forward", sliding smoothly from the percussive lead of the bass to the complimentary keyboards and back again, as he does similarly on the sax-infused "Step by Step." And on the one vocal number, the R&B influenced "Only Your Love", his bass serves as an almost erotic counterpoint to former Chaka Khan background singer Penny Ford's vocals.

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Kumalo is by no means a dilletante, however. While he is one of the very few bassists capable of elevating the instrument to the status of lead--which he does formidably on several tracks here-- he also recognizes the value inherent in the traditional role of the bass in jazz. In "Trio", he eschews his electric bass in favor of an upright accoustic and commandingly complements Bill Smith's piano and Damon Duewhite's drums. It's a song that both plays tribute to the fifties roots of progressive jazz and stands alone as an evolution of the genre.

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But it is "Africa" that stands as the true tribute to the roots of jazz and indeed, all music. It is not only the finale but the centerpiece of Transmigration. A solo effort in which Kumalo plays wood flute, guitar, bass, drum, as well as delivering a haunting vocal chant, "Africa" takes us to that primal well from which all music evolved. It is in that haunting simplicity that we first found our voice and it is in that same simplicity that we evolve.

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What Bakithi Kumalo has done with Transmigration is taken us on a flashback exodus from the current state of urban jazz to the very roots from whence it arose. He, along with producer and sometime collaborator Chris Pati, has lifted jazz from its stagnant state of the last decade and returned it to its rightful position of grace. While we're only six years into it, Transmigration may very well be the most important jazz album of the 21st century thus far.

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