Mwenso & the Shakes Headline NYCs Charlie Parker Jazz Festival

By Kevin C. Peterson

There are distinctly black and global elements at the center of Michael Mwenso’s pointedly blended jazz performance. Highly disaporic, the music he plays — with his eclectic ensemble of eight — plumb rhythmic ideas that span over continents, ethnicities, genre, time and tempo.

Within his music abide restless spirits, ephemeral influences, ghosts and apparitions that are incanting — and which seduce listeners with remembrance and persistent melodic charm.

Mwenso & the Shakes bring their singular sound to the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, Friday, August 23, 7:00 pm at Marcus Garvey Park, in Manhattan with special guest Fred Wesley. The event is sponsored by City Parks Foundation.

The sonic output of Mwenso & the Shakes is arresting solely on the basis of its ambition and flight in the direction of grandiosity — seeking to amalgamate the vast categories of jazz, rhythm and blues, Afro-pop and the American songbook in a melange of sound that pay punctuating homage to each genre, while also creating something slightly new.

“What we are really trying to do is…a few things,” said Mwenso during an interview earlier this week: “We are trying to play the music — Afro-American music, folk music, root music … rhythm and blues…