Indulge me in a little experiment: conjure up some "world music" in your mind's ear. What do you hear? If you're anything like me, the phrase evokes something anodyne and bloodless: vaguely African drumming, mellifluous but unintelligible vocals, and likely little complexity on offer.¹

Native Dancer has many of the accoutrements I associate with world music. But pejorative "world music," this is not: it's a rich, nuanced tapestry that captivated me from the first listen. It's also another example of the frustratingly squishy label "jazz fusion" that we've seen several times by now. However, on that front, Native Dancer has a much more legitimate claim to be "fusion" than its peers: it heavily features the enthralling vocals and compositions of the Brazilian musician Milton Nascimento—this truly is a blend of jazz and Brazilian traditions.

But though Nascimento's contributions here are laudable, he only gets second billing—this is Wayne Shorter's album. It is with no small measure of self-satisfaction that I share I was able to deduce this independently: after my first listen, I knew that I had heard that focused, piercing saxophone tone² before; with much straining of neurons I was finally able to discern the source as Heavy Weather.³ Shorter is one of those musicians who seems to have been at the centre of every big jazz group: he cut his teeth with the Jazz Messengers, played with Miles Davis, then left that gig to co-found Weather Report. Oh, and if that wasn't enough, he won Downbeat magazine's critics' choice award for soprano sax—for ten years straight.

One of the great successes of Native Dancer is that it lets both Shorter and Nascimento shine. In "Ponta de Areia," "Miracle of the Fishes," and "From the Lonely Afternoons," Nascimento's vocals are the main attraction—layered like rushing waters that create an inexorable current that drags you in and along. Shorter is largely a co-conspirator in these efforts, but he takes command on tracks like "Beauty and the Beast," where he injects a healthy dose of funk, and "Ana Maria." I'm also impressed by the pacing of the album: tracks like "Diana" offer a softer, quieter reprieve between the big vocal numbers. And not to put too fine a point on it, but the jazz element of "jazz fusion" comes through clearly here, unlike a certain other album we've heard.

It bears reminding that this is not the first Brazilian album we've heard: on The Best of Two Worlds, the standout track was "Aguas de Março," which was inspired by the long, torrential March rains of Rio de Janeiro. Native Dancer is also a distinctly Brazilian album, but in this case… the Wayne's Shorter.

Favourite track: Ponta de Areia