Matt Jenson

November 14th, 2009

Rebel Tumbao (Rebel “GROOVE”)

Matt and Jose have been working hard to complete new tunes and arrangements in preparation for the new Rebel Tumbao full length recording. The riddim section tracks will be recorded in NYC the last week of August and we plan to finish it sometime before the holidays for release early 2011 with tours set up for later in that year.

We’re very excited to announce that we’ll be working with RUBEN RODRIGUEZ (bass), ANTHONY CARRILLO (percussion) and ORLANDO VEGA (percussion) completing the rhythm section for the recording. ALSO, we’re blessed to be receiving guidance and inspiration from GREG LANDAU, an amazing musician, engineer, producer who works seamlessly between the reggae and Afro-Latin worlds.

TUMBAO — túm-‘Baó (Spanish) 1a: slang – to play music with extreme passion b: to groove your ass off

Before you do anything, please see our “Rebel Tumbao is…..” video to the right!! Also, the only recording we have to date is a 3 song demo featuring arrangements of Marley’s STIR IT UP, IS THIS LOVE and REBEL MUSIC. It hasn’t been released yet, so all that’s posted on this site are short excerpts. You can hear them on the music player to the right, below the video.

Rebel Tumbao (Rebel “GROOVE”) is the soulful merging of the earth shattering rhythms of Afro-Cuban soul and the conscious-raising mission of Reggae. At the center of this creative endeavor is its brain-soul-child, pianist/arranger Matt Jenson and José Clausell, world-renowned timbalero with Maestro Eddie Palmieri for the past 18 years. Matt and José met at an Eddie Palmieri summer camp workshop in Vermont (USA) 8 years ago and the two visionary musicians quickly realized a mutual calling to play deep, soul nourishing music with a genuine concern for the well-being of the planet and the people who live on it. The musical brotherhood was so compelling that they formed a partnership to bring forward this supercharged music and 10-piece band that merges Roots Reggae and Roots Afro-Latin vibrations with original compositions (See some of Matt’s lyrics for these originals to the right, below.) and wicked arrangements of Bob Marley’s music, all with a critical social message for our times. The sound of the group is squarely based in the sonic depths of the 1960-70’s soul, reggae and Afro-Cuban eruption yet arrives in the early 21st century creatively merging these styles with a contemporary depth of understanding and subtle use of electronic textures. (Listen to brief excerpts of Matt’s arrangements of three Marley tunes via the music player to the right.)

Matt (who is an assistant professor of piano at Berklee College of Music in Boston) and José are committed to presenting this music on the absolute highest artistic level and aim for international success via touring, recording and presenting educational programs.

We are also in the process of raising funds for the project and upcoming recording. Last March we held a hugely successful fundraising concert in Oakland, Ca at Piedmont Piano company. We presented a special “unplugged” version of the group featuring Karl Perazzo (percussionist with Santana for decades!), Toussaint Yeshua on vocals and Geoff Brennan on bass. The house was packed! (Our video from this event will be completed soon.) We will probably be holding another fundraising event in Boston or NYC this Fall or Winter, but in the mean time you can make tax deductible donations via our association with Fractured Atlas.

ALSO, if you wish to help support us RIGHT NOW, you can join our email list (above, right) and also consider that in this day of internet connectedness many organizations from indy microfunding companies, to booking agents and artist managers rely on energy generated through social networking sites such as Facebook to help determine their interest in working with a new musical project. In light of this we would GREATLY appreciate your becoming a fan on our Facebook Rebel Tumbao page.

August 27th, 2010

First recording session for new CD

We finally got ourselves into the studio to begin the new Rebel Tumbao recording! I’m (Matt) writing this the morning after the session and in a state of exhausted inspiration. We completed simply WICKED rhythm tracks for 7 out of 11 tunes and the ball is now rolling with lots of editing and overdubbing work ahead of us. It was a fantastic pleasure and honor for me to work with Ruben Rodriguez (bass), Anthony Carillo (percussion), Orlando Vega (congas) and of course, Jose Claussell (timbales). All of these amazing musicians took to heart the Rebel Tumbao vision which is just as the band name name states: GROOVING in the name of a positive and progressive rebellious movement! And we mean groove: we all worked hard to create deep and spacious riddims within our goal to soulfully merge roots reggae and roots Afro Cuban music, something that you don’t hear that much these days

Our videographer, Ron Wyman, was on hand shooting two days of footage (and still shots). He is every bit as much a part of this band as the musicians are! Soon we will be posting a piece combining footage from this session and from our Oakland, CA fundraising concert back in March.

June 23rd, 2010

Getting ready for the recording to take place late August

These days Matt’s deep in the shed and studio writing new music and completing arrangements for the Rebel Tumbao recording that’s coming up in August. A huge part of the process is delving deeply into current progressive (if not revolutionary!) thinking, with deep inspiration from Frances Moore Lappe (Jose’s been reading “Getting a Grip 2″), and at the moment, Naomi Klein, (Matt’s reading “The Shock Doctorine”), but also, on the other side of the spectrum, Matt’s reading Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom” (pretty much the road map for laissez-faire Capitalism) and he’s listening to conservative hard core right-wing talk radio (whoa!). It’s important to understand all viewpoints. From this they are crafting lyrics for the project.

Also Matt and Jose have been working together developing the music and grooves for the recording. They’ve been having some really inspiring sessions together sitting a the keyboard and drums with a laptop and an interface.

They both are saddened by not being able to make it to the US Social Forum taking place NOW, BUT, most recently Matt tuned into this incredible talk by David Korten at the 2009 Green Festival in Seattle:

March 10th, 2010

Rebel Tumbao welcomes Karl Perazzo for Oakland fundraiser

No doubt you can imagine that José is very well connected to the international brotherhood of incredible percussionists. One who fits this description well is Karl Perazzo, most well known for being a mainstay in Carlos Santana’s band for some 30 years now. We’re very excited to announce that he’ll be joining the Rebel Tumbao quartet, now a quintet, for our special fundraising event Saturday, March 13 at Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland, CA!! He’ll be rehearsing with us and putting his masterful touches on our music at the event. This will really fill out our “unplugged” sound!!

March 10th, 2010

Frances Moore Lappé and Rebel Tumbao!

POST BY MATT JENSON: About a 2 years ago Berklee held a special lecture given by the author Frances Moore Lappé. Some of you may know her as the author of the famous book in the 70’s, “Diet for a Small Planet.” She was speaking of her social vision as described in her book “Getting a Grip: clarity, creativity and courage in a world gone mad”. I had never heard of her and on a whim, liking very much what I heard from her, I bought the book. IT KNOCKED ME OUT!! It is a clear, intelligent, compassionate and visionary view of 1) the inhumane and destructive socio-political-economic state we live in and 2) an incredibly uplifting outline of a vision for change including tons of examples of how people on the grass roots level are making a difference. The margins of my copy of the book are marked up like crazy with my thoughts and comments.

It is just this type of vision that I want to express through our music with Rebel Tumbao and I had the incredible opportunity, made possible by the president of Berklee who is friends with Mrs. Lappé, to meet her. She was so excited about the Rebel Tumbao project that she enthusiastically donated 10 copies of her new book, “Getting a Grip 2: clarity, creativity and courage for the world we really want” to our cause. I am deeply honored to have her support and it is just these type of relationships we will be forging as Rebel Tumbao grows. It’s much more than about just the music!

We will be offering the 10 signed copies of the book as “give backs” for funding levels at the Fundraising concert on March 13, in Oakland, CA!!. THANK YOU FRANCES MOORE LAPPE!!!