JAZZ REVIEW : Culture Shock’s Latin Roots Bridge a Gap

Latin jazz has always been a hybrid form in which the heavy rhythmic elements too often tend to overwhelm the authentic jazz essence. Steve Huffsteter, who recently organized a band known as Culture Shock, is making a worthy effort to escape the strictures of this dual idiom.

Heard Wednesday at the Grand Avenue Bar of the Biltmore, doubling on trumpet and fluegelhorn, he offered a program of his own compositions and arrangements. Huffsteter is well qualified to bridge the jazz-Latin gap, having played with the Toshiko Akiyoshi band in addition to putting in several years with the late Willie Bobo.

His solos did not seem noticeably different, rhythmically or melodically, from those he performed with Akiyoshi, but his writing is intelligently geared to the Latin requirements, without falling into the pattern of monotonously danceable tempos, sound-alike melodies and overloud dynamics that too often dominate such groups.

Sharing the front line were Justo Almario, a capable tenor and soprano saxophonist, and the outstanding valve trombonist Mike Fahn. The three-horn blend was applied to such works as “Strange Head,” a minor quasi-blues (there was a surfeit of minor key tunes played consecutively). The ensemble, which includes a drummer and two other percussionists, along with electric bass and electric keyboard, came most vividly to life with the contagious Brazilian beat of “Street Samba.”

Huffsteter’s philosophy seems to be: “I don’t want to make history; I just want to make this kind of music more listenable.” On that relatively unpretentious level he succeeds, for Culture Shock is not shocking, but its cultural level is above the norm for the genre it represents.