ALBUM REVIEW : A Daring Symbiosis of Cultures : GRAHAM HAYNES: “The Griots Footsteps”, <i> Antilles</i> ***

Cornetist Haynes, the son of veteran drummer Roy Haynes, doesn’t waste time making a case for his belief in creative independence. “As far as what’s happening today in music,” he says succinctly, “I think a lot of people are asleep. . . . They only seem to want to repeat the past.”

Yet, curiously, the opening track on this, his third album (but first in wide release), initially suggests that Haynes may not be following his own advice. Sounding very much like a moody Miles Davis, he starts out with a darkly atmospheric piece in which he floats above synthesized textures reminiscent of Gil Evans’ charts for the trumpet master.

Traces of Davis continue to tinge his playing on the other works. But once beyond this somewhat misleading beginning, Haynes quickly confirms that he is not “asleep” and that like his musically adventurous father he is indeed determined not to “repeat the past.” A few years living in Paris in the early ‘90s exposed him to the cross-pollination of African, Arabic, Indian and jazz music that has always lurked in the creative underground of the City of Lights. It is those elements that come together in remarkably cohesive fashion in the balance of the album.

Haynes makes extensive use of meditative improvising over the drone-like licks of the tanpura . There is also a colorful mixture of timbres between cornet, saxophone and sitar and a dense percussion layering underlies every track. Haynes’ coolly focused soloing is counterbalanced by the heated avant-gardisms--multiphonic production of several simultaneous sounds, honks, squeals and rapid runs--of saxophonist Steve Williamson.

And the compositions are far more than typical jazz line. On “Flip Stories,” for example, percussionist Brice Wassy adds brisk vocal accents to a tune that, despite its metric complexity, swings furiously. And the title piece builds its climaxes via a repeated tone row.

Aside from such technical fascinations, however, the music’s greatest appeal rests in the feeling it generates of an authentic symbiosis of different cultures. Haynes’ probing vision has found common musical connections without simply forcing one style on top of the other.

The result is an album that is as musically captivating as it is creatively daring.

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good, recommended), four stars (excellent).