Life's Pleasures Quote by Lee Ritenour

Ritenour isn’t just describing an album’s sound; he’s staking out an identity in a genre that’s always had to justify its legitimacy. “World music flavor” can read like a marketing bin, but he immediately resists the postcard version of it: the record “doesn’t park itself in one country.” That verb matters. It frames style as motion, not possession, and quietly pushes back against the idea that a musician can “own” a tradition by dropping a few percussion loops on top of jazz changes.

The subtext is craft and credibility. He admits the music “borrows heavily,” then anchors that borrowing in relationship and history: Brazil is “dear to my heart,” and he’s “recorded several albums with that flavor.” He’s building a paper trail of engagement, not claiming a sudden epiphany. For a jazz guitarist coming of age in the fusion era, Brazil isn’t an exotic add-on; it’s a parallel language with its own harmonic sophistication and rhythmic authority. Saying so also signals taste: you’re supposed to hear Jobim, samba, maybe the studio polish of ‘70s MPB, not vague “global” ambience.

Contextually, this is a veteran navigating late-20th-century cosmopolitanism, when artists were rewarded for sounding borderless but criticized for being touristic. Ritenour’s line threads the needle: the album travels, but it travels with a passport full of stamps. It’s an argument for musical hybridity as lived practice rather than aesthetic scavenging.