Y’Y – Amaro Freitas

Y’Y is an album by Brazilian pianist and composer Amaro Freitas, released in 2024 by Psychic Hotline. The project emerged after a stay in Manaus and the musician’s exchange with the Indigenous Sateré Mawé community. Its title means “water” or “river” in the community’s language.

The album expands Freitas’ pianistic language through prepared piano, percussion, voice, and structures inspired by the Amazon, its rivers, and its enchanted beings. The search extends his interest in recovering knowledge that predates coloniality and connecting it with a contemporary conception of jazz.

The album features Shabaka Hutchings on flute, Jeff Parker on guitar, Brandee Younger on harp, Hamid Drake on drums, and Aniel Someillan on bass. Their contributions turn the album’s second half into a dialogue between Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous traditions and different currents of contemporary improvisation.