E-Mail This Article to a Friend War and peace Billy Bang’s Vietnam Aftermath, and Medeski Martin & Wood BY JON GARELICK

There have been jazz pieces about Vietnam (the Revolutionary Ensemble’s "Vietnam 1 and 2" comes to mind), but it’s difficult to think of any written by Vietnam vets based on their own experience in that war. That is, it was until violinist/composer Billy Bang’s Vietnam: The Aftermath came out in 2001 on the Canadian Justin Time label. And at that, Bang had to be coaxed into writing about his experiences by producer Jean-Pierre Leduc.

"For a long time, I thought about this project, but I never really had the courage to confront it," he tells me over the phone from his home in New York. "I didn’t want to bring those thoughts up again and revisit that area of my life. But Jean-Pierre remembered a conversation he and I had had at the last recording, and he said, ‘I don’t want to offend you, but would you consider writing about your experience in Vietnam?’ "

Bang had been living in Berlin for four years, and he needed to re-establish himself in the States with a new work, so he committed himself to the project. He and his quintet will be playing music from Vietnam: The Aftermath, as well as from a just-recorded follow-up, at the Central Square World’s Fair on July 25, the first time he’s performed the music in the Boston area.

He found writing Vietnam: The Aftermath as difficult as he’d anticipated, a process of "reliving the darkness of Vietnam. Because I was in combat. I actually did fight over there. I’m not proud to say that, but that’s just the truth, it’s a fact. I went through a lot of that in my head again. In writing the music, I was crying a lot, I was screaming at myself. I actually relived that war again."

For the most part, despite impassioned playing all around from Bang’s impressive band, the album does not express overt anguish. Even with titles like "Tunnel Rat (Flashlight and a .45)" and "Fire in the Hole," the music, with tunes often based on Asian-like scales, has a serenity about it. There’s plenty of medium-tempo swing, and even the hard-driving "Saigon Phunk" is more celebratory than excoriating.

"That’s been one of the recurring comments," Bang says. "I didn’t know what I was looking for, or what was going to come out, but I’m very happy that it came out on the side of being more peaceful, and not violent, not truly representing the horror but trying to find a brighter side of that event. Through this horror, some beauty came out of it." The only piece on the album that approaches tumult through free-jazz expressiveness is "TET Offensive," where Butch Morris uses his "conduction" technique to lead the ensemble through a spontaneous collective composition based on a short theme by Bang.

As for the Asian feel to some of the themes, Bang says he was looking for a balance between his identity as an African-American and the environment of Southeast Asia. "I was trying to put those colors together and not have one be more dominant than the other. For the most part, I think I did well enough, and there are some moments where it’s more jazzy or funky, and there are times that it’s more of an Asian tonality. But basically all my life I’ve been having Asian qualities in my playing, so it wasn’t absolutely new, but this was a way to work what I do naturally into a more thematic approach."

Now 57, Bang has long been a force in avant-garde circles, but he’s also a rarity in jazz in general, where aside from bassists there isn’t a big call for string players. In the late ’70s, he founded the String Trio of New York with bassist John Lindberg and guitarist James Emery and quickly established himself as a major new voice on the instrument. Leaving that band in 1986, he worked with the likes of Ronald Shannon Jackson, Don Cherry, Bill Laswell, and James "Blood" Ulmer and led his own sessions, including a tribute to swing-violinist Stuff Smith with Sun Ra and Andrew Cyrille on the Soul Note label. In 1997, he released the first of three albums for Justin Time. His playing has always been marked by an expressive range of color and dynamics, from speed-demon rushes of 16th and 32nd notes to expressive rhythmic scratches and scrapings.

The cover of Vietnam: The Aftermath shows Bang standing bare-chested, facing the camera with a heavy-lidded stare, cigar in his mouth, machine gun slung over his shoulder, dog tags dangling on his chest, the trees of the jungle surrounding him. The liner notes credit all the players by instrument but also the several Vietnam vets on the date — Morris, trumpeter Ted Daniel, the late tenor-saxophonist Frank Lowe, percussionist Ron Brown, and drummer Michael Carvin — by rank and serial number. (The date is rounded out by long-time Bang collaborators John Hicks on piano and Curtis Lundy on bass and multi-reedman Sonny Fortune playing flute.) Next year, Bang intends to return to Vietnam with a French documentary-film crew to work with Vietnamese musicians — his first visit since his tour of duty.

"When I came home, I felt really abused," he says of that tour. "I felt kidnapped, to be honest, and I was very angry. I felt I was tricked into doing something that I should never have done, and the reasons that were laid out for why I did it never made sense to me. I just felt like somebody took a period of my life — a very precious period, 19 to 21 — and destroyed it."

If that statement resonates with creepy echoes of current events, they’re similarities that Bang is all too aware of. There was also an unfortunate coincidence regarding the release of the album: it was recorded in April 2001 and hit stores just weeks after September 11. "There’s a rhythm we perceive as artists that seems to fall right into place with a bigger picture."

In Central Square, Bang will be joined by Daniel, Carvin, bassist Todd Nicholson, and pianist Andrew Benkey. He says he’s excited to be playing in Boston during the Democratic National Convention. "I’m hoping that John Kerry will stop by our bandstand, being a veteran."