Multi-reedist-composer-bandleader Marty Ehrlich is one artist whose creative impulses I’ve grown to trust, not only from his always intriguing recordings but also from having presented him in different band configurations at both Tribeca Performing Arts Center and Tri-C JazzFest. A very thoughtful man whose bespectacled presence suggests that of a wily, witty college professor (which he is at Hampshire College), Marty is one of those inside/out players who is as comfortable in a swinging environment as he is amidst dissonance. In that regard he is much like one of his mentors, the late pianist-seeker-teacher Jaki Byard.

Though born in St. Paul, Minnesota Marty grew up in St. Louis, so perhaps its our shared Midwestern affinity that in part continues to draw my ears to his work. As a teen Ehrlich came under the influence of the St. Louis-based collective of restless innovators – including fellow reedists like Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake and J.D. Parran – known as the Black Artists’ Group (BAG), an organization with much more than improvisational performance on its mind, much like Chicago’s enduring AACM. His affiliations have also included NEA Jazz Master Muhal Richard Abrams, John Zorn, Myra Melford and the great Haitian drummer Andrew Cyrille.

For his latest release A Trumpet in the Morning Marty Ehrlich has taken an expansive approach and engaged a large ensemble canvas on which to paint his original compositions. The band includes a number of notable players, such as drummer Matt Wilson, saxophonists Parran (who doubles as narrator), Howard Johnson (on baritone) and Andy Laster; trumpeters E.J. Allen, Ron Horton and James Zollar; trombonists Curtis Fowlkes and Ray Anderson, percussionist Warren Smith, pianist James Weidman, and longtime compadre guitarist-bassist Jerome Harris among an auspicious posse of others. Clearly some questions for Marty Ehrlich were in order on the nature of this release.

What’s been your experience leading and/or recording in large ensemble formats?
In many ways I have had a traditional jazz apprenticeship in the big band tradition, if with many paradigm shifting composers. I played in big bands throughout high school, as many students did at that time. (Public education had music programs, and ‘stage bands’, whatever that meant, were more common than not.) At the New England Conservatory, the core of our work in the Afro-American Music program was playing Jaki Byard’s and George Russell‘s Jazz Orchestra music. What couldn’t you learn from each of these masterful, visionary bodies of music? Gunther Schuller was in his Ellington performance period, and I got to do Ellington transcriptions with him.

When I got to NYC in 1978, the first tour I did in Europe was with the Anthony Braxton Creative Music Orchestra, 20 musicians strong. When George Russell put together his New York big Band, he asked me to be in it, which meant a lot to me. We ended up playing 30 or so nights at the Village Vanguard, pretty cool for your first year in the Apple. (I have never played a note there since.) Jaki started doing the Apollo Stompers in NYC, at Barry Harris‘ place and Rashied Ali‘s place, and I would do that. And it seemed that I did a whole string of the BAG and AACM large ensembles, gigs, tours, and recordings. Julius Hemphill, Muhal Richard Abrams, Oliver Lake, Wadada Leo Smith, Roscoe Mitchell and others. I got to do Sam Rivers’ big band one time, during the transit strike in the 80’s, and [drummer] Ronnie Burrage and I walked from Brooklyn to Manhattan with horns and cymbals. Surely my commitment to woodwind doubling helped with getting called for this work, along with my focus on ensemble playing. The many years I spent in Anthony Davis‘ mid- size group, and then the ongoing work on his opera, X- The life and Times of Malcolm X, kept me in a large ensemble focus. Very important for me was the work of the New York Composer’s Orchestra, which Wayne Horvitz and Robin Holcomb organized and were musical directors of. We did two CD’s for New World, which is the first opportunity I got to record my Jazz Orchestra music (Pliant Plaint and After All.) If I look at the CD collection of recordings I have taken part in, it has a good number of Jazz Orchestra CD’s in it.

Since Julius Hemphill’s passing, I have conducted his Jazz Orchestra music in America and in Europe. And leading two large ensembles a year at Hampshire College where I teach has given me both experience and a forum for “comprovisation” ideas.

With this question you have pointed to the new thing for me that I took on, conducting/producing only, not leading with my horn playing and improvising. I think all the work I talk about above was crucial in preparing me for taking on this role.

What compelled you towards this project at this particular time?
There were some very concrete things that came together that helped me pull this off. But I think the most important thing to say is that the range of approaches and musical languages of my long form pieces began to connect for me in important ways. I got to a point in my life where the connections became very important to me, and I wanted to put this range of writing and conceptualizing that I had done together in one place. It had a real unity in its diversity.

There’s a school of thought that relates to maximizing radio potential for one’s music that kinda rules against extended composition, yet you have extended pieces on this recording that clock in at 20+ and 14+ minutes. (For example, for airplay on my radio program I selected the first 7:18 section of “Rundowns and Turnbacks”, but with a typical 2-hour radio program I dare not spin the entire 20:22). What’s your thinking in that regard?
To some extent, these are concert pieces, and they are about having a large canvas to fill. How are you going to fill it? How to use this large number of instrumentalist/improvisers? How to use contrast in form and language and style to make a work that builds in resonance over the time of the work? The questions that can haunt you in the middle of the night when a deadline is looming for the completion of said piece.

I love radio, I listen a lot here in NYC, and I love the unexpected nature of radio programming. I consider the role that KDNA, the Pacifica station in St. Louis MO played in my musical education to be a crucial one. (And it was probably the first place that I performed my own music live.) It is still a thrill to hear my stuff pop up here and there. I hope it helps sell a CD. (I have bought a few after hearing a cut of a colleague’s newest project.) But for this project, I didn’t think of it as a consideration for the shaping of the music.

Willard, I like your solution in the question above a lot. I hope some other programmers do the same. And perhaps you have put your finger on something. That for long- form works, which are such an important part of the jazz/Afro-American music/Creative music continuum, the artist and the company could help by making a suggestion for radio play in their mailings such as you have just shared here.

And my next recording? Nothing but hits! (Well, we’ll see.)

Achieving a certain creative balance in a large ensemble is a tricky proposition, particularly where it concerns personnel. How did you go about selecting the personnel for this project?
One thing I did was to build the ensemble up over some time, because I was recomposing and re-orchestrating all along, and I would get ideas that this player would be wonderful to have for this section or that section. Let’s call it accessing my inner-Ellington; in the model he gave us of writing for individuals and maximizing their individual skill sets and essences.

But in general, putting an ensemble together of this size for these diverse pieces is a tricky thing. (Perhaps in some ways because you have a dizzying wealth of musical voices to call on here in NYC.) My music asks that the performers wear numerous stylistic hats, much as has been asked of me in my professional life. There is a range of performance practice I love to use, let’s say from the refined to the raw. Quick changes from ensemble precision where individual voice is secondary, to a soloistic or collective context where individual voice is crucial. If you compose in a way that is pan-stylistic and pan-historical, the performance practice challenges can add up. At the same time they are situations for creative play. The musicians on this CD have all worked in this way in their own career.

I am guided by this strong belief. What I have fought against my whole career is the separation into binaries when it comes to performance practice and creative playing:
The ensemble players and the soloists, the technical players and the creative players. Jazz and Classical, Black and White, Young and Old. The social world is not past any of that; we are not in a post-racial etc. anything. But I think that to the extent that this music, in its tremendous range of endeavor, is a progressive force and a progressive community, we want to fight against limited roles for anyone.

The enthusiasm for the music and the project that I received from the musicians involved was very moving for me. I think we got some great chemistry on the recording. I love hearing all the different creative voices within the music I wrote.

If nothing else, that concert you did at Tribeca last year proved that you have an ear for spoken word narratives as part of your presentations. What was it about Arthur Brown’s “A Trumpet in the Morning” that compelled you to write music and use that narrative as the centerpiece of this project?
Let me break your question down into two parts. The second part is easy. I made the composition A Trumpet in the Morning the centerpiece of the recording project because I think it is the most inclusive, creative work I have done in a large ensemble, large-form context. It was my desire to record this work, to realize a performance that represented what I knew was on the page, that pushed me to get the funding for the project.

As to the first part of the question, I was exposed to this poem when I was in high school in St. Louis. I connected to it in a visceral way. I can’t say how much I would have been able to explicate its many references to Afro-American music and poetry, the whole Blues continuum, though I surely had done a lot of listening, and I was living in an evolving world of racial integration. I doubt that at the time I thought much on the poems play on the central story of the Resurrection in Christianity. This is a profoundly African-American and Christian poem. If any of your readers are wondering, I am European-American and Jewish. And I am not now going to say, ‘but this work of art is universal.” Nothing is universal. (Well, death and birth, but not necessarily taxes for the wealthy. But I digress.)

What this poem does have is a lot of factors at play, and now I am speaking as a 58 year old thinker and reader. I do believe that in this poem Arthur Brown gives a powerful vision of spiritual transformation, and perhaps, just perhaps, reaches people across many different cultural backgrounds. It did for me.

I’ll point to two techniques in the poem. One is the aside of the preacher about his Florsheim shoes, the status shoes of the day. The one time I heard Arthur read the poem, he told the audience that these asides spoke to the vanity of the preacher, the self-consciousness if you will. The way these asides are mixed into the forward moving narrative of the poem, almost as a momentary brake, is very effective.

The other technique, really a place of poetic invention, is the mix of both real and surreal imagery in the poem. This is not a normal Sunday morning sermon. (For that matter, it’s not clear that the narrator here is even speaking to a congregation. He may be speaking to himself, or to God.) And to be equally clear, this is a work of imagination, not a history lesson in vernacular speech or cultural reference. i’ve been all night/ in the dew/john-revelated in the marshy bottoms/lazarused in the crook of a willow whittled/a gospel-boat from a simple reed/launched that skiff in the spittle/of a mule’s jaw/gouged a skysong from the black giant’s thigh/and shackled it to a cotton flower.

The poem moves with great force toward the moment of acceptance and insight in its concluding section. Arthur builds this forward motion into the poem, yes, like a masterful jazz soloist, playing with the rhythm of the tonal/metaphorical imagery at will. The sense of transformation by the end of the poem is palpable. The humanity of the narrator is deeply felt by the listener. I think J.D. [Parran] gave a powerful expression to that element of the piece. I had written the harmonic sequence underneath him for the last section of the poem to have a rising feeling, not ever fully resting, to be in a state of ongoing modulation. J.D. got to the end of the poem with some time to spare before the soprano sax solo. He just starts wailing, and it was the perfect bridge between the sections. Then the sax solo settles into the chord sequence that is more rooted, as a place of resolution to sing from. I think it is moments like this that are what we mean by the collective spirit of the music.

Information: www.martyehrlich.com

Is the Bay Area’s new jazz jewel, the SFJAZZ Center, somehow simply Jazz at Lincoln Center West? The answer is emphatically NO. Fact is this is the first free-standing institution dedicated to jazz in this country. “SFJAZZ stands on its own merits, I love the education, the music that’s coming out of [SFJAZZ]. Jazz at Lincoln Center has nothing but support and love for them,” in the words of JALC major domo Wynton Marsalis. If anything, SFJAZZ is the next step in the evolution of homes for jazz at the institutional level. Did I just utter a dirty word? For years the naysayers have decried the “institutionalization” of jazz music, as if that were somehow a bitter pill to swallow. But as my visit to the SFJAZZ Center last week proved, nothing could be further from the truth in the Bay Area; this is one of the healthiest developments in the music in all my years of deep investment in the art form. I’m left wondering what took us so long!

The mission last weekend was as part of my ongoing work for Arts Midwest with the NEA Jazz Masters Live grant program. SFJAZZ was the recipient of a modest grant to support a 3-day residency by NEAJM Eddie Palmieri, so I traveled to the Bay Area on Thanksgiving weekend for a site visit on the venue and to report on their Palmieri project. From my Union Square area hotel, it was a quick stroll down Powell Street on a temperate 70-degree day amidst the Black Friday revelers and clanking street cars to the light rail Metro station on Market Street. Two stops later and a couple of blocks walk and I arrived at the impressive SFJAZZ Center at 201 Franklin Street in the Hayes Valley district. Gazing up at the SFJAZZ sign at the southeast corner of the building, the immediate impression was that clearly this is a new day for jazz in this country!

First impression was of a shiny new building thoroughly lacking in ostentation, blending in well with its surroundings; a quite purposeful impression I later learned from SFJAZZ development director Barrett Shaver on our tour of the facility. The idea was to construct an attractive, eminently accommodating structure that wouldn’t stand out like some pretentious architectural sore thumb amidst its neighbors. A quick glance across the street revealed an unoccupied building somewhat gussied up by two rows of exquisite Herman Leonard photographs of assorted jazz immortals writ large, covering window spaces; lending still more jazz props to the neighborhood, as did the welcoming SFJAZZ posters in the windows of nearby businesses. Clearly this is a treasured neighbor.

Another conspicuously welcoming aspect is the glass enclosed lower level, which allows passing pedestrians and busy traffic a quick gaze into the building, further beckoning the uninitiated; covert audience development. Walkers and drivers can peer into the Joe Henderson Lab, the gift shop/box office in the street level lobby, and the adjacent SFJAZZ restaurant South. The gazing-through-glass aspect is repeated inside South. From a convenient perch at the bar, patrons can peer directly onto a portion of the stage in the main venue, the 700-seat Miner Auditorium. Obviously that’s further enticement to restaurant patrons to check out the main events, if they hadn’t already. By 60-minutes before showtime South was packed with patrons, buzzing on the southern cuisine menu and enjoying pre-show supper at their tables or beverages at the bar.

The floor-level seating entrance is on the main lobby; for the great majority entering Miner for Eddie Palmieri’s opening evening of Latin Jazz – his rhythm section, including the versatile young bassist Luques Curtis (who was a bedrock, energizing presence all weekend) plus guest saxophonists Big Chief Donald Harrison and bari ace Ronnie Cuber it was up the stairs or the elevator to the comfortable, acoustically sound main auditorium. A healthy, eager audience awaited and Palmieri delivered, keeping the pots on high heat, as he did throughout the weekend.

Eddie’s weekend long residency harkened back to yesteryear, when multi-night stands were the rule rather than the exception we find in these days of one-nighters even at jazz clubs. Shaver confirmed that as part of SFJAZZ founder and executive artistic director Randall Kline’s master plan. Kline is a sterling presenter whose work I’ve appreciated dating back to our first encounters as part of the old Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest National Jazz Network during my National Jazz Service Organization days. Even back then, in the early 90s, Kline was clear in his intentions to build this edifice. Shaver, who has been with SFJAZZ for nine years, confirmed that “One of the big changes for us was the presenting structure, the framework in our seasons. We went from presenting a single artist in a single venue on a single night, to now having theoretically seven nights a week at our disposal [with the opening of the SFJAZZ Center]; you have a lot more room to get creative with that. Randall is really looking at it as [ideally] 4-night runs,” Shaver confirmed. At this point about 60% of SFJAZZ’s bookings are such multi-night stands, which also bodes well for the institution’s robust jazz education component which often engages visiting pros as teachers in addition to its in-house educators, a program directed by the very active Latin Jazz pianist-bandleader Rebeca Mauleon, she of the slick fedoras.

Palmieri’s Saturday evening delivered an entirely different flavor, courtesy of his robust Salsa Big Band (2-shows @ 7 & 9:30). Knowing this evening was bound to excite would-be happy dancing feet and agile hips, I asked Shaver about the dance opportunity when we took the tour amidst Eddie’s rhythm section soundchecking on Friday afternoon. Simple, he explained, the floor-level seating in Miner is entirely portable, revealing a very accommodating dance floor when removed, a dance floor even when filled wouldn’t detract from the concert-seated contingent. Sure enough, that evening when I arrived at my seat the dance floor was positively vibrating with anticipation. Maybe two bars into Eddie’s first piece the dancers began streaming onto the floor and the mambo mix was in session, fun being the first priority over skill, though there were some impressive light-footed couples on the floor to be sure. And the flexible nature of the space also includes strategic curtains that can be employed from the ceiling to re-configure Miner in several different ways.

The dancers were out in joyous force for Eddie Palmieri’s Salsa Big Band

On Sunday afternoon at the 80-seat Joe Henderson Lab, named after the late NEA Jazz Master tenorist who had a close relationship with SFJAZZ’s earliest incarnation, and a room designed for intimate performances and education events, the brilliant musicologist-percussionist-historian John Santos did an interview with the maestro that morphed into more of an enlightening/entertaining conversation due to Palmieri’s well-noted loquacious nature. Santos, one of the current season’s rotating “resident artistic directors” (who are billed as “The most forward-thinking musicians in jazz, curating exclusive concerts and educational programs” by SFJAZZ’s development brochure) proved a skilled interlocutor as always, though with Eddie Palmieri you merely have to flip the switch.

John Santos (left) strolling through Eddie Palmieri’s rich history

Palmieri’s closing evening was another Latin Jazz exploration, with Eddie introducing two young firebreathing horn players during the first half. The second half of the evening was sublime, with guest vibraphonist Joe Locke in partnership with Palmieri recalling Eddie’s past hook-ups with Cal Tjader. A casual perusal of the SFJAZZ season program booklet made clear that this was just one of many tasty treats on the SFJAZZ menu, including recent past curatorial stints from such seekers as Zakir Hussain, Bill Frisell, Regina Carter, and Jason Moran. This certainly bodes well for the Bay Area’s cultural and social calendars, and is yet another jewel in jazz’s 21st century evolution.

This 3-panel mural, with its slightly quirky depictions of jazz history and San Francisco jazz history, has two panels adorning the second level lobby and a third in the Green Room.

Ancient/Future Radio airs Wednesdays 10pm-midnight on WPFW 89.3FM in the DC metro area and streaming live at www.wpfwfm.org. Here’s my playlist for the December 4 show, and just below the playlist is a link to a video interview The Jazz Video Guy made in our studio on a recent visit to DC.

ARTIST/TRACK TITLE/ALBUM TITLE/LABEL
(theme) Lou Rawls, In The Evening
Chico Hamilton, Forest Flower, The Best of Chico Hamilton, Impulse!
Chico Hamilton, Strange, With Strings Attached, Warner Bros.
Chico Hamilton, Conquistadores, The Best of Chico Hamilton, Impulse!
Chico Hamilton, Coming Back for More, Tanganyika, V.S.O.P.
Chico Hamilton, Larry of Arabia, The Dealer, Impulse!
Chico Hamilton, Mysterious Maiden, The Alternative Dimensions of El Chico, Joyous Shout/Soulfeast
WHAT’S NEW/THE NEW RELEASE HOUR
Archie Shepp, Blues For Brother G, I Hear the Sound, Archi
Kheswa & Her Martians, Ntyiylo Ntyiylo, Meadowlands, Xippi
Marty Ehrlich Large Ensemble, Rundowns and Turnbacks, A Trumpet in the Morning, New World
Leron Thomas, Waiting on Justin, Whatever
Jacques Lesure, I Didn’t Know What Time it Was, When She Smiles, WJ3
Eric Byrd Trio, Blessed Assurance, 21st Century Swing (Live)
Archie Shepp, Cry of My People, I Hear the Sound, Archi
Archie Shepp, Steam, I Hear the Sound, Archi

Contact: willard@openskyjazz.com

Some of you may recall reading an Independent Ear interview with the wonderful pianist-composer Sumi Tonooka. She’s recently embarked on an ambitious composition project dedicated to the incredible will and story of the young Pakistani woman who was shot merely for standing up for her rights and the rights of women in her country. Read about Sumi’s project below and click on the link to learn more.

I am writing this because you are a friend or relative or previous supporter of my work. You are the first to know that I have a new project that I am very excited about. It is called “For Malala” and it JUST WENT LIVE minutes ago. I am sharing this with you in the hopes that you will want to come on board and/or share this link with your circles. The word is just getting out, so please excuse me if you hear about this again via facebook etc within the next few days.

Thanks for being part of such an amazing circle of friends and supporters! I would love to hear directly from you. So please let me know that you received this email if you can.

Please click this link and let me know what you think!

http://www.hatchfund.org/project/for_malala_a_jazz_concerto_for_piano_trio_and_symphony_orchestra

Randy Weston and Billy Harper‘s long partnership has culminated in their first duo recording, The Roots of the Blues, recorded by French producer Jean-Phillippe Allard for Universal and recently released stateside by the Sunnyside label. Ace producer Allard has been at the console for such Weston record dates as Spirit! The Power of Music Verve/Gitanes 1999), Earth Birth (Verve/Gitanes 1995), Khepera (Verve/Gitanes 1998), Saga (Verve/Gitanes 1995), Volcano Blues (Verve/Gitanes 1993), Marrakech in the Cool of the Evening (Verve/Gitanes 1992), The Splendid Master Gnawa Musicians (Verve 1992), and the classic The Spirits of Our Ancestors (Verve 1991). The latter featured three distinctive, spiritually adept tenor men – Pharoah Sanders, Dewey Redman (the tenor exchange between those two on an extended version of “African Cookbook” is worth the price of the CD alone), and Harper. But the Weston/Harper hook-up goes back further than that auspicious record date.

In 1971, as part of his overall plan to develop an African cultural beachhead in Tangier, Morocco that would serve as a hub for African and African Diaspora culture, while continuing to operate his African Rhythms Club in the northernmost African city, Weston began planning a grand festival – which would eventually become the first primarily jazz festival in Africa. As part of his planning he recruited his boyhood friend Max Roach and arts activist Mary Jo Johnson as his US-based liaisons to secure and arrange travel for the US artists Randy planned to bring to the festival. The idea was to produce a festival that would find US and African artists collaborating creatively. The US artists who committed to playing the festival, which commenced September 1-3, 1972, included Mandrill, Pucho & the Latin Soul Brothers, Odetta, Hubert Laws, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, and Max Roach’s Quartet, with Cecil Bridgewater on trumpet, Juney Booth on bass, and Billy Harper. However for some then-unexplained reason Max was not on the flight! Additionally, Dexter Gordon and trumpeter Richard “Notes” Williams joined the lineup from Europe.

Randy puzzled over Max’s absence for years, not learning until after Roach’s passing that the reason he didn’t make the flight was to maintain marital bliss, Max’s wife being very much pregnant at the time. Come festival time – at a grand outdoor venue that was actually a converted bull ring stadium, a setting Weston described as fraught with the usual logistical nightmares of a short-funded start-up (the Moroccan government fell short of its promised financial support), Max’s band soldiered on without him, Harper even taking to the traps for part of the performance, which he also did handily for Hubert Laws set. Though clearly an artistic success, the festival dug such a deep hole for Weston that he was forced to padlock his African Rhythms Club and return home to Brooklyn to recoup. Obviously Billy Harper left a major impression on Weston, such that in recent years whenever a performance calls for or affords him the option of having a tenor player in his band, Weston calls on Harper.

In preparing the liner notes for The Roots of The Blues, I interviewed both Weston and Harper on the project, starting with Weston, with whom I had the advantage of a 10-year head start from writing his autobiography African Rhythms.

Photo by Alan Nahigian

From my recollection of your discography, The Roots of The Blues must be your first duo record?

Randy Weston: Yes, I always love the sound and imagination of Billy Harper. For a long time I wanted to record in duo with Billy. I first played with Billy in Tangier, Morocco when he came over for my festival with Max Roach’s group. I heard the sound I like, that Texas sound, and [Harper] being from Texas he’s a great blues player. When Billy plays the tenor its like an orchestra – the call & response is always there; I always hear the black church in his playing; he’s always singing through his horn. As far as why we work well together, it’s the magic, that big, black sound he gets. Billy’s sound (he has Somali roots) comes straight out of Africa, but it’s a universal sound – that cry, it reaches your soul. He plays that modern saxophone but it’s very poetic. You listen to his solos and it’s a full composition, you hear the whole history of the tenor.

Talk about some of the compositions on this recording.

RW: “The Healers” is one for our ancient ancestors that came out of the Nile Valley civilization; they are the foundation of what we do today. We have to remember those ancient people that created the music we play today.

I definitely hear some of your low end theory, that depth that is characteristic of your lower register playing on “Blues to Africa”.

RW: [Laughs] Only on the Bosendorfer! The lower register represents the earth, the elephant and the way the elephant strides inspires that lower register on “Blues to Africa.” The way [elephants] walk [laughs], maybe it’s because I’m big too! I love the sound of that lower piano register – and you get that only on the Bosendorfer!

“Take the A Train” is symbolic because coming up in Brooklyn the A train gave us the opportunity to get to Manhattan more directly, and [A Train] was written by one of my idols, Billy Strayhorn. [Editor’s note: Weston played piano at Strayhorn’s funeral.] Like the old blues players Billy tried to capture the sound of the train with that piece. It’s a great composition and the A train gave us in Brooklyn an opportunity to get up to Harlem much quicker.

“How High the Moon”: Musicians started playing that a lot in the 40s and 50s; it was the first piece I heard Lucky Thompson play and I loved it. I played with Lucky once in Brooklyn; what an honor!

“Body & Soul”: Coleman Hawkins, obviously. [Editor’s note: In African Rhythms Weston tells the story of how as a 12-year old in 1938 when Hawkins recorded his monumental version of “Body & Soul,” he ran out and copped three copies of the single with an allowance advance, playing two copies endlessly at home, with his record player on blast, tilted out his bedroom window to entertain the neighborhood, wrapping up the third copy for safe keeping.] What I do is in the beginning I play a melody based on the bridge of the piece before Billy comes in, which I call “Soul and Body.”

“Congolese Children”: Some of my early listening to African music came up in the Berkshires. I heard some music from the region around Lake Kivu [one of the African great lakes, which borders the Congo and Rwanda] in the Congo. That’s when I began to incorporate rhythms and harmonies of Africa in my music.

“Blues to Senegal”: The first time I took my band to Africa was in 1967, and our first concert was in Dakar. I heard Dou Dou N’Diaye Rose, the great master drummer who inspired me. My son Azzedine created a rhythm based on a Senegalese drum pattern that fit with this melody.

“Carnival”: Inspired by Bobby Benson [musician and owner of the Lagos nightclub Caban Bamboo], just being in his club in Lagos, it was like a carnival. The first time I recorded this was in Montreux; Billy [Harper] was there with Gil Evans, and Don Moye was there with the Art Ensemble of Chicago; they’re both on the record.

“Timbuktu” was inspired by several things: my father talked about Timbuktu as one of the great ancient civilizations and I always wanted to visit there. This piece is a combination of a prayer and the greatness of Timbuktu in the ancient times. The piece deals with sadness, love, history and dreams.

“Roots of the Nile” depicts the beginning of the Nile Valley civilization; it’s a tribute to the ancient people of the Nile Valley civilization.

“Cleanhead Blues”: I played two weeks with Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson up in Albany and it was quite an honor. Not only was he a great blues singer, he was a great saxophonist as well.

Billy Harper on The Roots of the Blues:

Billy Harper by Greg Turner

How did you meet Randy and what’s been your overall experience knowing and playing with him down through the years?

Billy Harper: I met Randy Weston during a European tour that I was doing with Gil Evans; this was in the 70s. We immediately joined our musical forces together and recorded an album called Carnival, a live performance at one of the main festivals in Switzerland. But the first genuine meeting was in Africa. I was invited as part of the Max Roach Quartet to perform at Randy’s festival in Tangier, Morocco. Although I did perform on saxophone – Max had sent the band ahead of time, but when the event started there was still no Max – so I played drums a bit; one such occasion was behind Dexter Gordon, and also Hubert Laws.

There are so many stories to be told in relating to the saga that involves the overall experience of knowing and performing with “Chief” Randy Weston, that probably the most significant one highlights the direction and values that are emphasized in the truth of understanding the history and origins of so much of Western culture, via the true birthplace of us all – Africa. As this awareness was passed down from Randy’s father, through the understanding of Randy, it has also been passed down to us – meaning all of the musicians, or for that matter all persons who have come in contact with Randy Weston – the supreme speaker and teacher of the “flame of truth” – whether the focus of the moment is the music that we play as “jazz musicians”, or the history that we live as “human beings” in this world. Our humanity is connected to music, and vice-versa.

What made you decide to play your piece “IF One Could Only See” as your solo saxophone contribution to The Roots of the Blues?

BH: It was at the request of Randy Weston himself that I decided to contribute my composition. This is a song that I played as a solo when Randy and I performed in duet recently in Japan at a spiritual shrine. This song was given to me, in a dream. In this dream, I was walking down Seventh Avenue in Manhattan and I was carrying an empty tape recorder. As I strolled along not really paying attention to anything, this humongous hand reached down from the heavens and there was a cassette tape in it! So I accepted the tape, placed it in the empty cassette player… and one of the most beautiful melodies was played. I woke up immediately and played what I had heard. I named it “If One Could Only See.” The philosophical meaning of the title is so vast that it explores the possibilities of the goal of perceiving truth (real truth) in all that we see, whether it relates to truth in life, love, history, events that are denied or distorted, events that have occurred and were thwarted, all those things that mankind has a tendency to hide. The truth can be seen through our hearts… if we can learn to use our hearts… if one could only really see.