The Independent Ear

FESMAN 2009: World Festival of Black Arts

Posted on January 27, 2009 by The Independent Ear

I had the pleasure of joining Randy Weston at the United States launch of The World Festival of Black Arts, FESMAN 2009, on January 14 at the United Nations in the Chamber of Economic and Social Council.  FESMAN 2009, which will take place December 1-21, 2009 in Dakar, Senegal, seeks "…the remobilization of the cultural diversity of Africa and the Diaspora, for the sake of longlasting development of the [African] Continent."  The launch event was presented by the host of what promises to be an incredible World Festival of Black Arts, the President of the Republic of Senegal, Mr. Abdoulaye Wade.

 

The UN launch event was an introductory opportunity for remarks from Dr. Djibril Diallo, the chairman of the Leadership Committee for the United States Launch of FESMAN 2009, and Dr. Marta Vega, founder of the Caribbean Cultural Center/African Diaspora Institute in New York and a member of the U.S. Committee for FESMAN 2009, and a keynote speech from President Wade (pronounced Wad).  Welcoming remarks were provided by the hip hop artist and record producer Akon, the son of Senegalese percussionist Mor Thiam who many remember from his groundbreaking work with pianist-composer Don Pullen among others, and the renowned singer Angelique Kidjo who is from Benin, West Africa was on hand, as was U.S. committee member Maulana Karenga, the creator of the Kwanza holiday celebration.  Weston perfomed with his trio to tumultuous applause.

 

FESMAN 2009 will actually be the third such global Africa arts & culture event.  The first two were known as FESTAC, the second of which was in 1977 in Lagos, Nigeria.  Elsewhere in The Independent Ear you can read an anecdote on FESTAC ’77 from the book African Rhythms, the forthcoming autobiography of Randy Weston (composed by Randy Weston, arranged by Willard Jenkins to be published by Duke University Press.  In the meantime anyone interested in FESMAN 2009, including artists wishing to be considered for what should be a groundbreaking festival, should visit www.fesman2009.com.

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2008: The Year in Recordings

Posted on December 11, 2008 by The Independent Ear

One afternoon hanging out with a good friend and fellow writer in the Crescent City during my November completion of the Randy Weston book manuscript for our publisher (Duke University Press) we started speculating on the various end-of-the-year lists we’d been called to participate in.  For me that included the JazzTimes magazine, and Francis Davis’ Village Voice respective year-end "critics" polls.  My friend threw up his arms and wondered aloud how one even arrives at such a list given the dearth of comprehensive listings of the releases of a given year.

    Thank goodness I have a ready solution to this personal conundrum – my radio playlist file.  Thanks to a year-long stint of program subbing on air at the Crescent City’s great radio station WWOZ (www.wwoz.org), and particularly to several months of alternating hosting with the superb Maryse Dejean the Sunday evening new release program "What’s New", I was blessed with a ready index of my favored new releases for the year.  

    I won’t be so bold as to label this some sorta "best of" list — and one will readily ascertain that the numbers are a bit uneven, there’s no particular ordering, and certainly no top 10 or top 25 or whatever arbitrary number — so here are some ’08 releases and reissues worthy of your attention:

 

Recommended 2008 Releases

 

 

New Releases

 

Sonny Rollins, Road Shows, Doxy

 

Joe Lovano, Symphonica, Blue Note

 

Catherine Russell, Sentimental Streak, World Village

 

Charles Lloyd, Rabo de Nube, ECM

 

TK Blue, Follow the North Star

 

Esperanza Spalding, Esperanza, Heads Up

 

Jenny Schienman, Crossing The Field, Koch

 

Dafnis Prieto, Taking The Soul for a Walk, Zoho

 

Sumi Tonooka, Long Ago Today, Kindred Rhythm

 

Jose James, The Dreamer, Brownswood

 

Dr. Michael White,

Blue Crescent

,

Basin Street

 

Gilfema +2, Obliq Sounds

 

Evan Christopher, Django ala Creole, Classic Jazz

 

Robin Eubanks, EBB Live Vol. 1, REM

 

Marty Sheller Enemble, Why Deny, PVR

 

Conrad Herwig, The Latin Side of Wayne Shorter, Half Note

 

Cassandra Wilson, Loverly, Blue Note

 

Rosa Passos, Romance, Telarc

 

Eric McPherson, Continuum, Smalls

 

Jaleel Shaw, Optimism

 

Vijay Iyer, Tragicomic, Sunnyside

 

Elio Villafranca, The Source In Between, Ceiba Tree

 

Adam Rudolph, Dream Garden, Justin Time

 

Corey Wilkes, Drop It, Delmark

 

Danilo Perez, Across the Crystal Sea, Universal

 

Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Live at the Village Vanguard, Planet Arts

 

Kurt Elling, Nightmoves, Concord

 

Bennie Maupin, Early Reflections, Cryptogramophone

 

Mike Reed’s Loose Assembly, The Speed of Change, 482 Music

 

Liz McComb, The Spirit of New Orleans, Gve

 

Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra, Harriet Tubman, Noir

 

JD Allen, Now!, Sunnyside

 

Dave Holland, Pass It On, Dare2

 

SF Jazz Collective, Live 2008, SF Jazz

 

 

Reissues/Historic

 

Sarah Vaughan, Live at the 1971 Monterey Jazz Festival, MJF

 

Lester Young, Live at Birdland, ESP disk

 

McCoy Tyner, Fly With The Wind, Milestone

Anthony Braxton, The Complete Arista Recordings, Mosaic

 

Return to Forever, Anthology, Concord

 

Henry Grimes Trio, The Call, ESP disk

 

Art Pepper, The Croydon Concert, Widow’s Taste

 

Coleman Hawkins, The Hawk Flies High, Riverside

 

John Coltrane, Traneing In, Prestige

 

Steve Lacy, The Forest and the Zoo, ESP disk

 

 

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Ancient Future – the radio program

Posted on December 11, 2008 by The Independent Ear

WPFW 89.3 FM, Washington, DC – Pacifica Radio in the Nation’s Capital (www.wpfw.org)

 

One of the distinct pleasures of returning to the DC area has been WPFW, the area’s most creative radio station.  I spent 18 years hosting programs at WPFW but knowing the drill at community radio I understand the pecking order, once one relinquishes their regular program — as I did in September ’07 — your return means go to the back of the line and start on track towards program hosting by seeking sub opportunities.  So I was delighted when WPFW program director Bobby Hill quickly offered me the 11:00 p.m. Wednesday evening "Late Night Jazz" slot alternating with my friend and fellow journalist John Murph and preceding old friend Bob Daughtry’s rangy "Overnight Jazz" show.

    Considering how to posture this program, after years of doing "Drivetime Jazz" (4pm) shows on WPFW, clearly such a nighttime slot would enable a broader sense of freedom in terms of stretching out a bit more.  Another programming consideration is the fact that my program follows WPFW’s nightly creative hip-hop slot "Holla’ Back".  So I’m developing the show with an Ancient/Future perspective, encompassing a fairly broad range of the music.  My edition of "Late Night Jazz" launched on Wednesday, December 10 and henceforth I’ll be posting my weekly playlist in this space.

 

Ancient/Future Playlist 12/10/08 WPFW 98.3 FM

Artist                       Album Title              Label                        Track

1) Dennis Rollins Badbone & Co., Big Night Out!, Raestar ("Sweet Tone Bone")   

2) Ron Westray, Medical Cures For The Chromatic Commands of the Inner City, Blue Canoe ("The Jiggy")

3) (Theme): Randy Weston, Ancient Future, Mutable ("Roots of the Nile")

4) Davell Crawford, Love Like Yours and Mine, Bullseye ("Sunday Morning")

5) Jelly Roll Morton, The Pearls, Library of Congress ("King Porter Stomp")

6) Professor Longhair, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Mardi Gras ("Big Chief")

7) Tuts Washington, Live at Tipitina’s, Night Train ("Tut’s Tee Na Na")

8) James Booker, Resurrection of the Bayou Maharajah, Rounder ("All By Myself")

9) Henry Butler, PiaNola Live, Basin Street ("Basin Street Blues")

10) Jonathan Batiste Trio, Live in New York at the Rubin Museum of Art ("Red Beans")

11) Randy Weston, The Spirits of Our Ancestors, Antilles ("Blue Moses")

12) SF Jazz Collective, Live 2008, SF Jazz ("Go")

13) Dr. Lonnie Smith, Purple Haze, Venus ("Voodoo Chile")

14) Steven Bernstein’s Millenial Territory Orchestra, WE Are MTO, Mowo ("The Viper Song")

15) Festival Gnaoua, 10th Annual Best of Live ("Chalaba")

16) Oliver Lake Organ Trio, Makin’ It, Passin’ Thru ("I Want to Walk with Jesus")

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THE Book for 2008

Posted on December 11, 2008 by The Independent Ear

Jazz… oops Creative Music Book-Of-The-Year:

 

A Power Stronger Than Itself

 

By George Lewis ( University of Chicago Press)

 

 

As trombonist-composer and now author George Lewis, Director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University, describes the members of the renowned musicians’ collective born in Chicago in 1965 known as the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), they are the “…musicians who extended the discoveries of bebop…”  And that’s about where the majority of these stalwart musicians cheerfully deposit their relationship to what some view as the constricting and others as the objectionable musical universe known as “jazz.” 

 

Regardless of where one chooses to categorize (and let’s face it Americans are willful categorizers) the musicians of this African American collective, many around the globe have long admired their inclusive approach to what they long ago termed their music: “Great Black Music… Ancient to the Future” (a tagline about which Lewis details more than a little contention within the ranks).  This writer fully admits to having a much deeper and more satisfying listening investment in the music of the AACM originators than in the concurrent often freely improvised music of their New York and Europe-based peers.

 

          The most rewarding aspect of this heroic tome (676pp) is the individual profiles of the AACM musicians as they entered the organization down through its roughly four generations.  These often intimate profiles serve to demystify the AACM.  For example, though this writer has visited the homes of and dined with such key AACM musicians as founding member Muhal Richard Abrams and second generation Douglas Ewart (including a long friendship with Ewart’ and his wife Janis Lane-Ewart, a former AACM administrator, and several years serving as director of the now sadly-defunct National Jazz Service Organization of which Muhal was a founding member), I learned many things about both of them from this book not only as musicians but as people than I ever knew previously.  Such personal insights as the Northwestern University matriculation of 2nd generation AACM saxophonist-composer Chico Freeman and pianist-composer Adegoke Steve Colson and later his spouse vocalist Iqua Colson were equally insightful.

 

          Having long been on the frontlines of the evolution of local, state, regional, federal (National Endowment for the Arts), private foundation and corporate support for jazz endeavors myself, Lewis’ excellent chapter on how the development of the AACM as a not-for-profit dovetailed with that development is also quite illuminating. For example this passage from Chapter 10 detailing Abrams’ early role in NEA jazz funding as panelist and policy-maker:”…The guidelines used to describe what they fund – music that’s done in the African American tradition, and that shows proper knowledge about chord changes…  We took that out.  I said ‘to some people these guidelines tell them, don’t apply.  This is the NEA, a government wing.  We have to invite all these people in here.  The so-called jazz world is producing all kinds of innovations.  We have to recognize that.  We cannot sit here and resist based on some empirical notions concerning swing and tempo and chord changes.  The music has developed out of that into other things.”  Such witnessing by Muhal and others enabled the gradual funding of musicians and presenting organizations working on the leftward fringes of what the NEA categorized as jazz and even opened funding doors for musicians so-identified to be supported in other categories. (And isn’t it about time Muhal Richard Abrams finally achieved a NEA Jazz Masters fellowship.)

 

          Unlike many who write jazz-related books, Lewis understands the territory from a variety of viewpoints – as musician, composer, educator, curator, presenter, grant recipient, and intellectual, making him uniquely qualified to write this excellent chronicle.  Lewis also evidences a keen sense of how creative music has evolved not only in the not-for-profit realm but also in the at times prickly relationships between the black composer-musicians of the AACM and their white counterparts in “downtown” New York and Europe; relationships which he details warts and all.

 

Undoubtedly AACM musicians are more often than not people who invest a sense of humor in their enterprise and their response to the music – an essential element in creative endeavors which may not go down quite so easily as the concurrent mainstream.  On pg. 130 first generation saxophonist-composer (and cleric) Joseph Jarman describes his mom’s reaction to a performance he gave with John Cage: “…DownBeat didn’t like it, and my mother didn’t like it either.  She said [imitates] ‘Joseph, if you ever play with that man again don’t tell me, please.  I love you, I love your concerts, I come to all of them, but if you’re going to play with him don’t tell me;’ ‘Yes ma’am!”

 

Lewis leaves no stones unturned, which he makes clear in his introduction, including the various disputes, disagreements, misunderstandings, and even rivalries between members.  An example of the latter would be that between such distinguished early members as Roscoe Mitchell and Anthony Braxton.  He details the personality schisms that arose when the Art Ensemble of Chicago literally beat a co-op band that included Braxton, Leo Smith, and Leroy Jenkins to the punch at the leading edge of AACM migrations to Europe.  Lingering rivalries and generational resentments have boiled between the organization’s Chicago and expat New York factions.

 

Lewis details both the triumphs and failures of the AACM, making this a very humanistic chronicle, highlighting both with equal candor.  He also pulls no punches concerning thorny issues of race and gender.  There are those who would suggest that somehow “the music” has been taken or outright stolen out of the black community.  Here’s Braxton’s take: “The music was taken out of the community, that’s a great phrase, but in fact that’s not what happened.  The musicians go where the gigs are.” 

 

A later chapter examines the issues women members have encountered being viewed as equals in such a male-centric organization.  He achieves this through the voices of such intimates as Iqua Colson, pianist-composer Ann Ward, flutist-composer Nicole Mitchell and the other members of the AACM’s lone female ensemble Samana.  Ms. Mitchell has risen to become the first female AACM co-president.

 

A Power Stronger Than Itself makes clear what a diverse and splendid group of African American musicians the AACM has always represented; they’ve emerged from both the projects as well as black middle class backgrounds literally all strata of the black experience in America, which has served to make the collective all the more remarkable in its 43+ year existence. 

 

 

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The Adventures of Randy Weston pt. 2

Posted on November 26, 2008 by The Independent Ear

This is Part 2 in our ongoing series of anecdotes from the book African Rhythms: the autobiography of Randy Weston, Composed by Randy Weston, Arranged by Willard Jenkins, forthcoming, published by Duke University Press.

 

In one of the early chapters of our book Randy talks about the influence of the ancestor grandmaster drummer Max Roach.  Max was a few years older and at the time (mid-late 1940s) much more experienced on the jazz scene than Randy but the two were fast friends and frequently hung out at Max’s place.  Recalling those times, here Randy details a Miles Davis encounter.

 

    "…Like I said, there were a lotta giants around Brooklyn back then, many of them living in my neighborhood.  I mentioned [pianist] Eddie Heywood, who lived directly across the street.  Max Roach’s house was two blocks away.  George Russell was living in Max Roach’s house at the time.  Miles Davis, who was the same age as me, had just come up from East St. Louis and he was a struggling young musician who didn’t have any money at the time, so he lived in a small place in the neighborhood on Kingston Avenue with his wife and young children.

 

    I used to hang out at Max Roach’s house on Monroe Street all the time.  Max’s house was a magnet for the new generation of musicians who emerged in the late 1940s, what the writers and fans called the bebop musicians.  I remember George Russell would be there working on "Cubana Be Cubana Bop", which Dizzy Gillespie later made famous with his first Afro-Cuban flavored band.  Miles would always be there at Max’s house as well because he was working with Charlie Parker at the time and Max was the drummer in that band; Duke Jordan, who was living in Brooklyn, was the pianist and Tommy Potter was the bassist.  So Charlie Parker’s rhythm section was all Brooklyn guys.

 

    I remember a really nice moment with some of these guys.  In 1947 when the great trumpeter Freddie Webster, who was a big influence on Miles, died so prematurely, George Russell, Miles Davis, Max and me all got in my father’s car and we drove out to Coney Island by the ocean.  While we strolled reminiscing on Freddie, Miles took out his trumpet right there on the beach and played a beautiful tribute to Freddie Webster that I’ll never forget!"

 

Stay tuned to this space… more anecdotes, further Adventures of Randy Weston coming soon…

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