GLENN (GHANABABA) WARREN - RHYTHMS OF HAPPY FEELINGS

 This, unjustly neglected record, is by Glenn Ghanababa Warren. However, it has his father, Guy Warren's fingerprints all over it!
The description on the sleeve perfectly described the music within the grooves:- "Discussed in Africa ... Recorded in Europe ... Mastered in America." So we have a record with a definite African flavour, largely played by Brits and remixed with a light (and sometimes not so light) fashionable disco-influenced style. And when it works its a pure joy!
Released on Ghana's Safari Records in 1980 - what a great record label symbol! Does anyone know if they released any more records?

It seems plausible that a young man would persuade his father to adopt a more modern sound. But I can't help feel that the ever ambitious Guy would have been well aware in 1980, when this record was produced, of the successes of such African musicians as Manu Dibango, Fela Kuti and his old rival Olatunji in the US disco scene. He was certainly aware of the rock band Osibisa as the string arrangements on this record and rhythm guitar were supplied by Kiki Gyan who had played extensively with the band. Furthermore, he must also have been aware of the jazz-funk, jazz-rock movements if for no other reason than the British jazzers on the record were part of these scenes.
Foremost from the British jazz scene on this record was Ian Carr. Carr played with Guy Warren in the sixties on his own records and on Warren's Afro Jazz LP. By 1980 Carr, together with saxophonist Brian Smith and keyboard player Geoff Castle and bassist Billy Kristain had all played together in Carr's jazz-rock-funk outfit Nucleus.
The final elements in the mix are Tom McCarthy and Sharon Shapiro who produced a number of disco records in New York. I think the presence of Michael Benedictus, also as arranger, who would go on to produce Don't Make Me Wait together with Larry Levan as the Peech Boys, must also have helped give this record its dance-floor-friendly flavour.

For a Guy Warren fan such as myself one of the joys of this record is hearing three of the great man's tracks re-recorded. Monkies and Butterflies and Highlife are from Africa Speaks, America Answers (read about it here), while Happy Feeling is, perhaps his most well know track as it was covered by Bert Kaempfert.

Needless to say the playing is exemplary. There is a different feel for each track. The opener, Monkies and Butterflies is a joyous party track with the band chanting and singing over a, sometime shambolic, but always infectious rhythm. Carr provides a great solo.

Next is Eyes of a Fawn which reminds me somewhat of a slightly less tight Brotherhood of Breath - which is a compliment!

The best part of the final track on the first side, Laakpaa, is the second half which consists of nothing more than chanting, singing and basic percussion. Magnetic, hypnotic stuff.

Over on side two we get the full disco treatment. I'd love to hear this in a proper club situation - in fact I'll have to play it sometime! It just builds and builds without a let up as strings, female vocals and even some disco synth stabs are added. Its definitely the most 'modern' track on the LP.

After such a dancefloor killer the last two tracks, both covers of earlier Guy Warren tracks seem somewhat subdued. However, after you have calmed down from Love of Rhythm, both Happy Feeling and High Life have much to offer.

I urge you to track down a copy of this fine record. Although its not super rare, I've seen it in some shockingly bad conditions, so spend a bit of time and track down a decent copy! Good luck

GUY WARREN - AFRICA SPEAKS, AMERICA ANSWERS!

Africa Speaks, America Listens is a truly remarkable record. Remarkable not only for its musical content, an as-yet-unheard-in-the-US-fusion of West African highlife and jazz, but remarkable also for its assertion of a cultural equality between the American and the African continents. Indeed, from the title you might be forgiven for thinking that America is the passive member of the partnership. Furthermore, unlike many of Warren's later solo recordings the other musicians on the record were, with two notable exceptions, white Americans. Although this is Warren's conversation with America, I am afraid to say that my copy is a UK Brunswick copy. The cover on the US album shows Warren playing against an almost Constructivist background and is much cooler that then UK version. There's also an Australian version with its own sleeve but I haven't seen one.
Guy Warren arrived in the US in 1954 and having played in London with Kenny Graham's Afro-Cubists (if anyone has any recordings of Warren with the band let me know!) and in Ghana with ET Mensah, he quickly found gigs, albeit not immediately very lucrative.
Through a contact at Down Beat magazine he met Gene Esposito who hired him to join his Latin Jazz band, which was composed entirely of Italian and Jewish musicians. He also met Red Saunders, again through connections. Saunders was a veteran drummer who had played with Albert Ammons and Joe Williams. Through Saunders, Warren secured a recording date at Decca. Saunders would play on the record but only minimally, despite receiving top billing and a hefty slice of the royalties.
It may, on paper, have sounded like an unpromising combination but Warren was able to marshall his forces and pull of a coup.
As I've mentioned in reviews of Warren's later LPs, he was never interested in producing jazz with an African flavour but was rather determined to produce a hybrid of the jazz played in America and the jazz played in Africa. The music on this record, considering it was his first LP as leader, is an amazing mix of highlife, traditional African music and American jazz. That the mix not only works but that he manages to get the right combination of all the differing elements (and managed to get his diverse band to play at the top of their game) is, I believe a tribute to his advanced vision and musicianship.
The record opens with Guy and band members chanting - presumably Africa speaking! Warren then plays the bamboo drums, the first example of a wide variety of African percussion instruments used throughout the album. Where Warren's playing and overall musical vision differs from those of percussionists such as Olatunji is that he employs traditional instruments in the service of modern music rather than jazzed up versions of African songs. Just as the listener thinks the track is going nowhere it takes a sudden swerve (or should I say fade out) into a more forceful and muscular direction. It is almost as though, having started to speak softly and attractively, Africa is now speaking directly and demanding to be heard as an equal. It is a great introduction.

Ode to a Stream, like the later My Minuet, seems to me to owe something to the European classical tradition, in this case to the impressionist composers. Johnny Frigo plays the violin solo. Frigo would go on to record some interesting but scarce records for modern dance. Maybe we'll get to this one day!

Duet sees Warren playing with Red Saunders. I must admit that while it is interesting, Saunders is just too conventional against Warrens imaginative percussive onslaught. Not I suspect Saunders' fault but Warren is just better!

Eyi Wala Don (My Thanks to God) has some great piano-work from Gene Esposito while Warren plays the drums. Can someone tell me what he is saying?

Monkies and Butterflies on one of my favourite tracks on the record and in fact one of my overall favourite of all Warren's songs. The band really comes together there, particularly Esposito and Johnny Lamonica on trumpet.With the female vocals in the background this is such a happy track.

The first side closes with J.A.I.S.I (Jazz as I see It). While very enjoyable, compared to the previous track, it just seems too conventional to my ears, although the conga and bass interplay and solos are a highlight.
Side two kicks off with Invocation of the Horned Viper. As ever Warren's playing is terrific. I can't help feel, however, that overall it is a little too 'exotica'. What do you think?

Chant continues the adoption of traditional music, in this case, a drum ritual to accompany a dead body being carried to a cemetery. Just as it is about the go the way of its predecessor, the piano and sax come in to add a jazz element.

My Minuet is a very strange song indeed. I would love to know more about it. The sleeve notes very unhelpfully just say that it is "almost 18th Century Drawing Room style". What were Warren's influences to create such a song?

The Highlife is, to my ears, surprisingly flat when you consider that Warren was a key part of highlife music in Ghana. I think the most off-putting aspect of it are the lyrics which are incredibly trite.
I like the Eyes of the Fawn. The horn section really seem to be comfortable with it, perhaps because it allows them space to improvise over the top of Warren's playing. For some reason it makes me think of some of the experiments of Kenny Graham in the UK!

Finally FE-ED-TO-NE closes the record with a bang. What a great track! It perfectly pulls together the various elements of jazz from both continents into a perfect blend that allows both to come out. The beginning of Warren's singing and playing, gives way to Esposito's driving piano solo. He is joined by the horn section which pulls the track in a more 'American', West Coast-cool direction. The Warren comes back in to finish the track. Africa and America are in conversation but Africa has the last word. 

SOLOMON ILORI - AFRICAN HIGH LIFE

I don't really know very much about Solomon Gbadegesin Ilori and I would like to know more.
Ilori was born in Nigeria and, according to the sleeve notes of this, his only record as a leader, he had only been in the US for five years at the time of its recording. African High Life was recorded in 1963, a year after Art Blakey's African Beat on which Ilori also played. Read about it here.
In some ways this is a continuation of Blakey's African Beat as many of the same people played on both records. Ilori, Chief Bey, Robert Crowder, Montego Joe, Garvin Masseaux and Ahmed Abdul-Malik all appear on both sessions. They are joined by Josiah Ilori on sakara drums and cow bell (a brother perhaps?), Jay Berliner on guitar and Hosea Taylor on sax and flute.Taylor had previously played with Olatunji and also played on two unreleased at the time cuts on Freddie Hubbard's Blue Spirits. Hubbard of course played in Blakey's Jazz Messengers!
I don't know as much about Taylor as I would like to but his playing on this record is exemplary.
African High Life falls between the work of Guy Warren on one hand and Olatunji on the other. Neither as complete a fusion of American jazz and African highlife nor as obviously indebted to 'traditional' African music, Ilori manages to be both inventive and surprising. As the linear notes comment, "his use of African and European musical instruments on this album and the achievement of a perfect balance between them also point to his success in fusing together two diverse cultural elements without doing any professional injustice to either of them." The sleeve notes are penned by Oladejo Okediji, who I assume is the Nigerian writer. If so then these are the first sleeve notes on a US record by an African musician that I have read that are written by someone who may have been able to understand the music from its African source and not just as a new sound on American shores. Indeed Okediji's comments praise Ilori for attempting to correct some fundamental misconceptions about African music as being about "unmeasured and raw shouting", while "African dancers jump aimlessly into the air with a kind of martial impulse."
As the sleeve note make clear African High Life is not a percussion record of the likes of Chiano but an attempt to explore a wide range of African music and instruments. Of course, there are drums and in some cases they are prominent but Ilori also uses other 'African' instruments such as the pennywhistle (read about South African pennywhistle kwela here) and the guitar (read about the guitar and the Heshoo Beshoo Group here) to create music of depth and interest.
The opening track Tolani (African Love Song) is also the most drum focused track. It starts with some incredible drumming before the rest of the band join in. Listen out for Taylor's sax towards the end - New York meets Lagos if ever I've heard it!

Next is Ise Owula (God's Work is Indestructible). Berliner's guitar and Taylor's flute interplay are just beautiful and Ilori's sensitive drum work is perfect. His deep voice never fails to move me on this one!

The first side closes with Follow Me to Africa,which again, is a melodic and beautiful song. It opens with some fine pennywhistle playing from, I think, Ilori. Abdul Malik's bass also stands out for me. Happy stuff.

Side two kicks off with Yaba E (Farewell) which is pure highlife. It starts with a refrain from an instrument that sounds like a xylophone before breaking into an infectious dance groove.

The next track, Jojolo (Look at this Beautiful Girl), is another highlife track. With lovely call and response singing, Taylor's sax is once more to the front. The percussion is particularly good.

 
The record finishes with Aiye Le (The Troubled World) which, at the beginning, is almost a duet between Ilori's voice and Berliner's guitar - although, inevitably, there is some inventive percussion work supporting them. Then it sounds as though the rest of the band join in and everyone sings this beautiful song together.

The English 'translations' reveal that Ilori was a spiritually minded person for whom God and life were linked and worthy of respect.

In many ways this is a surprising record to come out on Blue Note, although it seems to have been an extension of Blakey's interest in African music.

I would very much like to know more about this fascinating musician. Did he stay in the US or return to Nigeria? Did he make any more records. There is a fairly recent release of tracks from the African Highlife sessions which I haven't heard. Is there any more? Any information will be very gratefully received.

OLATUNJI- ZUNGO!

If Guy Warren's musical journey was an attempt to introduce African drumming to jazz then one might think that Olatunji succeeded in the attempt. However, rather than fuse jazz and African drums, Olatunji served up a watered down version of traditional Nigerian songs that captivated record buyers and jazz musicians alike.
Babatunde Olatunji was originally from Nigeria, first came to the US to study politics at Morehouse University and only started playing drums when he arrived in the US.
Due to a combination of luck and and good connections Olatunji became known in New York jazz circles as the go-to-guy for African drumming He appears on a number of jazz records of the early 60's appearing on Randy Weston's Uhuru African, Cannonball Adderley's African Waltz, Herbie Mann's Afro-Jazz Sextet and Max Roach's We Insist.
His Drums of Passion LP became a sensation, selling thousands of copies in the US. Unlike Warren and other African drummers such as Solomon Ilori, Olatunji's music was more 'traditional'. Using songs from his homeland and some of his own compositions (most notably Gin-Go Lo-Ba which would go on to become Jingo in the hands of Santana) Drums of Passion came off as a 'genuine' slice of Africa.
It was however, nothing of the sort. Most of the musicians on it were African Americans perhaps most notably drummers and percussionists James 'Chief' Bey (who played with Guy Warren on Themes For African Drums - read about it here), Thomas Taiwo Duvall and Montego Joe (read about his solo records here) and the singers were also from America.
Olatunji was not formerly trained as a drummer and his three co-drummers, by some accounts, provided most of the music and helped him overcome his initial limitations. Indeed in the introduction to his autobiography it is even admitted. However, Olatunji not only got top billing, the help he received remained virtually unknown.
All three percussionists appear on Zungo which was released in 1961, together with Yusef Lateef on winds, Clark Terry on trumpet, George Duvivier on bass, and Ray Barretto on conga and timbalis. Interestingly Lateef, Montego Joe and Chief Bey would go on to play on Blakey's African Beat (read about it here) in 1962, while the previous year, 1960, saw Lateef, Duvivier and Olatunji play on Randy Weston's Uhuru Africa. The 'Africa' link surely doesn't need to be pointed out!
Why was he so popular both with the jazz world and with record buyers if his playing was questionable and his music lacking in authenticity? Part of the answer lies in Lateef's recollections of playing with him. In his autobiography Lateef writes: "Later in 1960, I moved from Mingus to a group led by Babatunde Olatunji, the Nigerian percussionist. Playing with Babatunde was an interesting experience, mostly because for the first time I had to perform without a pianist or bassist in the group. It provided me with a lot of harmonic space and freedom. Olatunji's music also provided a wider appreciation for world music. To this extent he was a pioneer of what is termed today 'world music'."
For Lateef, Olatunji represented an opportunity to play with an authentic African drummer and to learn about African drumming so as to incorporate it into jazz. The same was true of John Coltrane, who became friends with Olatunji and he and Lateef agreed to help him financially with his Center of African Culture. Indeed the last concert that Coltrane played, and the last recording of him playing, was at a benefit for Olatunji's Center. Coltrane was always interested in rhythm and drummers and his love of playing with Elvin Jones because of his fierce drumming style is well documented. Coltrane also said in interviews that he intended to record with Olatunji or at least learn about 'African' drumming and music from him.
Even Nina Simone recorded Zungo, from this album, on her At the Village Gate LP. And Jack Kerouac, according to the sleeve note, loved Olatunji. Guy Warren must have been very put out by the song Jolly Mensah. After all he had actually played with the highlife king!
So, Olatunji represented a potential new musical direction but also a physcial manifestation of pride in Africa and, for African American, African culture. At a time when Africa was coming out of the oppressive period of empire and was yet to succumb to other forms of economic colonialism, the continent could become a source of pride for African Americans. Meanwhile, 1960 also saw the sit in protests in the US (shown in graphic form on the cover of Max Roach's We Insist), while 1961 and 1962 saw more sit ins, freedom rides and boycotts across the Southern states of the US.
However, despite his success both commercially and professionally I find Olatunji's music to be rather flat. It often lacks the rhythmic intricacies of other percussion records, notably by Guy Warren and Solomon Ilori. Both these musicians also strove, and sometime wonderfully succeeded to fuse Western jazz and African 'traditional' music, as well as the already existing fusion that was highlife. Lateef and Coltrane may have been fascinated by Olatunji's music, and I suspect that this was because he was perceived as authentic. They wanted something that sounded 'African' rather than sounding too 'Western'. Through wanting to create a fusion of their music with 'authentic African' music, ironically, American jazz musicians and record buyers ignored the music that already existed that was already a fusion of the two - highlife.

GUY WARREN - THEMES FOR AFRICAN DRUMS & AFRICAN RHYTHMS

Guy Warren, in the late 1950s, was on a mission in the US to show the jazz world, and the rest of the musical community, the importance of drumming. Not only that but he was determined to show people that the drums of Africa were as expressive and versatile as any other instrument in America. For Warren, drums were not just for providing a steady background beat while other instruments took the lead. For him the drums were the centre stage instrument.
Not only that, for Warren jazz was all about the drums, and African drums at that. The music, its development, its history, was for Warren inextricably linked to African music, specifically music from West African, the part of Africa that provided many, but not all, of the people who would become slaves in the US.
Warren had played jazz in the UK with Kenny Graham's Afro Cubists and in the US with established jazz musicians such as Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, to whom he dedicates one of the tracks on this album. He had also played highlife in Ghana as a member of the Tempos along with ET Mensah and Joe Kelly. By 1958, when this record was released, he was an experienced, sophisticated musician with a vision for his music. "This is the album I wanted to make ... This is MY album" he proclaims in the linear notes.
His jazz credentials are for all to see in the linear notes. He thanks critics Nat Henthoff and Lee Shapiro. His band mates include James Hawthorne (Chief) Bey (who would play on Art Blakey's African Beat - here), he mentions Monk, he uses jazz terms such as free-form and jazz slang such as 'laid it down'. How can this be anything other than a jazz record?
That is, unless you ignore the truly obscene cover. From the cover you would think that this record was firmly in the exotica genre.

What is the crazed man in front of a fire supposed to represent? Is it a reference to voodoo, or just a blanket heart of darkness reference? I think it is tragic that a man so proud of his country and the contribution that it had made to world culture should find that his first solo record, the "album I wanted to make", should be packaged in such a crude and insensitive way. I have included a few other exotica sleeves to show that this sort of thing was not uncommon. But it also shows how Themes for African Drums suffered. The record sleeve made it seem as though the music was not authentic, that the music was neither genuine African music nor genuine jazz. On the evidence of the sleeve you might have thought that Warren's music was on a par with Thurston Knudson or maybe Augie Colon.
In fact it is fascinating and amazing music. If you've read any of my other Warren posts you will probably know I am fascinated by him and his music.

Warren, however, was a somewhat confusing proposition to the record buying public of America. For a start, although he is pictured on the reverse in Ghanaian clothes, his music was not a strict 'ethonographic' reproduction of Ghanaian or African music.
The complexities of music from Africa, the enormous range of  external influences, from Europe in the form of church choirs or military marching bands, from Cuba in the form of a wave of Latin records that swept over the continent after the second world war, from the West Indies in the form of calypsos and from the US in the form of jazz, was never acknowledged in European imaginations. Instead, as can be seen from the cover, music from Africa was assumed to be from a place untouched by the influences of the outside world. Wild, primal, sexualised (as can be seen from the cover above) and 'savage' drumming was the music that most Westerners expected from Africa. Jazz, particularly sophisticated fusions of the jazz idiom and African traditional idioms, was not expected. Few Americans were familiar with highlife or any of the other forms of modern music being created in Africa.
Furthermore, Warren's pride in his Ghanaian roots, pride in his country and Continent, proved problematic at a time when many African countries were gaining their independence. The response of jazz musicians was to pen tracks whose names recognised new nations, or the creators of new nations. The response of jazz critics and white audiences was either to ignore this or to label this as some form of racism. Where within this dichotomy could an African jazz musician and his music find a home? Warrren was, I suspect, too proud to accept any easy assimilation into American cultural imperialism.
I would guess that Warren was very influenced by the writings of Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah explored ideas about cultural transformation through the traditional culture of his country. He took popular artists such as EK Nyame and the Uhuru Dance Band with him on his trips outside Ghana and he encouraged musicians to use traditional instruments and rhythms and wear national costume. As the cover of Themes for African Drums shows, this could only be interpretedin America through a lens of colonialism and Western superiority, rather than as an equivalent and valid cultural statement. Jazz was American and even if many of its practitioners were not white Americans, for white record company executives and the white record buying public the concept that an African could explore new areas of jazz was just too incredible a proposition in 1958.
Themes for African Drums contains the amazing, Love, the Mystery Of, later covered by Art Blakey on his The African Beat LP only four years later in 1962. It also contains the incredible My Story which, if anyone's autobiography can be written using drums, then this must be it. 

Warren maintained the same musical path for his next record, that is a mix of jazz and traditional African music. To my ears he achieves a more successful fusion on African Rhythms. Again, the sleeve notes make it clear that this record is jazz and not exotica. He is joined by Richard Davis on bass and Ollie Shearer on vibes and marimba. He is praised by the likes of Leonard Feather and Nat Henthoff and is even called "a jazz genius" by Earl Wilson.
Yet once again the sleeve puts the music firmly in the exotica genre. Stylised dancers, looking very similar to depictions of black jazz dancers in the 1920, particularly Josephine Baker, replace the crazed drummer of the previous LP. However, I would say that they reveal nothing about Warren's music, instead giving the impression that it is something to accompany a Tarzan movie. There wasn't even a photograph of him on the reverse.
For me African Rhythms is slightly more pleasurable than Themes for African Drums. Although Warren plays more trap drums in African Rhythms, there are no brass instruments. This means that each track is carried entirely by the drumming - by the rhythm. I find tracks such as My Anthem and both parts of the Third Phase to be utterly hypnotic and captivating.
As Warren revealed in an interview in 1960, he was aware of the problems that his music making created in the jazz community in the US. "I could never play like Gene Krupa, Max Roach or Louis Belson. They have a different culture. So I had to make a choice of being a poor imitation of Buddy Rich or playing something they couldn't. So I started playing African music with a little bit of jazz thrown in, not jazz with a little bit of Africa thrown in. For it is African music that is the mother, not the other way round. But I had to find out the hard way!"
What he found out was that, like many innovators, he was too far ahead of his time. In a few years, in America, the concept of Africa, the concept of the continent's meaning in jazz and for jazz, and the concept of what music from the continent could sound like, had changed completely. Records by Olatunji took the same elements as Warren's records but found a wider audience. Olatunji became friends with John Coltrane and apparently the two considered recording together. Other drummers, Big Black, 'Chief' Bey, Solomon Ilori, Montego Joe, put out records and carved successful careers within the American jazz scene. Symbols taken to represent Africa became more common as did the adoption of musical signs and idioms to indicate that black jazz musicians recognised that Africa was their spiritual home. All too late for Warren who unfairly has been neglected as anything but a footnote in jazz history. Buy his records and rediscover his greatness.

GUY WARREN - NATIVE AFRICA - KPM 1053 and 1054

Did I ever mention that I am obsessed with Guy Warren of Ghana?
Maybe at least once!
Anyway, here are a couple of records he did for KPM in 1968.
In 1968 he was in London (of course) and had just recorded Afro Jazz with Don Rendell, Ian Carr and Amancio D'Silva.
He would team up with D'Silva again for The African Soundz which you can read about here.
The money from KPM must have been good to persuade Guy to make these two records. Why else take time from your career to record two albums worth of material? The suspicion, before you've even put the needle on the record, is that he was going through the motions. A chance to earn some money and just exploit the situation.
But of course when you listen to the music and hear the quality of the songs, it is clear that this was not the case.
I must admit that when I first heard these records I was reminded of lots of very worthy 'in the field' recordings of African musicians. You know the stuff - field recordings of so-called 'ethnic' musicians, which come in worthy sleeves with lots of footnotes about the collator of the music, but little about the people who made it or how it fits into local culture.
By 1968 Guy Warren had moved beyond all of that easily categorizeable stuff.
Having played in London with Kenny Graham (another obsession of mine) and in the US with some of the legends of bebop, Warren was international. He had even been a DJ for the BBC World Service for God's sake!
Nevertheless these are his least jazz-influenced recordings. The usual KPM descriptions (click on the pictures to get a larger image) reference, Watusi (or as we say now Tutsi), Uganda, Asafo and Muslim music. They also talk about natives, lions, insects, tribes and witch doctors. I guess the best you can say is that it was 1968!

You can imagine the kind of programme that these tracks were intended to soundtrack. A white man, perhaps in khaki shorts and with a neat beard, drives a beaten up Land Rover across the veld. Perhaps he is accompanied by a faithful retainer, dressed in a mix of Western and local clothes. As they drive along, the camera pans back to show giraffe or elephants. You can hear drum-based music in the background to show that we really are in the deep heart of Africa!

Listening to these records make me wonder about Warren's relationship to Europe and America. Like many African artists he had left Africa to pursue his musical aspirations. How, did he have to compromise to achieve his aims? Did he relish the opportunity of recording these tracks for KPM or was is a distraction from his more jazz-related work? Did he find it easy to be a Ghanaian in London?

As with all things related to Guy Warren of Ghana it is best to let the music do the talking. I have taken my favourite tracks from each record. Apologies if you favourite isn't here.

01. Talking Drums - Dramatic dancing drums. 3 Odono talking drums of various pitches, 1 Master drum
02. Dancing Drums - Small drum, 2 medium Atumpan drums, Master drum, uptempo dance sequence
03. Uganda Drums and Flute - 1 Heavy drum, 1 medium drum and sixteen inch bamboo flute. General atmosphere
04. Witch Doctor - Gong, medium drums and chanting voices, Voodoo (Juju) dance rhythm
05. Asafo Dance (Semi Military) - 2 medium drums, master drum, Ododonpo chanting voices. Builds to climaz. For warlike events
06. African Suspense III - 2 drums and flute. Mysterioso
07. Children At Play - Drums, small bamboo flute, harmonica, children's voices
08. Gyil Dance (African marimba) - Gyil, 2 drums, ground shaker
09. Gyil Solo (African marimba) - Peaceful scene
10. African Pastoral - The open plain, animals at rest. Hells (sic), bamboo flute, cymbals
11. Vehicle Movement - Snare roll joined by precussice "High Life" rhythm
12. African Kwela I - 2 Bamboo flutes, and snare drum
13. Tribal Calling - Native duologue. Native calling in the stillness of the forest
14. Sanza - Light plucked instrument generally called the "thumb piano". Gentle light sounds
15. Hullcinations and Mirages - Dream sequence - droughts - fishing
16. African Flute Solo - Lonely flute solo. Nature at rest

Native Africa - click here

GUY WARREN - EMERGENT DRUMS

As you may know I am a huge Guy Warren fan.
I don't think, however, in this instance I can say anything that is going to improve on the great man's own sleeve notes for his own record.
I guess I want only to point out his love of his country and continent, particulary at a time of serious political problems, his love of jazz and his interest in using the studio as a tool to develop his music. A man very much ahead of his time

Click here for the music

Hail! The Osagyefo is a rhythm portrait of President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. I borrowed the stirring Atumpan (Ashanti) rhythms of Ghana and used two jazz drums to execute my painting here. I cut this performance at one isttnig and there was no dubbing.
A Recital for Flute and Drums. I had to use the techniques of dubbing for this one. I first played the African bamboo flute, accompanying myself at the same tie with the rhythm of ankle bells tied to my right foot. Next I dubbed in the drum part - and the result is just what I wanted: a loose, swinging rhythm, suporting a swinging loose melody. Are you with it?
I recorde the bell part of An Akwapim Theme first and dubbed the drums on this afterwards. (That clear, tinkling sound, by the way, is the result of my forgetting to bring along a bell to the studio. There were two empty strong glass ashtrays lying around - and one of them came in pretty handy! Which gives me the opportunit to emphasis that, in most African music, it's not so much what yu use to get the desired effect, but how well you can play your part with what you have, and above all, if the sound it right!) The rhythm here is built to urge and move forward... this is the kind of rhythm that was used by the Akwapims of old Ghana, in their wars with the Ashantis. Even now, when it is played, you can feel the same sense of urgency all around...
The Blind Boy again uses the dubbing technique. I first played the African flute, laid it aside and, as this was played back, recorded the jazz drums on top of it as an extension of the theme,returning to the flute for a third track and out. I dubbed the 'talking drum' passage also as an extension of the theme. The title was suggested by a blind youth who wanders around the city of Accra, the capital of Ghana, playing his flute and accompanied by another boy who performs on a single African shaker. This second boy is also the eyes of the team: he plays an accompaniment, dances, collects the pennies, and guides his companion through town.
Black Flute.  When I take my bamboo flute, walk down that little meandering, laterite road somwhere in teh county, and take in nature ... then I blow my blues - the blues that comes from nowhere and goes nowhere because it is part of us. It's happy and it's sad. It's life and it's death. That's the blues!
In Buddhism, Prajana means self-nature, the realisation of the SELF. In the studio, I sat behind my two sets of drums and allowed my self to emerge. That's all I can say about Prajana. (I recorded the jazz drums and voice first, and then dubbed in the conga. Towards the end, the jazz drums had introduced a few break patterns. When I took up the conga, it started to solo in and out and in between. The jazz drums at this point sound as if they are almost twisting around the conga - but in a split second they break away and start to do a ritardo - kind of sliding to a stop. Such was the feel that existed during the dubbing that I shaded the conga solo right there into the jazz drums and the two sets of percussion slid out together in perfect concord.)
Babinga Babenzele! There was no dubbing in this pygmy drum suite from the Congo: it was recorded straight and at one take. I sat behind two sets of jazz drums and distributed rhythms to each drum in the twin ensemble, handling at the same time a bamboo flute for opening and fade away.
The Babingas are a pygmy tribe in the Congo. They are subdivided into the Bangombes and the Banenzeles, though both groups are essentially the same. For their music, the Babingas either yodel or play single-note flutes each of which has been pitched differently. And there are drums, too. For many years it was believed that only nativesof the Tyrol or other dwellers of mountainous areas yodelled. The Babingas - who live in the middle Congo, where there are no mountains - give the lie to this.
This suite is supposed to give you an idea of the music of the Babingas. A team of flautists come together to play on their single-note instruments: they perform in such smooth succession, one after the other, that they produce a hightly rhythmic melodic line. At the same time, the drummers man the drums. Teh village swings. As we approach, the music gets louder, more intense. Now we join in the fun and dance until we are exhausted, knocked out. Finally, we free ourselves from this musical hypnotism and depart. As we get out of range, the flutes fade - but we can still hear the two master drums. They are powerful, this pair - they were the ones we heard first! Now, at last, we still hear them in the distance ... like the alpha and omega of the jungle.
The Agasiga rhthym comes from Central Africa, from Watutsi-land. Like all Watutsi rythyms, it is slow, majestic.  I cut the piano part first and dubbed the rythym and voice on top.
The music you here now paints you a picture of what is happening in Africa today, not forgetting what happened yesterday. Many live have been lost. Many homes have been broken. But out of chaos will yet rise the power of the new Africa.

AHMED ABDUL-MALIK - EAST MEETS WEST

How much difference can we accept in our society?Are there some basic tenants of Western society that are inviolable and we should uphold these, even at the risk of losing sight of some of the other elements that make up our society? How far should people integrate into a society at the risk of losing their own cultures?
I think that these are questions that were as important in the America of 1959 when this record came out as they are now.
There was, of course, the Civil Rights Movement, which after the Montgomery Bus Boycott had somewhat lost momentum by 1959. Its greatest successes were ahead of it. There was the long shadow of the McCarthy-ite hearings, the witch-hunt that trampled on the rights of Americans in the quest to root out suspected Communists. America was still the home of the company man and non-conformity was uncommon, and slightly feared. Perhaps Abdul-Malik, given his interest in music and instruments from the Middle East followed the increasing American influence in the area. After the Suez Crisis in 1956, American oil companies increased their presence in the region and the American government increasingly provided help to undemocratic leaders in order to provide 'stability' and indeed by 1959 there had been a US military presence in Saudi for nine years.
However, unlike popular conception, the 50s in America were not in cultural-stasis waiting for the explosion of the 60s. Rather it was a period of intense experimentation and searching for new forms and approaches and few areas were are exciting as jazz. Musicians were bringing many different influences to jazz. Influences from Africa, from the Far East even from European classical traditions. Why not from the Middle East?
Abdul-Malik was born in Brooklyn to Sudanese parents. Unlike many other US jazzmen he did not come to Islam later in life but was born into it. Introduced to jazz at an early age he soon became an in demand bass player (we've already come across him on Art Blakey's African Drums and you can hear more of him with Coltrane at the Village Vanguard or on Monk's Misterioso). Perhaps inevitably he began to mix the music of America with the music of his roots.
This record shows how that mix might work. Using some of the top hard bop musicians in New York,  flautist Jerome Richardson, Benny Golson and Johnny Griffin on saxes, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Al Harewood on drums and Lee Morgan on trumpet, they are joined by Naim Karacand on violin, Mike Hamway and Bilal Abdurrahman on darabeka and Abdul-Malik himself on oud.
Like all marriages this one has some areas of harmony and others of tension. The two tracks that are at the East and West extremes are Takseem (Solo) and Searchin'. Takseem has no traditional jazz elements too it. The hard-boppers must have all popped out for a coffee or something while this track was recorded. A rhythm is laid down with the darabeka while oud and violin extemporize around the beats. Over the top is some very beautiful singing by Jarkarawan Nasseur. I am afraid that I do not know what she is singing about but it sounds to me as though it is the song of a sad woman who's man has left her.
This is immediately followed by Searchin which is straight ahead funky bop. It seems almost a shock after being taken on a journey to the Middle East to be returned to New York via a track that could be by the Jazz Messengers.
But it is Isma'a (Listen), the first track on side two that really shows what a true meeting of the two musics could produce. Starting with the opening  of the oud and the darabeka the track begins from the 'East' with a repeated motif which is then joined first by drums and then by the sax. Using the initial motif rather in the same way as they might use a complicated bass line, the drums and sax weave around the oud and darabeka and the song gathers pace. Then, Lee Morgan's trumpet cuts through, at first repeating the line of the oud but then in a wonderful and imaginative solo, soaring above the East and West elements into pure delight. That Lee Morgan sure could play! As the song comes to an end one by one the Western elements drop out until it is just the oud playing the refrain. Really exciting stuff that ends too quickly. I could have had a whole side of just this song. Apparently that arch-bandwagon-jumper Herbie Mann covered Isma'a on one of his albums but I have yet to hear it.
So, can a jazz record point that way through the thorny questions of multi-culturalism and integration? Of course you cannot learn how to live from a record. However, maybe there is something to be learnt from a Muslim in a Christian country who learnt to play a style of music that was indigenous to his adopted country but at the same time tried to bring something of his parent's country to that music.

Hunt it down and enjoy it.

ART BLAKEY AND THE AFRO-DRUM ENSEMBLE - THE AFRICAN BEAT

You all know about Art Blakey, right? The Jazz Messengers, Moanin', The Big Beat, Holiday for Skins, Orgy in Rhythm?
Blakey is the kind of drummer who makes you think he hates his drums. That's the only reason he could have for hitting them repeatedly and so hard. He must have been one hell of a drum-phobe. Have you seen the way he looks on the cover of Orgy in Rhythm?
Apart from his fierce attacking method, Blakey also knew a thing or two about musicians. Just look at the people who came through his Jazz Messangers!
By the late fifties and early sixties people in the US jazz world had become very interested in the music of Africa. Initially conflating African music with that of Latin American, in particular Cuba and Argentina, the jazz world began to incorporate increasing elements of 'exotic' musics.
It's no coincidence that this coincided with many jazz musicians finding Islam. Many black jazz musicians, as well as writers, poets, academics and others, began to turn their backs on Western modes of thinking and look to Africa for inspiration. As the civil rights movement in America became more prominent and, in some cases, more violent, many black Americans wondered what they owed to the modes of thinking and behaving that had come to them from white America. People wanted to shed their names, names given to them by slave owners. People wanted to shed their relgions, forced on their ancestors by slave owners, and return to religions that they might have had before slavery. People wanted to move even further away from Western approaches to music and adopt musical styles from Africa.
Blakey himself went to Nigeria as a merchant seaman in 1948 and is supposed to have converted to Islam and taken the name of Abdullah Ibn Buhaina. He later denied that he had gone to Nigeria to study drums and indeed said that jazz was emphatically American and owed nothing to Africa.
How then is one to take this record?
Blakey surrounded himself with some of the best musician's from Africa he could find in New York in 1962. Solomon Ilori and James Ola. Folami from Nigeria and Chief Bey from Senegal. From Jamaica came Montego Joe( read about his solo records here). From the US came Yusef Lateef (Read some Yusef Lateef stuff here) and Ahmed Abdul-Malik (Read about him here) both converts to Islam and both already investigating music from Africa,Garvin Maseaux who was studying the Yoruba in Nigeria and finally Robert Crowder and Curtis Fuller.
For me the stand-out track is Love, The Mystery of by Guy Warren (have I mentioned I'm kind of obsessed by him?). (You can read about Warren's original recording here) What a shame he doesn't play on the record itself. The track opens with a snaking sax line by Lateef that is followed by chanting. Underpinning the sax and the chanting are Blakey on the drums and others on various percussion. Lateef moves on to oboe and then Blakey is given the space he needs for a thundering drum attack. Abdul-Malik keeps the whole proceedings together with a rock steady bass-line and Blakey drops one drum bombshell after the other with Lateef adding scrapper in the background. Then Lateef comes back in on oboe with a long sustained note that rises above Blakey's furious drums until the entire track gains an unstainable intensity and the chanting begins again until it is faded out at the end. Altogether beautiful stuff.

GUY WARREN - THE AFRICAN SOUNDZ OF GUY WARREN OF GHANA

Over the last few years I have had moments when I have become quite obsessed with Guy Warren.
In this age of instant Internet information access there is something elusive about him.
His earlier, 'exotica' records are quite easy to come by. I think that is in part because they are seen as exotica rather than jazz. His later records where he teams up with Amancio D'Silva amongst others are much harder to turn up.
Warren, or Ghanaba, as he was later known, remarkably played with ET Mensah in the Accra, then with Kenny Graham's Afro-Cubists in London (although I do not think he was recorded) and then with Charlie Parker in New York (again unfortunately not recorded due to the untimely death of Bird). He appears on landmark recordings by Ian Carr and Don Rendell and one of his songs appears on Bert Kaempfert's Swingin' Safari. What a resume!
I think this quote from Max Roach in 1974 shows how important he was: "I met Ghanaba in Chicago in 1956.... Ghanaba was so far ahead of what we were all doing that none of us understood what he was saying - that in order for Afro-American music to be stronger, it must cross-fertilize with its African origins.... We ignored him. Seventeen years later, Black Music in America had turned to Africa for inspiration and rejuvenation, and the African sound of Ghanaba is now being imitated all over the United States, where ever Afro-American music is played."
I also like this description of him by Ian Carr: "A few months later we had met the African percussionist Guy Warren when we worked with him on one of his own LPs, and the experience had been very stimulating. He played everything from talking drums to maracas, cowbells, Indian bells, gourd, bamboo flute, harmonica and tambourine - but more than his music, his attitude to music, his dress, his uninhibited manner seemed to epitomise a completely and refreshingly opposite approach to jazz. The Rendell-Carr Quintet wore dark suits and primly knotted ties and could have merged into almost any respectable background; our clothes seemed to symbolise the conservatism and safety of our music. But Guy never wore Western clothes. His shaven head would be covered by a black fez or else a kind of straw pith-helmet; over a white African gown he sometime wore a black cape, sometimes a leopard skin. And he always wore dark glasses."
In many ways I think that his music was, as Roach says, so far ahead of his time that he was really waiting for the advent of free-jazz so that his forceful, rhythmic, evolving and fascinating percussion work could be properly accompanied.
He gets close to achieving it on this album. One might not think that a guitar would be the perfect foil to his waves of beat but in fact D'Silva is his perfect partner - perhaps making a connection back to his Ghanaian highlife days. The partnership is still perfect when D'Silva switches to electric bass on African Dance No. 4 producing a very eerie, deep sliding noise that matches the jiggering staccato drums.
Dick Heckstall-Smith provided sax and flute support. He is understated and complimentary and at no point tries to upstage the show although he gets a chance to let rip on African Dance No 2 and plays some wonderfully honking squealing sax.
For those not used to percussion led music this record may, at times, seem repetitive and lacking in melody or very much in the way of song structure. But I urge you to listen again. Perhaps, given the rise of dance music, prominent drums will not seem as strange today as they did when this record was first released. Don't listen as you would listen to an orchestra. Rather listen as though you are feeling the music. Listen as though the music is for a party and is asking you to take part.I think that this is music to envelope the listener, music to try and take over the listener. Its not entirely jazz, its not entirely highlife or traditional African music. Its a wonderful amalgam of all of these. African Soundz indeed.
He also wrote an autobiography called I Have A Story to Tell and, even though I have looked for it in the British Library I can find no evidence of it anywhere!