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.

YUSEF LATEEF - EASTERN SOUNDS

I'm not sure I can do justice to this record. Whatever I write will only scratch the surface of what this amazing record has to offer. I feel as though I have decided to write about A Love Supreme or Milestones!

For me, it is a cornerstone of my love of jazz. It opened my ears to the potential that the music has and the fascination that I have for the exploratory nature of jazz stems directly from Eastern Sounds. Like all great jazz records it not only shows its jazz antecedents, it adds original elements, and the resulting mix points the way towards a new approach to the music.

It may sound slightly improbably but I found this record in a charity shop.I was out to lunch with my wife and had dropped her off at the restaurant while I parked the car. As I walked back to the restaurant I went passed a charity shop. Someone had obviously just dropped off a jazz collection, or perhaps it had been there for some time and the 'real' gems had already been bought. To find any jazz records in charity shops is pretty rare. Over many years I've been lucky enough to find a handful, but the reality is that you are more likely to find records by military dance bands or soundtracks to the Sound of Music than anything jazzy -much less original US pressings in perfect condition! Needless to say when I finally met up with my wife, a large bag of records under my arm, she was not very pleased that I had taken time off from being a husband to be a record collector instead!

But it was all worth it for Eastern Sounds.

This album was recorded in 1961. Lateef had been recording steadily for the previous five years, producing as many as four albums a year in 1957 and in each recording he included at least one experimental track. Often the experiment was the use of an unusual (for jazz) instrument such as an oboe, a piccolo or something from another country.

Lateef's interest in the music of Africa, initially the music of North Africa, stemmed from his conversion to Islam in the early 1950s. As he puts it in his autobiography, when faced with the prospect of having to produce records each year he realised that he would need something more than, then current, hard bop. "To break the mould, I began to study other instruments from different cultures. This new pursuit meant I had to spend time in the public library doing research on Africa, India, Japan and China."

Prior to Eastern Sounds, Lateef has been involved in Olatunji's Zungo and Randy Weston's Uhuru albums. Both records took their inspiration from Africa, the second particularly celebrating the recent withdrawal of British colonialism from many African countries. Music from Africa, particularly Nigeria in Olatunji's case, was used for both records and although Lateef's playing is not decisive on either recording, I think it is an indication of the man's interest in music from outside of America as well as his technical ability to play in other idioms.

Intriguingly, however, the recording Lateef produced of his own music prior to Eastern Sounds is Lost In Sound, which to my ears sounds very much a straight forward, of its time, hard bop record. While the record that followed Eastern Sounds, was Into Something, which again is less experimental than Eastern Sounds. What makes this record stand out from the records Lateef was making at the time, and in some ways from all the records he would ever make, is its relentless experimental approach. With the exception of Don't Blame Me, each track has something different, not just unusual instruments, but also unusual approaches to jazz, ,choices of tracks and influences. Ironically, although it is the least experimental track on the record, the writer of the linear notes, Joe Goldberg pays it more attention than any of the tracks. Perhaps he felt most at home with it?

Lateef's band comprised Barry Harris on piano, Ernie Farrow on bass and Lex Humphries on drums. They are all very competent musicians in the hard bop style and Harris is particularly good throughout, both inventive and sympathetic to Lateef and playing some really fine solos. However, I don't think it is disparaging to these musicians to say that I doubt they could have produced such a classic record without their leader.

The record kicks off with The Plum Blossom on which Lateef plays a Chinese globular flute. It produces such a particular sound that I have never heard anything like it on a jazz record. With some fine piano work from Harris and some interesting bass work from Farrow (is it the rabat he is playing? What kind of instrument is it?) the minimal nature of the song, its repetitive nature, its paucity of percussion and overall simplicity make it utterly captivating.

Blues for the Orient is slightly more conventional except that Lateef is playing the oboe rather than his tenor. This gives the track the, no doubted intended, 'oriental' feel. Its clearly an attempt to merge the American blues idiom with music from the 'orient' as the title tell us. To my ears there is a lot of blues and not a lot of orient - unless the oboe is all the orient there is!

Chinq Miau is, according to the sleeve notes, so-called because of a scale in Chinese music. Based on nothing more than a hunch I wonder if it is the most 'authentic' track on the record! While still 'jazz' it also points the way to the potential for something else, something more.

Lateef's interest in exotica is also evident in the two movie themes on the record. Lateef's versions of the Love Theme from Spartacus, written by Alex North for the movie of the same name, is one of my favourite songs in any genre of all time. Harris's playing is beautiful and Lateef's oboe is keening and heartfelt. I have to admit that there is something almost too deliberately 'exotic' about it, too knowingly 'out-there' and 'strange', as though Lateef is stretching to find the right way to express his interest and love of non-American music. Indeed the choice of covering a song 'about' an exotic place rather than listening to music from that place, only seems strange in the modern world. Coltrane, like Lateef, would listen to ethnographic recordings, but that would be some years hence. These records were not always easy to find in the US and the taste for them was not set in 1961. I am sure that there would be much to be gained from closely comparing this record to Coltrane's Africa Brass of the same year.

Snafu is, to my mind, an acronym from the US military which stands for Situation Normal, All Fucked Up. Is this song in some way a comment on the war in Vietnam. In 1961 the war had yet to become to take quite the divisive position in the US that it would later take. However, many young soldiers, disproportionately poor and therefore black, were being sent there to fight. The refrain maintains the 'exotic' feel of the rest of the record although the rhythm section play it fairly straight. I could see this as being the 'experimental' track on another Lateef record. Here is comes across as almost 'straight'.

Following the frenetic Snafu, Purple Flower is achingly slow. Lovely piano from Harris and restrained brushing from Humphries underpin Lateefs deep tenor tone. Makes me think of feeling 'heavy' and 'happy' - too deep to do anything but enjoying it nonetheless.

He also covers another sand and sandals tune, the Love Theme from the Robe. A film that has somewhat lapsed into obscurity, it tells the story of a Roman Centurion assigned to crucify Jesus. Supposedly set in Palestine it was shot in LA but retains a somewhat otherworldly character.

 The record closes with the Three Faces of Balal which acts as a coda to Plum Blossom. The instrumentation is similar as is the mood. I am not sure what the Three Face of Balal are, but I doubt the explanation given in the sleeve notes. Could it be another biblical reference to go with the two songs from biblical movies? Perhaps, given the composer's faith, it is not Biblical related, however, it may have a North African reference which would fit with the other tracks on the record.

YUSEF LATEEF - PRAYER TO THE EAST

Ever since I found Eastern Sounds in a charity shop in Hammersmith I've been fascinated by Yusef Lateef - the man and his music.
He seems to me to have been unfairly relegated to a footnote in jazz history. He is mentioned as a friend of Coltrane's who made available to him books about Islam. If he is mentioned it is usually in the context of some of the exotic instruments he used such as the rahab, shanai, koto, Chinese wooden flutes as well as the oboe and the flute. Sometime he is referred to as a precursor of 'world music' - whatever that may mean. The depth and beauty of his music, however, is rarely mentioned.
Jazz musicians have always attempted to expand the range of the music through the use of different instruments, different combination of instruments and different ways of playing.
Lateef's interest in 'exotic' instruments should be seen against the background of the introduction into jazz of a range of unlikely instruments from the harp to the cello to the bagpipes. Before sounds could be generated by a computer they had to be made by people and jazz musicians were always looking for new sounds. The long shadow cast by bebop encouraged younger musicians to experiment with form as well as content. Nothing was off limits, everything could be co-opted from Broadway musicals, to classical music and even in the case of Sonny Rollins, calypso.
However, Lateef carried these experiments furthest, at least until the seventies. From the early fifties when he started to lead his own groups almost every record he made has at least one track on which he plays oboe, flute or another instrument from beyond the United States.
To this love of different sounds Lateef added a love of the blues. Unlike Eric Dolphy who sometime seemed to be dismantling the post bop/ hard bop sound, Lateef used his ability as a multi-instrumentalist to give the blues based form of jazz a dose of energy, to revitalise it and to make it relevant.
Lateef puts it best himself: "Having completed two albums for Savoy, it dawned on me that perhaps I could be recording for few years, and it was no use reinventing the wheel with each new album. To break the mould, I began to study other instruments from different cultures. This new pursuit meant I had to spend time in the public library doing the research on Africa, India, Japan and China."
But the use of other instrument was not just a gimmick. As well as introducing new musical sounds Lateef hoped that the use of instruments from other countries could help to promote understanding and possibly friendship. He felt that other cultures had much to teach the US and that interaction could be beneficial to all involved.
I am certain that his interest in different musical instruments and in religion, leading to his conversion to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, are linked. Indeed later in his life Lateef would travel to Nigeria to teach music but also to study Nigerian music. Lateef also became an educator and developed his theory of Autophysiopsychic music. Clearly he is a man who with a deeply searching and enquiring mind.
Lateef fully converted to Islam in 1948, after a few years of intense study. In his biography he recalls: "My embrace of Islam came in about 1946 while I was working with the Wally Hayes Band in a club on the west side of Chicago. One night a trumpet player named Talib Dawud sat-in with us. He told me that he was an itinerant musician and that he was practicing Islam as a member of the Ahmadiyya Movement."
I think that it is significant for Lateef's music that he chose the Ahmadiyya Movement rather than the, albeit still nascent Nation of Islam. The motto of the movement is 'Love for All: Hatred for None' and, although it has been rejected by heretical, particularly in Pakistan, it is far closer to the mainstream of Islam that the Nation of Islam.
Although  one could infer that the adoption of Islam by Lateef, changing not only his name but the names of his wife and children, was an implicit rejection of elements of post-war American culture, Lateef does not seem to have been militantly calling for mass change. As he puts it, "I believe that the motivation for any human being to embrace Islam is that when almighty God turns a person's heart towards Islam (peace) there is no other choice for the person." This does not sound to me like the words of a many set on violent change - or indeed violence of any sort!
In a passage of Dizzy Gillespie's autobiography that is often quoted, Gillespie attributes the attraction of Islam to black Americans to the fact that they would treated with respect and as equals, something that could not easily be found in American institutions of the 1950s. Gillespie goes on to recount a story of one of his band members persuading a racist restaurateur to serve him by saying that he was not a Negro but a Muslim.
For Lateef, and indeed other jazz musicians such as Art Blakey, Dakota Stanton, Ahmad Jamal, McCoy Tyner and Shihab Sihab, conversion was a matter of deep faith not expedience
The record opens with Dizzy Gillespie's A Night In Tunisia.

The track begins with a gong and Lateef playing eastern sounding notes while in the background there are strange percussive sounds. Altogether a very evocative beginning , perhaps derived from Lateef's studies of North African musics or from folk records from the region.
The song soon, however, returns to the US and follows the well trod path of other covers of this standard. In 1957 when this record was made, Lateef
Lateef had played in Gillespie's band and must have been very familiar with Night In Tunisia. Written in 1942 and first recorded in 1944 the title refers to the Allied involvement in Tunisia rather than attempting to evoke a mythical exotic paradise.
I particularly like the very end where Lateef and trumpeter Wilbur Harden quote Charlie Parker's famous version. Harden would record four albums as leader with John Coltrane - yet another Coltrane connection!
Endura, written by Lateef is a very straightforward post bop number with fine solos from Lateef on tenor and Harden on flugelhorn. It swings in a funky manner but after Night In Tunisia is seems rather flat to my ears.

Side Two opens, like Side One, with a gong. Bassist Ali Jackson, who would also play with Coltrane as well as on other dates with Lateef, provides the wonderful Prayer to the East. Lateef's flute soars majestically above the tight rhythm section. Although the use of the flute seems to be an attempt to invoke a sense of prayer or reverence, Harden's flugelhorn is just too loud and tough to hold the same mood.
I find the next track fascinating. Why Lateef chose to cover exotica maestro Les Baxter's Love Dance, perhaps we will never know. He must have owned, or at least have had access to a copy of Baxter's Le Sacre Du Savage.

Exotica has become renowned for its fakeness, its lack of authenticity and its use of foreign instruments, usually from the Pacific, to spice up some otherwise pedestrian music. Les Baxter, however, was the one who started it all and his music is never pedestrian.  The Ritual of the Savage LP contains Quiet Village which when covered by Martin Denny on his Exotica LP became a smash hit.
I think its worth quoting the description of this track on the Ritual of the Savage sleeve notes.
"The fervid sun has dropped behind the jungle curtain ... living creatures of the tropics make their nests. A chattering chimp squawls a final command to its young. Over the softening sounds of evening comes the beat of the tom-tom... bringing together the entire native populace for a ritual as stimulating as it is sacred. Here is music for a slow, surging and erotic dance ... a dance as seductive and pulsating in its concept as in its execution ... gentle in tempo ... violent in extreme." Heady stuff!!!! And I still don't understand why Lateef would have covered it.
If anything it threatens to give credence to accusations that he is just using foreign instruments in the same manner of people like Denny or Arthur Lyman - as pure exotica, employed only to evoke a feeling of a dangerous, sexually freer primitive place.
Did Lateef, still a young man of 36 really believe in the savage and primitive nature of Africa?
The sleeve states that Love Dance was arranged by Ali Mohammed Jackson, no doubt the same Ali Jackson who wrote Prayer to the East. From the name one can infer that he is a Muslim too.

The set concludes with the lovely ballad Lover Man which shows the depth of Lateef's playing to the full.

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.