just imagine what else was going on in the US during these specific years… the 60s only grows gigantically as the world descends into rack and ruin at the hands of the power elite… why, really, would musicians, particularly black musicians, turn to the east at this historical moment… and to which ‘east’? the north african east of course… but also to the ‘far’ and/or, ‘south’ asian ‘east’. given coltraine’s edification at the hands of lateef, where else could he have gone but to interstellar…
perhaps one of the most beautiful and compositionally radical jazz albums ever recorded:
reminder: see lateef’s book that is fundamental reading for all serious jazz musicians:
Repository of Scales and Melodic Patterns
all that jazz, and then there is dorothy ashby and jazz harp.
wikipedia:
orothy Ashby, was an American jazz harpist and composer. Hailed as one of the most “unjustly under loved jazz greats of the 1950’s” and the “most accomplished modern jazz harpist,” Ashby established the harp as an improvising jazz instrument, beyond earlier use as a novelty or background orchestral instrument, proving the harp could play bebop as adeptly as the instruments commonly associated with jazz, such as the saxophone or piano.
wikipedia
and… just listen to the drummer: drum&base precursor, no? on some pieces, elsewhere the percussion is latin… as is the overall feeling.
right…
and alice of course!
a notebook of epic reflections by mark bartlett 