My baptism into the music involved an outlook on life and the music that was very very vast and broad and negated very little. You can see it reflected in my music and approach to the music over the years.
-Abdul Wadud
As all who have been on this journey with me know, I am a huge cello fan - an obsession that began unexpectedly.
In 1985, I was studying Dutch at the Defense Language Institute at Presidio of Monterey and fell in with DJs at Pacific Grove’s KAZU radio station. Just down the street from the radio station was a used record store. Whenever I was going to the station, I’d stop in, look around, and buy some albums, generally West Coast Jazz.
One day as I walked into the store, the owner reached down, pulled out a stack of records, and placed them on the counter. He told me, “You need to buy these.” A guy had dropped them off earlier in the week, but he was evidently saving them for me. Here they are:
Although I was familiar with Chet Baker, I knew nothing about Helen Merrill or Oscar Pettiford. On his recommendation alone I bought them for more than I could afford. That was a good call - 38 years later these albums are still some of my all-time favorites. I realize now I stumbled onto a little gold mine. The interesting thing about this stash is that Pettiford plays on all but the Baker LP and whoever owned these was clearly a Pettiford enthusiast. When I listened to Pettiford’s cello solos on songs like Not So Sleepy and Now See How You Are from the Oscar Pettiford Orchestra albums, I was completely knocked out. It was through Pettiford that I fell in love with the cello.
Many years later, when I ran across Abdul Wadud’s By Myself with a man holding a cello - you don’t see the cello on the cover of many albums in the jazz section - I bought it without hesitation, even though I had no idea what kind of music to expect. It was later I understood from Abdul Wadud that the “type” of music didn’t matter. He helped me understand Jazz was only a label and labels create unnecessary competition.
In a 1980 interview with David Lee, Wadud explained:
It wasn’t about the word “Jazz.” The musicians were creating music, and performing, and they had music of all types happening in that period of time. It was an outgrowth of culture. The need for spirituals arose, the need for so-called “liturgical music” arose, the need for party music, dance music arose, and out of that grew all these labels: jazz, spirituals, gospel, and so forth… basically the word “jazz” and other labels came about out of the sky, out of people’s imaginations.
In an environment of labels, classical musicians look down on musicians who opt out and record on the commercial side of the business. The commercial musicians look down on musicians on Broadway. The Jazz musicians look at both classical and commercial musicians as squares. In jazz, the Bebop musicians don’t work with free players and vice versa. All these cliques fight against each other and vie for power. In the end, it’s a destructive environment.
This dysfunction led Wadud in 1995 to disappear from the music scene. For twenty years he remained out of sight. There were rumors in free jazz circles of his death in 2012. However, in 2014, Joel Wanek was able to track him down. In the article By Myself: An Interview with Adbul Wadud, originally published by the online music journal Point of Departure, vol. 57, Wanek recalls that meeting:
I had been searching for Abdul Wadud for two years before meeting him for this interview in November 2014. Earlier that year (and at least one instance a few years prior) there had been rumors of his death circulating throughout the internet from prominent musicians and free jazz aficionados. But, no obituary could be found and no one could seem to find out if the rumors were true. Even some of his former musical collaborators couldn’t confirm whether he was alive or dead.
When we talked, he was in the process of moving from Charlotte, North Carolina back to his hometown of Cleveland. Once he got settled in Cleveland he would be more than happy to meet up and talk. So, Tomeka [Reid} and I ventured to Cleveland together, to meet our musical hero. Wadud invited us to his downtown apartment where we talked at length over the course of two days in late November 2014.
On this week’s journey on that Big River called Jazz we’ll explore the world of Abdul Wadud, who helped me understand music is just art and to label it does a disservice to the creative art form.
Ronald Earsal DeVaughn was born on April 30, 1947, in Cleveland, Ohio. He started playing sax and cello at 8 years old and played in school bands, a musical education that included an interesting mix of classical and jazz. While in sixth grade he attended the Sutphen School of Music and took private lessons from Martin Simon, who played with the Cleveland Orchestra. At the same time, he’d listen to Miles Davis and John Coltrane when they played at Leo’s Casino around the corner from his house in the projects on East 55th between Central and Quincy. In that 2014 Interview, he recalled: “Albert Ayler came from Cleveland so he was a big influence on me. He used cello also in his band. He was known around town but he was bigger in Europe. I got exposed to the New Music, the avant-garde, when I was about 14. I started playing it when I was about 16.”
After high school, he studied at Youngstown State University from 1966 to 1967. Then he transferred to Oberlin College Conservatory from 1968 to 1970. During his junior year at Oberlin, he became a Muslim and changed his name to Abdul Kabir Wadud. Kabir means well informed and Wadud means loving, reflecting his desire “to be well informed and loving in my life.” He was introduced to Islam by saxophonist Yusuf Mumin and drummer Haasan Shahid, with whom he formed the Black Unity Trio. Wadud made his recording debut with them at Oberlin, which would become one of the seminal albums in jazz history.
In the Winter of 1968, after practicing together four days a week for six months in the basement of a jazz record shop called Cosmic Music!, the Black Unity Trio recorded Al-Fatihah:
Al-Fatihah, which in Arabic means “The Opening”, is titled after the Qur’an’s first Surah. In 1969, they pressed 500 copies on their self-released Salaam Records and sent them directly to radio stations at college campuses. From Al-Fatihah, here is the first track Birth, Life, and Death:
This is a spirited and thoughtful record, a triumph in ensemble playing. It was the ensemble playing on this wonderful album that most interested Wadud.
Wadud had a unique approach to music. He was concerned with doing away with the upfront playing - the John Coltrane model so popular at that time. He was all about cohesiveness and collective improvisation, without the solo on top of the rhythm section. It was the ensemble playing he liked about working with the classical musicians in symphonies while at Youngstown and Oberlin, and later with the New Jersey Symphony.
Through Oberlin’s Black History professor Oliver Jackson, Wadud met St. Louis saxophonist Julius Hemphill, a member of the Black Artists’ Group (BAG). Jackson was from St. Louis and familiar with BAG. You can read more about the Black Artists’ Group here:
BAG - St. Louis
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October 7, 2023
When Hemphill came to Oberlin for a concert, he met with Wadud. This association brought him to Archway Studios, St. Louis in February 1972 to record Hemphill’s legendary Dogon A.D.:
In his 2004 book Point From Which Creation Begins: The BAG of St. Louis, Benjamin Looker writes that the album’s title was influenced by the art and culture of the Dogon people of West Africa, and “A.D.” refers to their “adapted dance.” The album was released in 1972 on Hemphill’s own Mbari label, a tribute to the 1960s Mbari Club.
Founded in Nigeria in 1961 by German expatriate Ulli Beier, the Mbari Club was a post-independence Nigerian consortium of artists, writers, and musicians. It was an important cultural hub for African writers and closely connected to the art journal Black Orpheus, founded in 1957 by Beier:
The Mbari Club acted as a publisher in the 1960s and was considered the only African-based publisher of African literature at the time. It also hosted prominent American artists like Langston Hughes, Pete Seeger, and American painter Jacob Lawrence.
Jacob Lawrence and his wife, fellow artist Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, first traveled to Africa in 1962 where he presented an exhibition of his work in Lagos, Nigeria. In 1964, they returned to Nigeria for a nine-month stay. During this visit, he finalized more than 25 works for his Nigeria series that explores themes of spirituality and community, often centered on the marketplace, a crucial gathering place in Nigerian culture. After returning to the United States in 1965, Nigeria was presented at his New York City dealer’s gallery. Here’s one of his paintings:
In the same way as Lawrence’s art, the music of BAG was heavily influenced by African Modernism and perhaps no greater example is the album Dogon A.D. Note the back cover of this album:
From this album, here is the title track:
What’s unique about this album is not only Wadud’s cello rather than the traditional bass, but also the presence of the great drummer Phillip Wilson. Earlier, Wilson played with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band before his life was tragically cut short when he was murdered in New York City in 1992.
In 1977, Wadud recorded his solo masterpiece By Myself - his magnum opus. It was recorded at Blank Tape Studios in New York City and released on Wadud’s own Bisharra Records, the label’s only release:
This is a highly innovative album that signaled the coming-out party for the cello in many regards. In the 1980 interview, Wadud commented about the album:
My approach, as I outlined in the liner notes of my solo album [By Myself], is to approach the instrument in its totality. I don’t believe in boundaries, I don’t believe in the cello being necessarily limited to being an accompanying instrument, or a rhythm instrument, or a so-called “lead” instrument. The cello can be anything that I want it to be. If I want it to be a drum, it can be a drum. There are times when I use it as such. When I want it to be a horn, it can be a horn. And out of this same philosophy evolved a concept of ensemble playing. As far as I’m concerned, ensemble playing is the essence of music. The whole philosophy from which I came and in which I began to develop the direction of my music came out of that, thinking in terms of ensemble playing
Here’s one more for the road. From By Myself, here is Happiness:
With this classic solo performance, Wadud demonstrates how music can simply transcend labels. Two of Wadud’s final recordings with James Newton and Anthony Davis I've Known Rivers (1982) and Trio^2 (1989) both released on the Gramavision label take the music to an even further place - a place in the ear of the behearer. Then in 1995, Wadud suddenly withdrew from the music community.
On August 10, 2020, Abdul Wadud passed away. He was a true pioneer, who helped broaden the possibilities of the cello. In the 1980s Wadud acknowledged that musicians like Oscar Pettiford, Ray Brown, and Ron Carter, for example, were educational and inspirational; however, he also acknowledged that no one brought the chordal, percussive, and ensemble approach to the cello into one context as he did. Following his Muslim name, Abdul Kabir Wadud, he lived a well-informed and loving life. He will be greatly missed, but his legacy continues.
Next week, on that Big River called Jazz, in celebration of Spring, we’ll dig our paddles in and explore the world of birdsong recordings.
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Until then, keep on walking….
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