SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
FALL, 2022
VOLUME TWELVE NUMBER TWO
TERENCE BLANCHARD
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
FALL, 2022
VOLUME TWELVE NUMBER TWO
TERENCE BLANCHARD
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
ISAIAH COLLIER
(November 26-December 2)
SAVANNAH HARRIS
(December 3-9)
JOSH EVANS
(December 10-16)
ORRIN EVANS
(December 17-23)
NASHEET WAITS
December 24-30)
MIKE KING
(December 31-January 6)
MARCUS SHELBY
(January 7-13)
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/musicians/nasheet-waits
Nasheet Waits
Nasheet Waits, drummer/music educator, is a New York native. His interest in playing the drums was encouraged by his father, legendary percussionist, Frederick Waits. Over the course of his career, Freddie Waits played with such legendary artists as Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, McCoy Tyner, and countless others. Freddie Waits
Nasheet’s college education began at Morehouse in Atlanta, GA, where he majored in Psychology and History. Deciding that music would be his main focus, he continued his college studies in New York at Long Island University, where he graduated with honors, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Music. While attending Long Island University, Waits studied privately with renowned percussionist, Michael Carvin. Carvin’s tutelage provided a vast foundation upon which Waits added influences from his father, as well as mentor Max Roach. It was Max that first gave Nasheet’s formidable talent international spotlight, hiring him as a member of the famed percussion ensemble M’BOOM. One highlight of Nasheet’s tenure with M’BOOM was the live concert performance of M’BOOM with special guests Tony Williams and Ginger Baker.
Nasheet’s talent came to the attention of reedman Antonio Hart, who asked Waits to originate the percussion chair of his first quintet. Waits remained a standing member of Antonio’s various ensembles, recording three albums and touring nationally and internationally in noted venues, jazz festivals, as well as live television and radio performances. Nasheet remained a member of Antonio’s group through 1998.
Nasheet with Billy Higgins
Most recently Nasheet has been a member of Andrew Hill’s various bands, Jason Moran’s Bandwagon, and Fred Hersch’s trio. As an originating member of pianist Jason Moran’s Bandwagon, Jason, bassist Tarus Mateen, and Nasheet have been deemed, “the most exciting rhythm section in jazz” by JazzTimes, The 2001 recording “Black Stars” with the Bandwagon, featuring Sam Rivers was named the “Best CD of 2001” in (Jazz Times, Jan 2002) and “The New York Times”.Nasheet’s recording and performing discography is a veritable who’s who in Jazz, boasting stints with jazz notables such as Geri Allen, Mario Bauza, Hamiett Bluiett, Abraham Burton, Ron Carter, Marc Cary, Steve Coleman, Stanley Cowell, Orrin Evans, Stefon Harris, Andrew Hill, Bill Lee, Jackie McLean, The Mingus Big Band, The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Greg Osby, Joshua Redman, Vanessa Rubin, Antoine Roney, Wallace Roney, Jacky Terrason, Bunky Green, Peter Brötzmann and Mark Turner. Waits has recorded and toured extensively in Africa, Europe, Japan, Canada, South America and the United States.
Amidst his performing, recording and touring activity, Nasheet teaches private lessons to youth and adults, stressing a personal approach to the drums and music. He has been heralded for his musicality and creativity by such virtuosos as Ed Thigpen, Max Roach, Andrew Hill, and Stanley Cowell . True to his personal philosophy of the necessity to balance Tradition and Modernism, Waits collaborates and performs regularly with a wide range of artists. He remains dedicated to exploring his role and creative path in music.
Gear
Nasheet Waits is Endorsed by: Zildjian | Promark | Remo
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/nasheet-waits-mn0000315826/biography
Nasheet Waits
(b. June 15, 1971)
Biography by John D. Buchanan
Jazz drummer Nasheet Waits got his start with Max Roach and went on to play as a sideman for a multitude of other artists and to record albums as a leader.
Waits was born in New York City in 1971. The son of famous percussionist Freddie Waits, he was brought up in the thriving Westbeth artists' community in Lower Manhattan. Beginning to play the drums at a young age, he was encouraged by his father and, through him, met many great players who contributed to his musical education. Majoring in psychology and history at Morehouse College in Atlanta, he decided to pursue music as a career after his father's death in 1989. He moved back to New York and into the circle of his father's fellow players. Max Roach gave him a start in his M'Boom percussion ensemble, in which his father had also played. Nasheet went on to play with a dizzying galaxy of stars including pianist Fred Hersch, bassist Eddie Gomez, and saxophonist David Murray. Sought-after for his fluid, soulful playing, he recorded in the ensembles of Antonio Hart, Jason Moran (for Blue Note), and Ralph Alessi (for ECM), and in the group Tarbaby, and recorded two albums as a leader, 2008's Equality (on Fresh Sound) and 2016's Between Nothingness and Infinity (on Laborie). In 2018 he appeared alongside Alessi on German jazz pianist Florian Weber's ECM date Lucent Waters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasheet_Waits
Nasheet Waits
Nasheet Waits is an American jazz drummer.
Selected discography
As a leader
- Equality (Fresh Sound Records, 2008)
- Between Nothingness and Infinity (Laborie, 2016)
As sideman
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With Ralph Alessi With Dave Douglas
With Antonio Hart
With Tony Malaby
With Jason Moran
With Armen Nalbandian
With Tim Berne
With Tarbaby
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With others
|
|
References
- "Biography: Nasheet Waits". AllAboutJazz.com. Retrieved 26 July 2012.
External links
Nasheet Waits Joins New England Conservatory Jazz Studies Faculty
New England Conservatory’s Jazz Studies Department has hired renowned drummer, composer, and educator Nasheet Waits to join the jazz faculty beginning in the 2020-21 academic year. In addition to his work as a leader, Waits is widely known for his performances and recordings with a jazz greats including Antonio Hart, Geri Allen, Greg Osby, Marc Cary, Andrew Hill, and Wallace Roney, among many others.
“It is with excitement and pleasure that I join the faculty at NEC,” says Waits. “I look forward to contributing to the rich legacy of progressive education that has preceded me.” “I’m thrilled that Nasheet has agreed to join the faculty at NEC,” says Ken Schaphorst, chair of NEC’s Jazz Studies department. “His involvement in the jazz tradition as well as more innovative approaches to music makes him perfectly suited to continue the legacy of jazz education at NEC.”
Waits is a New York native whose interest in playing the drums was encouraged by his father, legendary percussionist Frederick Waits (Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, McCoy Tyner). Nasheet began his studies at Morehouse College, where he majored in psychology and history before switching to music and continuing his studies at Long Island University, from which he received his bachelor of arts degree in music with honors. While attending Long Island University, Waits studied privately with renowned percussionist Michael Carvin, who provided a vast foundation upon which Waits added influences from his father, as well as mentor Max Roach. It was Roach that first gave Nasheet’s formidable talent an international spotlight, hiring him as a member of the famed percussion ensemble M’BOOM. Nasheet’s talent came to the attention of reedman Antonio Hart, who asked him to originate the percussion chair of his first quintet. Waits remained a standing member of Antonio’s various ensembles through 1998, recording three albums and touring nationally and internationally in noted venues and jazz festivals, as well as live television and radio performances.
Most recently Waits has been a member of Andrew Hill’s various bands, Fred Hersch’s trio, and Jason Moran’s Bandwagon.
Nasheet Waits: Drummer
Nasheet Waits began his career as a jazz musician in the
nineties, and he has been hard at work ever since. The list of musicians
he has played with includes names like Andrew Hill, Fred Hersch, and
Antonio Hart. Nasheet leads his own band, Equality; he’s a member of Jason Moran & The Bandwagon; and he’s part of the trio Tarbaby, with Eric Revis and Orrin Evans.
The son of percussionist Freddie Waits, Nasheet explains his own commitment to a life in music: “I have been very fortunate to have the opportunity to find myself in the company of some great musicians. They were kind enough to share their time and history with me. I strive to be part of that continuum.” Terry Stoller talked with Nasheet Waits in summer 2013 about his Westbeth roots, his mentors and the lessons he learned, the good nature of the drumming community, the underpinnings of two major projects, the performer/audience relationship, and the challenges of recording.
Terry Stoller: When did you
move to Westbeth?
Nasheet Waits: I was born here.
My parents were original tenants.
Do you feel that growing up in the building contributed to your becoming an artist—besides all the other forces?
Those other forces—my father was a musician as well. And my mother was a designer of clothes, so there was art all around me as a child. And my neighbors—a lot of the people I grew up with, their parents were artists, and all the children seemed to be interested in music and acting. One of the early residents here in Westbeth was a painter and a sculptor—Carole Byard was her name. She moved out maybe in ’80. She was a friend of the family, and she had done a lot of traveling to Africa, so she had a lot of instruments, like kalimbas and little drums and things of that nature. She used to let me come down to her apartment and hang out and play on them. She was really, really kind. I was a gregarious child, full of a lot of energy, and I used to hang out with her for hours on end, and she was very supportive. So being in an environment like that definitely encouraged the creative.
I’ve read about your influences and your mentors,
especially your father, Freddie Waits, and also Max Roach and your
teacher Michael Carvin. Could you elaborate on some of the things you
learned from them that remain important to you?
I learned a lot of lessons from them. One of the most important themes was to develop your own voice. They always encouraged me to find my own path. In this creative music, it’s important to find your own voice.
What does that mean as a drummer?
As a drummer, or whatever instrument you play, I think it means being true to yourself. There are all types of influences that you have as an artist, but if you are just perfecting somebody else’s vision, that’s not a true representation of yourself. And I think art is supposed to be a representation of how you interpret your world and the world around you, your influences, what comes across your palette, how you describe that. Using somebody else’s language to describe that exclusively—while people can be successful doing it—is not necessarily a representation of yourself.
Like somebody trying to become a singer and imitating Frank Sinatra.
They may sound great. Somebody who sounds like Stevie Wonder may sound great, but that was Stevie Wonder. He came into that because of his experiences, and that’s what we hear in his work. Or Ray Charles—or Max Roach or my father or Michael Carvin. I didn’t want to sound like them necessarily. And I never really thought about it like that. I never really had an issue with that. But I know in all my lessons and all the time I spent with those men, that was something they always imparted to me. It was always about maintaining the artistic integrity within yourself. And that being, walk in your own path and not try and walk in their footsteps. Because they came to it, to their voice, through different circumstances that caused them to formulate their voice. So for me to play like them exclusively, it wouldn’t be true to myself. To a certain degree, you always steal and take from your mentors—that’s wise. But then it gets to a point where you don’t want that to be predominant in your creative voice.
As a child when you’re attracted to something, you’re not thinking about those kind of things. You’re just thinking, This looks like fun. I like the drums.
Usually as a child you’re also imitative.
I was, definitely. But even through that, I played so much as a
child, practiced so much—when I say practiced, I mean just coordination
things and things of that nature, and then just emulating what I heard. I
listened to my father. I listened to some albums—
like a Mickey
Roker album. He’s a drummer from Philadelphia. He played with a lot of
great musicians, from Lee Morgan to Ron Carter, just everybody. I
remember a Lee Morgan record in particular that Roker was a drummer on,
and I used to listen to it a lot and play along to that record. You’re
definitely emulating. I wanted to have a certain sound of some of those
musicians, but at the same time, I was doing it because I liked it. I
enjoyed it. But individuality was never a problem for me. If anything, I
had to conform my stuff to fit into a situation, to find a way to
incorporate what I was hearing into that template.
You’ve been playing professionally for about two decades.
I got serious about it—when I say serious, I figured that this might
be something I wanted to do for a profession—after my father had passed
away. In 1990, I moved back to New York from Atlanta (I was going to
Morehouse College), and everybody I was around was into music. My good
friends had gone to music school. And I was hanging out at jazz clubs.
The friends of my father—it’s a relatively tight-knit community—were
almost like family. Some of those people I called my uncles or
godfathers. Like Max Roach, Dr. Fred King—he was like a godfather to me.
He was somebody who played percussion with Pablo Casals and went on to
play in M’Boom, the percussion ensemble with Max and Joe Chambers and
Warren Smith and Roy Brooks and Omar Clay. That was the community that
was around. And Jack DeJohnette. People like that were very supportive
of me and my brother when my father passed away. So it became a natural
progression for me to get into the music. I had played, like I said, as a
youngster, but I didn’t really have the formal music knowledge, in
terms of knowing song forms and structures and chords and harmony. I
found myself kind of playing catch-up, but
at the same time that’s
when I got serious about it and started approaching music in that way.
And I thought, maybe I’ll be able to do this for a living. So I started
thinking about the economics of it. Before that, it hadn’t occurred to
me. I didn’t know what I was going to do.
I see you walking in the street listening to music. That’s part of your work, right?
That is part of the work. Some of that is me trying to learn some music, trying to get the stuff together, so I’m not going to have to be in the page, as they say. If you’re reading music all the time, it’s difficult to be in the moment.
You’re still open to doing improvisation even if you’re reading?
There are generally components of improvisation even within the written material. But it can be more liberating if you have some of the passages and some of the nuances under your belt so that you don’t have to be as focused on the page.
Especially as a drummer, when you’re playing drums and cymbals, and you have to coordinate each extremity differently.
But generally the music doesn’t dictate what each limb does. The music that you get is generally like a lead sheet; it’s the melody or the form of the song or something like that. You kind of have the freedom to interpret that the way you want to and shape the music in the way that might be appropriate for what’s happening.
In a 2011 interview, you talked about the divide between
expressive work and difficult, almost academic work—about people getting
too technical about the work. If what you want to do is work that’s
expressive and reaches out to people, how do you achieve that
considering that you’re playing with a variety of musicians, some of
whom may be doing the “difficult” stuff?
Even in those situations, the goal is to communicate some type of love. Regardless of what the setting is, that’s always my contribution. Sometimes you listen to things you’ve said, and you realize how they could be misconstrued, like your saying I don’t like this type of thing. I like all types of music. And I’ve played some very complex and challenging music, and I enjoy that just as much as I enjoy playing the blues or anything like that. I apply the same type of integrity with all of it. I think most musicians do. What I was talking about was, I think there has been a movement or a tendency for people to be more dedicated to the academic nature of what they’re doing as opposed to the soulful nature of what they’re doing, so that it starts to lack that type of connection to people. Jazz is already pretty limited in its audience. It becomes even more limited when it becomes so difficult to understand that only people who compose music like that can enjoy it. I find this is all about making a connection with the people. If your heart is in there, then you’ll be able to do it.
You speak about community, and your band Equality is a
creative collective. In my experience, the world of performing arts can
be very competitive. Is the communal spirit particular to musicians
because you must play together and mesh? Or do you look for people who
have that ideal too?
For the most part, I really enjoy the people that I’ve had the opportunity to work with, and bands that I lead and co-lead, and situations where I’m called to be part of the gig or tour or recording. For the most part, we’re all like-minded, in the sense that it’s a community. But within that community, like you said, there’s definitely some competitiveness. But I think that’s healthy because it keeps everybody searching. It keeps the art at a high level. There’s no complacency.
What is the impetus to be a bandleader, if you want your Equality band
to be a collective?
In that particular unit, the emphasis is on everybody contributing music, so when you use that term leader, that probably is more about the other aspects, off the bandstand, like getting the gig, contacting the agent, things of that nature. Also there’s a certain amount of professional impetus. You don’t want to be dependent on someone else for your livelihood all the time.
It doesn’t have to do with the music itself, then.
It does, too. Regardless of people contributing to the music, not only myself, but everybody else, I still get to pick and choose. You have the last say. Everybody is equal in a certain sense, but it’s a lot looser than in some situations. I’ve been in some bands where the leader is a little bit tyrannical or egotistical and has a vision. Sometimes it’s a beautiful vision, but sometimes they could use other input. Not everybody is the greatest composer. I play with a lot of musicians who play only their compositions, but a lot of those compositions sound similar, so they could use some outside influences—just to broaden the spectrum. Not everybody is Wayne Shorter or Andrew Hill. I had an opportunity to play with Andrew Hill. We played mostly his music, but he was a great composer, so it made sense. Not everybody is of that ilk with their pen.
I got the impression from what I’ve read that the drummer is the de facto
leader of the group.
There was a great drummer, Kenny Clarke. Wonderful drummer. And he said the drummer was the mother of the band. He was talking about it in a familial sense. This was in a traditional sense—definitely in the time that he was talking about it, in the late thirties, forties, fifties. The drummer pretty much played throughout the whole set, and you had to cater to everybody’s needs. If the bass player was slowing down, you had to play on the other side of the beat so that the tempos didn’t drag. Or if he was speeding up, you had to play a little bit behind so that the tempos didn’t rush. You had to be in tune with the piano player. You had to be like an octopus in terms of your level of attention. Whereas somebody who was soloing took their solo and then stepped off the bandstand, you were always there. Billy Hart, another dear friend of my father’s and a great drummer in his own right, said, “You know why there are no conductors in jazz music? Because they’re drummers. We’re the conductors.” There’s a lot to be said for that, in terms of your ability to arrange and conduct and fuse the different elements into a cogent and functional unit.
Sounds exhausting.
It can be, physically and emotionally and spiritually. But it’s also very rewarding. Generally drummers, amongst each other, are very loving and embracing. When you see each other, it’s all love. Now when trumpet players see each other, it’s not necessarily like that.
Why?
Think about the nature of the instrument. It’s brass, it’s cold, it’s hard. You’re laughing, but it’s true. Or alto players, they don’t necessarily share. Drummers are, let’s get together and hang and hit. Alto players, they ain’t always doing that. They ain’t sharing their secrets like that. That’s something that they hold close to themselves. That’s the nature of the instrument. The nature of drums is more of a familial type. Come on, hang, and break some bread; let’s have a drink together. The love is always there between us.
I saw the clip of “Not His Hands!” from the film about
the 2009 production of “In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall, 1959”—the
multimedia concert with Jason Moran & The Big Bandwagon. I don’t
know how it was done in the live performance, but in the film, there’s a
section about Delaware state patrolmen pulling over the car that
Thelonious Monk is driving, then beating his hands when he won’t get out
of the car—and then it cuts to you.
That’s what happens in the performance.
You play a solo—beautifully—and you walk off the stage
when you’re finished. It’s very theatrical. Can you talk about your
ideas while you’re playing?
That whole work was produced by Jason. He had ideas from different places, but he put that together beautifully. And I think that was a natural segue, illuminating the racism in the South, talking about black Americans and our lineage. So after he talks about Monk’s hands being hit, it segues into a drum solo. And out of the drum solo, it segues into a brass selection sounding like a spiritual. What I was responding to in the solo was definitely the subject matter. We’ve done that concert over twenty times since the first time we did it in North Carolina in 2007. Hopefully, it’ll resurface here in the States. So every time, it’s different in terms of my solo. It’s never, OK, I’m going to definitely do this and do this. But coming out of that story, I was visualizing what that must have been like. There’s a strong image onscreen, and then just dealing with that—there’s a lot of fodder for that solo. And then responding to the horn players once they start playing. So you’re in this one area, but then you’re also fusing that into what’s happening with the spiritual. There’s a mode of development involved in any solo. You always try to tell a story to a certain degree.
I also found a recording online of the April 2013 Tarbaby
concert at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. I believe you dedicated
that concert to the philosopher Frantz Fanon.
We wanted to do some work with the French guitarist Marc Ducret, who was a part of that project. Mid Atlantic Arts was giving a grant for a work using American and French artists. I asked Eric Revis, the bass player, What type of topic or person can we use as the source for this project? He proposed that we use Fanon as a topic, and I agreed that was a great idea. And then we took that ball, and I went back and read some of his books. I had read a few in college. I studied history the first couple of years at Morehouse College, and I became aware of his work there. So that became a natural progression. Ducret is French, and Fanon was from Martinique and did a lot of his work in Algeria, when it was a colony. He was a revolutionary. It was also a way for us to talk about issues of social, cultural and economic inequality that are still present, not only in France, but in some of the countries they had colonized. To see what was happening in Morocco and Tunisia. And there were issues of ethnic profiling and inequality that led to rioting some years ago in the Paris suburbs, in Strasbourg, and in other cities. A lot of the first- and second-generation immigrants were revolting against what was happening. And the same type of discrimination existed here. A lot of times, people younger than me don’t have a sense that they’re different. They seem to think we’re all the same—which is the way it should be. We all are the same in the sense that we’re all human beings, and cultural differences are something that’s attractive. But when I was growing up, racism was a lot more visible. You could feel the racism, even in the Village, which is a pretty liberal neighborhood.
And stop-and-frisk.
Racial profiling. And in France, they instituted the same practices there—targeting the Moroccans, the Algerians. They have a large Senegalese population, so they were getting harassed.
I rarely hear anybody talking about Fanon. People talk about Che Guevara or Biko, Mandela, Martin Luther King, or Malcolm X or the Panthers. Fanon was very influential to a lot of those movements. So we thought, Why don’t we talk about that? In France, women were told they couldn’t have their faces covered in public. Let’s try to talk about a little of this now—or bring it up for discussion. I think that’s part of the focus of Tarbaby, to bring things up for discussion that probably aren’t brought up for discussion.
You were asked in the 2011 interview about the social
connotation of the name Tarbaby, and you said that it’s primarily about
aesthetics.
We do have a social consciousness, but that also has to do with the name and the legacy of the story, the folktale. Generally when somebody says something about a tar baby, it’s something you don’t want to touch. It’s a sticky situation that wants to be avoided. We’re not afraid to address those sticky situations. It could be with regard to race or culture or economics, or even creativity or music. That was another thing that we were initially talking about—harking back to what we were talking about earlier—this movement in the music where everything was so overintellectualized. The more difficult it was, then the more appealing it was. And our feeling was, that’s not necessarily so. We love music like that. Some of the music we play is extremely hard, but that’s not the focus of the group. The focus is the communal effort, and that communal effort not only in the group, but between the listeners, too. We want you to come from listening to those concerts having really enjoyed the music—and you might not have understood everything. Not pandering, but not trying to confuse, either.
How much do you factor in the audience while you’re playing?
You definitely feel their presence. There are some times when you’re giving and giving, and you feel like they’re not giving back. But at the same time, like I said, there’s never any pandering, regardless of whether they like it or not. Sometimes their not liking it is what’s supposed to happen. I’ve been in situations where musicians are trying to think, OK, this is a certain type of audience, and we should play this type of material. I think that’s a little dangerous because you could never really know. If they’re there, then they’re probably into what’s happening anyway.
I heard a musician say in a film that he likes recording
because it teaches him about how he plays. How do you feel about
recording vs. live performance? Do you enjoy it?
I enjoy recording. You have to learn to let go. That ego thing comes back into play. I enjoy it, but it’s definitely different than playing live because you’re listening to the musicians through the headphones. And even yourself through the headphones. It took me a little while to be comfortable in the studio because I never have myself in the monitor when I am playing live. But I realized when I was recording, I needed to have myself in the mix because I couldn’t hear myself. And that’s something that you never think of, being a drummer. Drummers can always hear themselves. People rarely have drums in the monitor unless you’re doing something that has a lot of amplification. But in the studio you have to have yourself in the monitor, so it becomes a little difficult in terms of the touch that you’re using; you become somewhat disconnected because you don’t hear all of the nuances as well as you do in live performance. But at the same time, I enjoy it because I enjoy making music. And sometimes you come up on some stuff that you really like. Sometimes it does teach you things about yourself, some tendencies that you may have. It may bring you back to trying to work some stuff out.
When I wrote asking for the interview, you said, “I’m always down for Westbeth activities.” How come?
There are so many reasons. It’s always been my home, even when I didn’t live here all the time. I’ve always considered New York and Westbeth my home. There are so many people here that are like family for me. Like Carole Byard, and down the hall from her was Idaka, Marilyn Worrell. She’s a dancer. She and my father did a dancer and drummer thing on the tenth anniversary of Westbeth. Madeleine Yayodele Nelson—Carole brought her into the building. Those people are like family. Lee Frasier. I’ve known all these people pretty much my entire life. I grew up with Ari Satlin. His father Stan wrote this baseball song that we sang as children. Westbeth is full of memories. I’m also in support of the mission of the building in cultivating the arts. That’s important, especially in America, where we don’t really support the arts. That’s why I work overseas so much because they support the arts a lot more than we do here—I’m talking about the government. So if I’m around, or if I can do anything that’s affiliated with Westbeth, I’m more than happy to do that.
Source cited:
Joshua Barnes, “Tarbaby Trio and Oliver Lake: Naked on Stage,” Sampsonia Way, Nov. 14, 2011, sampsoniaway.org. The interview was conducted by Thaddeus Mosley.
(For more about Waits, go to nasheetwaits.com.)
Photograph by Janette Beckman; album cover by Emra Islek. Courtesy Nasheet Waits.
Terry Stoller is a Westbeth resident and author of Tales of the Tricycle Theatre.
Profiles in Art, Copyright 2013-14 Terry Stoller and Westbeth Artists Residents Council
https://jazztimes.com/features/profiles/tarbaby-back-to-basics/
Tarbaby: Back to Basics
Bassist Eric Revis elaborates: “In the story, the tar baby is something you don’t want to attach yourself to. And it seems to me there are elements of jazz that a lot of people don’t want to attach themselves to: the idea of swinging, playing with conviction, with reckless abandon. Everything now tends to be very pensive and ‘interesting.’ An exercise in the math of music. None of us are about that.”
For drummer Nasheet Waits, Tar Baby speaks to the need for musicians to engage the full sweep of jazz tradition, not focus narrowly on what’s current. “The best players have a firm sense of history,” he says. “That’s why they’re able to walk their own path. There’s a cultural message that I think is being lost today, with the younger generation not referencing certain elements that are key to making jazz strong, making it what it is.”
Although Tar Baby found a home on pianist Orrin Evans’ Imani label, the band is a co-led collective, with Evans, Revis, Dillard and Waits at the core. J.D. Allen, also on tenor, has since decided to focus on his own work as a leader. But the three Allen compositions on the disc, including the mysterious title track, will remain in the book, and Allen is still spoken of as an honorary member. “It’s not a parochial view of a group,” says Waits, noting the two guest appearances by vocalist TC III. “We’re always open to change. The band can always augment itself, and that was the vision.”
After the opening intro, the quintet offers a heated, to-the-point reading of Don Cherry’s “Awake Nu,” a clear statement of interest in the free-jazz continuum. Revis and Waits have explored these modalities in a trio with the iconic Peter Brötzmann. And yet Tar Baby’s sound is largely tonal, wide in range, from the dark, loosely flowing 6/8 of Allen’s “Being in Nothingness” to the agitated funk motifs of Evans’ “Iz Beatdown Time” and the shuffle groove of “Psalm 150-2,” by Philadelphia organ legend Trudy Pitts.
Revis’ tricky, swinging “O,” named for Evans, might call to mind the Branford Marsalis Quartet, in which Revis has played for years. Another version appears on Laughter’s Necklace of Tears, the bassist’s new album, also featuring Evans and Dillard. “The tune pretty much describes Orrin,” Revis offers. “It’s ‘simply complex,’ you know, with this earth-visceral thing but also this sophisticated thing that’s in there.”
Asked about his and Allen’s respective approaches on tenor, Dillard cuts to the chase: “The one playing crazy is me. The one with the sweeter tone, that’s J.D.” Both saxophonists hail from Michigan, but Dillard, the youngest of the group at 31, wasn’t aware of that connection when he first heard Allen, an experience that “took me onto a whole different page musically,” he says. When Tar Baby formed, he recalls, “they suited me up, took me in like a little brother, and here we are.”
Tar Baby comes in at a concise, perhaps even brusque 33 minutes, yet it seems very much a rounded and complete narrative, harking back to pre-CD days when albums were necessarily shorter. “Some of the greatest music ever made in jazz is like three minutes long,” Revis contends. “I think that phase [long tunes, long albums] served its purpose, but we’ve gone through the exploration thing. Now, at least for me, it’s time to start whittling all this stuff down and getting to the essence of something.” Bolstering the point, Waits fondly recalls the advice of an old mentor: “Get to your shit quick.”
That’s not to say the band won’t stretch when the live setting calls for it. At New York’s Winter Jazzfest in January, Tar Baby sounded more exploratory and supple-more like a band-than Jeff “Tain” Watts’ star-studded quartet across the street with Branford Marsalis, Terence Blanchard and Christian McBride. Another Tar Baby studio effort is under discussion. “I’ve been at the drawing board quite a bit and I’ve got material ready,” confides Dillard. Waits plans to contribute as well. “We all have equal input,” the drummer says. “There’s strength in numbers, that’s our motto. It’s all about ‘us’ and ‘our.'”
Nasheet Waits, drummer and music educator, is a New York native. His interest in playing the drums was encouraged by his father, legendary percussionist, Frederick Waits. Over the course of his career, Freddie Waits played with such legendary artists as Ella Fitzgerald, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Sonny Rollins, Lee Morgan, Max Roach, Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, and countless others.
Nasheet’s college education began at Morehouse in Atlanta, GA, where he majored in Psychology and History. Deciding that music would be his main focus, he continued his college studies in New York at Long Island University, where he graduated with his Bachelor of Arts in Music. While attending Long Island University, Waits studied privately with renowned percussionist, Michael Carvin. Carvin’s tutelage provided a vast foundation upon which Waits added influences from his father, as well as mentor Max Roach and percussionist Fred KIng. It was Max that first gave Nasheet’s formidable talent international spotlight, hiring him as a member of the famed percussion ensemble M’BOOM. One highlight of Nasheet’s tenure with M’BOOM was the live concert performance of M’BOOM with special guests Tony Williams and Ginger Baker.
Nasheet’s talent came to the attention of reedman Antonio Hart, who asked Waits to originate the percussion chair of his first quintet. Waits remained a standing member of Antonio’s various ensembles, recording three albums and touring nationally and internationally in noted venues, jazz festivals, as well as live television and radio performances. Nasheet remained a member of Antonio’s group through 1998.
1999 proved to be an auspicious year for Nasheet. After his tenure with Antonio Hart had concluded, Waits joined the bands of Andrew Hill and Fred Hersch. A myriad of performances and recordings resulted from these 2 opportunities. Nasheet stayed with Andrew through 2005 and Fred for 10 years. He also toured and recorded with New Directions, a band of young Blue Note recording artists. The band featured Jason Moran, Greg Osby, Stefon Harris, Mark Shim, Tarus Mateen, and Waits. This situation proved to be fruitful as Waits went on to work with Jason and Tarus in Stefon and Greg in their units. Most notably Jason Moran and the Bandwagon was spawned out of New Directions experience. Jason Moran’s Bandwagon, Jason, bassist Tarus Mateen, and Nasheet have been deemed, “ the most exciting rhythm section in jazz” by JazzTimes magazine. Most recently Waits has found himself assuming the title of leader, as well as joining forces to form two other cooperative bands. Nasheet Waits Equality had its auspicious origin with a tour in Italy the spring of 2007. The quartet featured Logan Richardson on alto and soprano saxophones, and Jason Moran and Tarus Mateen, Waits’ colleagues in Moran’s Bandwagon. Equality went on to record its first offering, “Alive At MPI” in 2009 for Fresh Sound Records. Equality also has featured virtuoso pianists Stanley Cowell, and James Hurt during several tours of Europe from 2007-2013. Waits is also at the core of Tarbaby a cooperative band he leads with bassist Eric Revis and pianist Orrin Evans. Tarbaby has released 4 offerings, the first an eponymous effort in 2008, the 2nd “The End Of Fear” in 2010 on Positone records. “The End Of Fear”, which features Oliver Lake, Nicholas Payton, and JD Allen was placed in several top 10 records for 2010. The 3rd release for Tarbaby, “The Ballad of Sam Langford” has been released in the spring of 2013 on Hipnotic Records. This offering features Ambrose Akinmusire and Oliver Lake. The most recent release, “Fanon”, was inspired by the work of philosopher, revolutionary, psychiartrist, and author, Frantz Fanon. This recording features Marc Ducret and Oliver Lake. Another project Waits’ co-leads, 3rd EYE (Aethereal Bace) is an unconventional trio comprised of Abraham Burton tenor saxophone, Eric Mcpherson, drummer and Waits. These 3 New York natives have a connection that transcends the bandstand. Most recently Waits has taken part In another co-led band featuring Bennie Maupin, (an alum of Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner, etc) and Eric Revis to form a trio, “Options”. Waits has also produced the soundtrack for contemporary artist Alyson Shotz for her exhibition, Forces of Nature. He is also the MD for her new interdisciplinary work revolving around the concept of time that will be premiered at Grace Farms.
Nasheet’s recording and performing discography is a veritable who’s who in Jazz. Outside of lengthy associations with Andrew Hill, Jason Moran, Christian Mcbride, David Murray, Fred Hersch, and Antonio Hart, Waits has boasted stints with jazz notables Jackie McLean, Wadada Leo Smith, Dave Douglas, Stanley Cowell, Peter Brotzmann, Mark Turner, Miroslav Vitous, Bunky Green, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Eddie Gomez, Geri Allen, Ralph Alessi, Mario Bauza, Hamiett Bluiett, Steve Coleman, Amir Elsaffar, Tony Malaby, Jackie McLean, The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Greg Osby, Michel Portal, Antoine Roney, Wallace Roney, Jacky Terrason, and The Mingus Big Band. Waits has recorded and toured extensively in Africa, Europe, Japan, Canada, South America and the United States.
Amidst his performing, recording and touring activity, Nasheet teaches private lessons, stressing a personal approach to the drums and music. True to his personal philosophy of the necessity to balance Tradition and Modernism, Waits collaborates and performs regularly with musical cohorts, contemporaries, and masters. Nasheet is dedicated to exploring his role and creative path in music.
I feel my soul as vast as the world, truly a soul as deep as the deepest of rivers; my chest has the power to expand to infinity. I was made to give and they prescribe for me the humility of the cripple. When I opened my eyes yesterday I saw the sky in total revulsion. I tried to get up but the eviscerated silence surged toward me with paralyzed wings. Not responsible for my acts, at the crossroads between Nothingness and Infinity, I began to weep.
Frantz Fanon, Peau Noire, masques blancs
1952, Réédition Le Seuil, collection “Points”, 2001
Nasheet Waits: Burning Hot Son
by Tom Terrell
May 8, 2019
JazzTimes
Whilst double-stepping the six blocks between West 4th Street and the Village Vanguard-drummer Nasheet Waits is hitting there with pianist Jason Moran’s New Directions-my mind began to trip on the latest batch of jazz legend progeny-Anthony Wilson, Ravi Coltrane, Graham Haynes. Will they be able to transcend legions of skeptical critics and curmudgeonly fans and get their props, and why the fuck should they have to deal with that as well as paying traditional dues anyway? This hackneyed soliloquy was left hanging in the humid ether of Seventh Avenue South as I descended into the cool dimness of the basement mecca. Still, as I watched Waits purposely settle in-tweaking cymbals; adjusting seat; checking pedals; blessing his toms and snare with sticks, mallets and brushes-three hoary clichés nagged my membrane like a Diana Ross chorus: He’s a chip off the old block; He’s his father’s son; The apple don’t fall too far from the tree.
A resident of the Max Roach side of the tracks (at the corner of Billy Higgins and Tony Williams), Freddie Waits was an economical, stylistically versatile, rhythmically subtle drummer. You know the kind of selfless player that gets perpetually slept on by everyone but the major cats who jam/record/tour with him or her. Senior Waits’ tasty, no-frills style (ride cymbal setting, modulating and shifting the pulse, bass drum shadowing the bass fiddle, crisp snare drum just behind the beat, random bursts of crash/toms) and Swiss precise timekeeping made him the consummate Blue Note team “vibes” man; the catalytic ghost in the machine. I only saw Freddie live once, with Max’s M’Boom, but if you’ve heard his sides with Andrew Hill or Grant Green then you feelin’ me.
Back at the Vanguard, New Directions commenced to work their asses off.
New Directions is basically altoist Greg Osby’s iconoclastic youngblood quartet-Moran, Waits and bassist Tarus Mateen-augmented by tenor saxophonist Mark Shim; by design a time/space-conflating improvisational collective, ND throws down an insouciantly eclectic (“You’ve Changed,” “Skippy,” Icelandic electronica queen Björk’s “Joga”), cerebrally adventurous, emotionally snaky first set. Throughout it all, Waits was right there inside the music: steady clocking groove, brushing spongy sand dances on snare ‘n’ ride, flowing melodic colors, ebbing rhythmic shades. By the third song, Nasheet got so sick wid’ it that he “disappeared” into the music. Deep into the music’s Zen zone, he went DNA-organic: everywhere, yet nowhere, betwixt and between, foreground/background/underground, catalyst and gestalt. Subliminal, sensual, ubiquitous, transparent, crucial.
The other Nasheet Waits, the funky-freaky-just havin’ fun one, showed up on ND’s cheeky set-closing version of “The Sidewinder” (the tune from New Directions’ recent self-titled, classic-Blue-Note-cover-tune-focused album). The band was wailing most irreverently-Moran staggering-stumbling-tripping the melody like Monk on Quaaludes, Osby and Shim pimp slappin’ the boogaloo vamp, Waits and Mateen cold boppin’ the groove-until the ONW cold sweated (literally) the joke from the ridiculous to the sublime. Remember the give-the-drummer-some solo on “Cold Sweat”? Now imagine it recontextualized as a no-holds-barred funky-jazz drum solo (left hand dropping bop-eccentric bombs and off beats, right hand swinging hip-hop abstracts, bass drum racing heartbeats). Smell it? After that, the party broke up.
Note to self: Nasheet Waits is both seed and fully-grown apple tree.
Now let’s bust this whole children-in-daddy’s-footsteps curse thing wide open. Example: New York-bred Nasheet’s primary influence was not his father but buddies drummer Eric McPherson and saxophonist Abraham Burton, whose partnership continues on their excellent new CD, Cause and Effect (Enja). “We grew up in the same neighborhood, went to elementary school, junior high school, all that stuff together,” he muses. “So when I would hang with them, they were into the music. My family, my peers, I was surrounded by it. I went to Morehouse for a few years and I wasn’t studying music down there and neither was I focusing on that in high school. But Eric and Abraham kept playing. So when I came back to the city to hang with them, they were always going to the jazz clubs or going to the record stores. And stuff that they were picking up was like ‘Trane-that was the stuff I was being exposed to along with the other stuff, popular music, that was happening.”
Good thing Nasheet’s crew kept him in the mix, ’cause Mr. Waits wasn’t even trying to pass the torch to his son at home. But little Nasheet dib-dib-dabbed with the traps anyway. “It was probably the fact that my father played them and I wanted to be like him,” he laughs. “I’m his child, so I played them. I never really had the desire to pick up another instrument.”
Beyond that bond, the elder Waits’ experiences were passed along via “osmosis, from being around him, from going to the gigs and being around him with other great musicians that come to the house or that he was playing with.” One long introspective pause later, Nasheet adds. “There are certain things that I notice in my playing earlier on that he was the primary source for that approach but it wasn’t because I studied it, like I listened; I think it just happened because I’m his son.”
Upon his father’s passing on Nov. 18, 1989, the prodigal son left Morehouse and moved back home. For the first time in Nasheet’s life, the eyes were focused on the prize. When you get serious like that, good things happen; within a year, the dabbler was enrolled in Long Island University’s music program (B.A., ’96), drum teching on M’Boom gigs for “Uncle” Max and private studying with master drummer Michael Carvin. Midway through ’92, a recommendation from McPherson led to Nasheet’s six-year, three-album, bones-making stint with Antonio Hart’s young lion band. Of that time, he remembers wistfully, “It was a different type of dynamic in terms of a group situation. It was more geared to the history of the music-driven and swinging exclusively. It was good we were playing tunes like ‘Cherokee’ because I needed that foundation. To be able to develop you have to have some kind of language and want to be acquainted with the music. I wanted to be.”
More than just roots-grounding, the Antonio gig earned Waits first-call status with veteran leaders such as Joe Lovano, Geri Allen, Mario Bauzá and Jaki Byard. All those experiences have been invaluable in Waits’ ongoing artistic evolution.
“Being in the jazz community affords you the time to do this,” says Waits. “Playing with Antonio afforded me a lot of exposure, but generally the situations we played in were peer-oriented situations. Everybody was in the same age group, which was cool ’cause it was like we were finding things out at the same time. Whereas if you play with somebody like Andrew Hill or Hamiet Bluiett or Stanley Cowell [all recent, ongoing gigs] they give you the freedom to do what you want to do more so, probably. It’s probably because they understand more about what they’re doing! [cracks up]”
Pausing, he then continues serious-like: “One thing I definitely learned is that first of all, you’re always making mistakes. That’s definitely not a problem for me at least. My attitude towards making mistakes is that’s where some of the baddest shit is created. If you out there fucking up and you’re still in there, then it’s like you supposed to be doing that.”
These days Nasheet usually can be found on recordings and bandstands in the company of pianist Marc Cary or “these Blue Note guys [Osby, Moran, et al.].”
“I think we’re all kind of moving in the same direction as well as in terms of like the interpretation of whatever you want to call it. When we play with each other it’s more of a community within that as opposed to, ‘OK, I’m the leader and you’re gonna do what I want you to do.’ It’s more like, ‘I’m hiring Nasheet because of the way he plays and I know the way he plays.'”
Obviously, they really, really like him ’cause the last year has been Waits’ most prolific by far: Moran’s debut Facing Left (Blue Note) Cary’s Trillium (Jazzateria)-both trio dates with riddim twin Mateen-the New Directions date, Lenora Zenzalai Helm’s Spirit Child, (J Curve) and soon-come CDs with Bluiett, Fred Hersch, Antonio Hart and Orrin Evans.
Still, for Nasheet Waits, the mission rolls on, the struggle continues.
“Even though I love playing with Tarus and Jason, if that was to be the only thing that I did over the course of the next five years that shit would drive me crazy. Then it’s like that’s the only creative input you get in terms of that consistent bandstand shit. When you go on a bandstand with different people to deal with, you’re dealing with everybody’s whole energy. So that becomes something entirely different and I always like checking things out that are foreign from what I might be dealing with most of the time.
“My goal is to have a positive energy circulating the whole situation, even if there’s negative energy, even if you’re salty with some of the people on the stage or something happened to you early on in the day. Emanate that positive energy. That can be experienced in a musical sense and also in an emotional, spiritual type of sense too. I’m not really trying to get on the gig and prove anything, [I’m] trying to play within the context of the music and bring as much strength and validity as possible.”
Pops would be chest-puffing proud of the chip, the apple, the son.
Listening Pleasures
“I try to keep listening to different things. I’ve been listening to this tabla duet album with Ustad Allarakha Khan and Zakir Hussain. It’s called Tabla Duet-Oooo, that’s serious. There’s this album that my father was on called The Wee Three; an album with Stanley Cowell and Buster Williams. It’s a Japanese release on DIW. It’s a nice trio album. Let me see…James Brown. It’s like a greatest hits-20 All Time Greatest Hits-that shit is killer. Other than that, I’m enjoying this last Jason [Moran] one [Facing Left] and that Marc Cary [Trillium] and this other album I just did with Orrin Evans [untitled at press time].
Recommended CDs Featuring Nasheet Waits
Jason Moran: Facing Left (Blue Note)
Marc Cary: Trillium (Jazzateria)
Lenora Zenzalai-Helm: Spirit Child (JCurve)
New Directions: New Directions (Blue Note)
Michael Marcus: In the Center of It All (Justin Time)
Gearbox
“I use Gretsch drums [wood with coated heads]. It’s like some Octagon-they got the Octagon patch on them-they’re from the ’70s. 18- by 16-inch bass drum, a 14- by 14-inch floor tom, the snare drum is like an old Leedy 5 1/2- by 14-inch [that’s pre-Ludwig]. I got that from my father. The two cymbals on the right [22-inch ride, 18-inch crash] are from my father as well. Michael Carvin gave me the one on the left [20-inch ride]. The hi-hats are 14-inch A Zildjians [the others are old K Zildjians]. I use Pro-Mark sticks, which I endorse.”
Originally Published November 1, 2000
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Tag Archives: Nasheet Waits
For Nasheet Waits’ 50th birthday, a Jazziz Profile from 2017 and Nasheet’s Max Roach homage for www.jazz.com in 2009
To mark the milestone fiftieth birthday
of the great drummer Nasheet Waits, here are a couple of pieces — at the
top is a feature piece I had an opportunity to write about him for
Jazziz at the end of 2017; below it is an article that I commissioned
Nasheet to do for the great, late-lamented http://www.jazz.com
‘zine back 2009, where Nasheet selected and discussed a dozen of his
favorite tracks by Max Roach, who a key mentor and influence in his
life.
Nasheet Waits Jazziz Article (#1):
It was midweek in early February, the eve of a snowstorm, and Nasheet Waits, internationally known as the drummer with Jason Moran’s Bandwagon for the last 17 years and counting, was playing before a sparse audience at Manhattan’s Jazz Gallery with a quartet led by 19-year-old alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, comprising 20-year-old bassist Daryl Johns and 21-year-old pianist Jeremy Corren. It could have been the most innocuous of gigs. But Waits, who is 45, devoted full attention to interacting with partners young enough to be his children. Sight-reading the rubato, ametric passages and shifting time signatures in Wilkins’ charts, he interpreted the melodies on the fly, unleashing a stream of undulating beat permutations while eliciting precisely calibrated textures from each component of the drumkit within the flow.
“They were incredible,” Waits said the morning after. “What comes out of their instruments is very mature.” He became sold on Wilkins and Johns after hearing them play standards in trio with twentyish drummer Jeremy Dutton two weeks earlier at Smalls, down the block from the Village Vanguard, where Waits had just finished his evening’s duties with Christian McBride’s open-ended New Jawn Quartet.
“They were expanding them to the edge of what you could still identify as the tune,” said Waits, who had shared Iridium’s bandstand with Johns on a Macy Gray gig in January. “It reminded me of the Bandwagon’s approach to stretching and bending and refracting the foundation. I thought, ‘Oh, these young brothers have the same kind of spirit; it will be nice.’ You have to start accepting who you are age-wise.”
The encounter underlined Waits’ status as a first-call among his generation for multiple bandleaders, famous or obscure, who want a drummer to render a 360-degree range of styles with authoritative execution, high musicality, imaginative intention and inflamed-soul spirit. During the ’90s, Antonio Hart, Stanley Cowell and Hamiet Bluiett were the most prominent leaders who recognized Waits’ potential; in the first half of the aughts, in addition to Bandwagon commitments, Waits frequently played with the Andrew Hill Sextet and Big Band and the Fred Hersch Trio. But during the past decade, he’s become a ubiquitous presence on projects led by upper echelon shape-shifters and speculative improvisors. Since 2011, Waits has toured and recorded with David Murray’s Infinity Quartet, most recently documented on Blues For Memo (Doublemoon). Into the Silence (ECM) is his fourth CD with trumpeter Avishai Cohen; Quiver (ECM) is his third with trumpeter Ralph Alessi; Incantations (Clean Feed) is his fifth with tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby. Then, too, during the last 15 months, Waits’ special sauce infuses pianist Ethan Iverson’s old-school piano trio recital, The Purity of the Turf (Criss Cross), with Ron Carter on bass; alto saxophonist’s Logan Richardson fusion-esque Shift (Blue Note); alto saxophonist Michael Attias’ outer-partials opus Nerve Dance (Clean Feed); and pianist Sophia Domanech’s programmatic Alice’s Evidence (Marge)
Recently, Waits contributed his interpretative mojo to Abu Sadiya (Accords Croisses), on which he, French-Tunisian woodwindist Yacine Boularès and cellist Vincent Segal mold the Malian-descended Stambeli music of Tunisia into original works. A collaboration of longer standing is Tarbaby, an experimentally oriented trio with pianist Orrin Evans and bassist Eric Revis whose four recordings since 2009 include discursive encounters with Nicholas Payton, Ambrose Akinmusire and Oliver Lake. New Jawn Quartet’s prospective spring recording for Mack Avenue will reflect the freewheeling interactivity that McBride and Waits achieved throughout their week at the Vanguard.
“I love Nasheet’s intensity, that he’s a conversational drummer without being obtrusive, which is a fine line to walk,” McBride said. “Playing with him is an exciting feeling, like running down a street when a dog is chasing you.”
Moran deployed a different metaphor to express a similar observation. “The way Nasheet’s sensibility moves on the kit is unsettling,” he said. “He can make the ground that might be lush soil turn into ice very fast. You think you have your footing, then all of a sudden it becomes very slippery, and that next step you take, all of a sudden you’re sliding. That can be infuriating to a soloist. I heard that the first time we played together, and it’s intrigued me ever since.
“Any bandleader who calls Nasheet is not looking for anything light. They want to feel the fire underneath them. They want to feel the rhythm really moving. Also, most importantly, when you write music and hand it to a drummer, you are looking for them to fill in every gap you left in the score, to make all the decisions that you aren’t able to make as a non-drummer. He’s figured out the tools to utilize to make people’s average shit sound awesome. That’s what great drummers do.”
“Sometimes you play things that aren’t necessarily what the person wanted, but it’s what the music needed,” Waits said. “I have more resources now than I used to. I always had a creative connection to the music, but I wasn’t always capable of folding that creativity into every situation because I didn’t have the capability. I’ve become more versed in the music’s continuum, and it’s strengthened my foundation. I’ve put a lot more tools in my shed.”
[BREAK]
Shortly before New Jawn Quartet entered the Vanguard, Waits had played several dates in Europe with his group, Equality, with alto saxophonist Darius Jones, pianist Aruán Ortiz, and bassist Mark Helias, who perform on his 2016 leader album, Between Nothingness and Infinity (Laborie Jazz). He recorded it eight years after his leader debut, Equality (Fresh Sound), with Richardson, Moran and Bandwagon bassist Tarus Mateen. Both recitals reflect, as Helias puts it, “an unspoken imperative that we’re going to stretch out and take chances. Nasheet is most interested in where a piece is going, how we can expand it from the inside out to make something happen musically.”
One of Waits’ four originals on the new release is “Hesitation.” “It refers to my hesitancy to even ‘lead’ a band,” he says. “The way our industry works, you’re viewed differently as a leader than as a sideman. It took a while for me to become comfortable with feeling I was ready, although Andrew Hill had encouraged me to start my own thing.”Report this ad
He seized the moment in 2007, while touring with Eddie Gomez for an Italian promoter who suggested Waits organize a band to play some dates. “I knew the promoter’s roster, and I thought a certain aspect of music was under-represented,” he says. “Everything I was seeing was very technical—well-executed, but missing a certain rawness and spontaneity. I felt Jason did that, Tarbaby did it, and that this could be my opportunity to do it.”
After the 2008 recording, Waits did sporadic hits with Equality, some with Moran, Mateen and Richardson. Helias entered the mix, and Cowell, Craig Taborn, David Virelles and then Ortiz played piano at different times. As Waits participated more and more in Murray’s projects, Valerie Malot, Murray’s wife, who runs the 3D Family production company, offered to help him find outlets for his sonic vision.
“I was reticent,” Waits says. “I felt sated in terms of my creativity. But I heard Darius, and enjoyed the emotive quality of his sound, so I decided, ‘Yeah, let’s work on some stuff.’ One thing led to another, and once we got this contract we started doing things overseas. This band definitely has a collective spirit. We’ve had quite a few special moments. I want to be part of creating as many situations like that as possible for the rest of my life.”
Waits traces the consistent imperative to exist as a creative being—to take risks, to make mistakes and play out of them—to “the people who mentored and taught me, my father first and foremost.” He’s referring to Frederick Waits, who worked with blues and rhythm-and-blues groups as a youngster in Jim Crow era Mississippi, before moving to Detroit, where he became a Motown house drummer. He moved to New York in the late 1960s, and ascended the ladder, accumulating a c.v. that boasted work with Ella Fitzgerald, Lee Morgan, Richard Davis, McCoy Tyner, Hill, Cowell, Donald Byrd, Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor and Max Roach’s M’Boom.
Waits lives with his wife and four-year-old son in the apartment he grew up in at Westbeth, the venerable artists’ complex on the western edge of Greenwich Village where his parents were original tenants, sharing the space with luminaries like Gil Evans and Merce Cunningham, along with numerous painters, sculptors, musicians, dancers and actors. During childhood and adolescence, his main passions were baseball (he played shortstop) and the drums, on which he practiced assiduously to high-octane jazz recordings like Lee Morgan’s “The Beehive,” from Live at the Lighthouse, fueled by Mickey Roker. He played timbales and drum solos in an excellent middle school band that included best friends Eric McPherson and Abraham Burton, now esteemed jazz pros; Rashied Ali’s son, Idris, who played trumpet; and Sam Rivers’ granddaughters Aisha and Tamara, who played clarinet. At 11, Waits recalls, he accompanied his father to a gig in Connecticut with Jackie McLean, and was allowed to sit in for a tune. For his 16th birthday, he asked his father take him to Sweet Basil, a few blocks away from Westbeth, to hear Cedar Walton, Ron Carter and Billy Higgins.
“I was there at the inception of hip-hop, but it was filtered through Gil Evans and all this other stuff my father was involved in,” Waits says. “It wasn’t that it was jazz; I was attracted to the way it made me feel. It was never presented to me that I had to approach jazz in a certain way, but a cultural importance was placed upon it—if you were going to participate you had to have a respect and reverence for the music.
“Greenwich Village was wild, a lot more diverse—culturally, economically, racially—than it is now. I could say that it translated to being attracted to a certain raw quality in what I do, but also in seeing validity in a lot of different styles of music. It’s more about the culture to me, and the culture can be expressed in a lot of different ways.”
[BREAK]
Waits’ mother, Hakima, died when he was 13. He enrolled at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, from which he matriculated to Atlanta’s Morehouse College, where he studied history and psychology, while tabling his involvement with the drums. But when his father died in November, 1989, Nasheet returned to New York so that his 9-year-old brother would not have to be uprooted. For the next decade, they lived together at Westbeth, given unconditional support by family and friends like Max Roach, Roach’s M’Boom colleague Dr. Fred King (Waits’ godfather), and Carvin, who opened their homes and hearts. So did McPherson and Burton, who invited Waits to McPherson’s weekly gig at Augie’s, an uptown bar where other stars-in-the-making like McBride, Brad Mehldau, Jesse Davis and Peter Bernstein came to play. In this environment, Waits rekindled his passion for music-making.
“I didn’t read, and I hadn’t practiced rudiments, like doing a paradiddle or a double-stroke roll,” Waits says. “On my first gig at Augie’s, they called the blues and I didn’t know what they were talking about; they called Rhythm changes and I was like, ‘What does that mean?’” He set about systematically transforming raw talent into knowledge, abetting the process through formal lessons with Carvin; classes at Long Island University’s strong jazz program; and ample face time with Roach, who responded to Waits’ questions with cryptic, koan-like answers. Gradually, Waits assimilated dicta that his father had impressed upon him, particularly the notion that “the sound you pull out of the drums is the first impression you make to people who are listening.”
“My father never forced any of his opinions upon me, but let me discover these things for myself,” Waits says. “He, my father and Michael would always tell me to start my own thing. ‘Ok, this is the way they did it; now how are you going to do it, what are you going to incorporate?’ The breadth of their work was wide, and their hearts were open. They were practicing on the bandstand every time they hit. They had no limitations, and that became part of my lexicon.”
Roach’s insistence on “always sounding like he’s on the edge,” on “never playing it safe,” will remain core to the default basis of operations that animates Waits, his partners in the Bandwagon, and the other company he keeps. “Part of what’s helped us stay together so long is that I try to keep finding other frameworks for us,” Moran says. “It could be conceptual frameworks, where we work on how slow can we play, how long can a space be between one note and the next. I could ask Nasheet to do a press roll for 15 minutes on a piece, and then not have him do it during the performance. It’s to have us think about these processes and how we work together. These things give us new edges to jump off of.”
Waits concurs wholeheartedly. “If you’re always accessing something that you know, you’re limiting what you can learn and the music that can be created,” he says. “Sometimes it can be a disaster, but out of those disasters is a lot of beauty. The way Bandwagon evolved is optimal. It reflects being inside the music and trying to release yourself within that, becoming the music, as opposed to trying to control it or make it do something. To play a tune that sounds good the same way all the time is definitely not the goal. We’re always looking for the sweet spot, but to find that sweet spot you might have to tread through deep and murky waters where you don’t achieve it. The search is lauded as much as the accomplishment. Look at and approach the music like it’s putty in your hands. Make it elastic. Put it in a ball, throw it up against the wall, take it off, see what’s imprinted on it. That can be done in infinite ways, so there’s never an answer. That spirit lends itself to being fresh all the time. Immanuel and his guys were approaching it that way. Most of the musicians I’ve surrounded myself with have that same spirit.”
Nasheet Waits (Max Roach Dozens for http://www.jazz.com):
In an era when drummers consider it a default performance practice to navigate a global template of rhythmic expression, it is important to remember that Max Roach (1924-2007), whose eighty-sixth birthday anniversary came along last week, is the single most important figure in this development.
Just ask the drummers who knew him, as I did a few years back when Downbeat gave me the honor of writing a lengthy obituary. “Before Max, all the drummers, even the great ones like Baby Dodds or Gene Krupa or Chick Webb, approached soloing on the drumset from more of a rudimental and snare drum concept,” said Billy Hart. “Max was the first one to take the rudiments and spread them melodically around the whole drumset—bass drum, tom-tom, snare drum, cymbal.”
“Max was adamant that it was just as important for him to know the form and melody as everybody else,” Kenny Washington added. “He took independence between two hands and two feet to the next level.”
Roach was never content to recreate the past, which he associated with segregation times, and he spent the second half of his career in perpetual forward motion, determinedly bridging stylistic categories. “Max may have used 30 signature things, but he used them in so many different ways,” Jeff “Tain” Watts remarked. “One piece of vocabulary could function as a solo idea, a melody for a solo drum piece. He’d take the same fragment of melodic material and take it out of time, use it like splashing colors on a canvas or whatever, or use it in an avant-garde context, like his duets with Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton. That cued me not to be so compartmentalized with certain stuff for soloing and other stuff for something else, but just to use vocabulary—your own vocabulary—to serve many functions.”
Born on Jan. 10, 1924, in Newland, N.C., and raised in Brooklyn, Roach was the first jazz musician to treat the drum set both functionally and as an autonomous instrument of limitless artistic possibility. As a teenager, Roach paid close attention to “drummers who could solo”—Jo Jones, Sid Catlett, Chick Webb, Cozy Cole. Toward the end of his studies at Boys High School, he began riding the subway from Bedford-Stuyvesant to Harlem for late-night sessions at Minton’s Playhouse and Monroe’s uptown House, where the likes of Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke and Dizzy Gillespie, all Roach’s elders by several years, explored alternative approaches to the status quo.
By 1942, they had reharmonized blues forms and Tin Pan Alley tunes, changing keys, elasticizing the beat and setting hellfire tempos that discouraged weaker players from taking the bandstand when serious work was taking place. Before World War II ended, the new sound was sufficiently established to have a name—bebop.
Thoroughly conversant in how to push a big band—he hit the road with Benny Carter in 1944 and 1945, and filled in for Sonny Greer with Duke Ellington in early 1942—with four-to-the-floor on the bass drum and tricks with the sticks, Roach made his first record in 1943 with Coleman Hawkins, and played on Hawkins’ ur-bebop 1944 session with Gillespie on which “Woody ’N’ You” debuted. But as Charlie Parker’s primary drummer in 1944 and 1945 and from 1947–49, Roach developed a technique that allowed him to keep pace with and enhance Parker’s ferocious velocities and ingenious rhythmic displacements. His famous polyrhythmic solo on Bud Powell’s “Un Poco Loco” in 1951 foreshadowed things to come in the next decade.During the early 1950s, Roach studied composition at Manhattan School of Music and co-founded, with Charles Mingus, Debut Records—one of the first musician-run record companies. In 1954, he formed the Max Roach–Clifford Brown Quintet, in which he elaborated his concept of transforming the drum set into what he liked to call the multiple percussion set, treating each component as a unique instrument, while weaving his patterns into an elaborate, kinetic design. After the death of Brown and pianist Richie Powell in 1956, he battled depression and anger, but continued to lead a succession of bands with saxophonists Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, George Coleman, Stanley Turrentine, Eric Dolphy, Clifford Jordan, and Gary Bartz, trumpeters Kenny Dorham, Booker Little, Richard Williams, Freddie Hubbard, and Charles Tolliver, tubist Ray Draper, and pianists Mal Waldron and Stanley Cowell.
Roach also performed as a sideman on such essential ’50s recordings as Thelonious Monk’s Brilliant Corners and Sonny Rollins’ Saxophone Colossus and The Freedom Suite, as well as important dates by Herbie Nichols, J.J. Johnson and Little. He interpolated African and Afro-Caribbean strategies into his flow, incorporated orchestral percussion into his drum set and worked compositionally with odd meters, polyrhythm and drum tonality. He gave equal weight to both a song’s melodic contour and its beat. “Conversations,” from 1953, was his first recorded drum solo; by the end of the decade, he had developed a body of singular compositions for solo performance built on elemental but difficult-to-execute rudiments upon which he improvised with endless permutations.
He continued to expand his scope through the ’60s. A long-standing member of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Concord Baptist Church, he incorporated the voice—both the singular instrument of his then-wife, Abbey Lincoln, and also choirs—into his presentation. It was the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and he used his music as a vehicle for struggle, expressing views on the zeitgeist in both the titles of his albums and compositions—“We Insist: The Freedom Now Suite” (commissioned by the NAACP for the approaching centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation), “Garvey’s Ghost,” “It’s Time”—and his approach to performing them.
Roach joined the University of Massachusetts, Amherst faculty in the early ’70s, and seemed to use the post as a platform from which to broaden his expression. In 1971, he joined forces with a cohort of New York-based percussionists to form M’Boom, a cooperative nine-man ensemble that addressed a global array of skin-on-skin and mallet instruments; and in the early ’80s he formed the Max Roach Double Quartet, blending his group, the Max Roach Quartet with the Uptown String Quartet, with his daughter, Maxine Roach. He recorded with a large choir and with a symphony orchestra. A 1974 duet recording with Abdullah Ibrahim launched a series of extraordinary musical conversations with speculative improvisers Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor and Archie Shepp; these sparked subsequent encounters with pianists Connie Crothers and Mal Waldron, and a 1989 meeting with his early mentor Gillespie.
He also reached out to artists representing other musical styles and artistic genres—playing drums for break dancers and turntablists in 1983; collaborating with Amiri Baraka on a musical about Harlem numbers king Bumpy Johnson, and with Sonia Sanchez on drum-freestyle improv; improvising to video images from Kit Fitzgerald, to moves from dancer Bill T. Jones, and to freestyle verse from his nephew, Fred “Fab Five Freddie” Braithwaite, who conjured the epigram, “The man with the fresh approach, Max Roach.” He scored plays by Shakespeare and Sam Shepard, composed for choreographer Alvin Ailey, and set up transcultural hybrids with a Japanese kodo ensemble, gitano flamenco singers, and an ad hoc gathering of Jewish and Arab percussionists in Israel.
No drummer born after the Baby Boom knew Roach more intimately than Nasheet Waits, whose father, the excellent drummer Frederick Douglas “Freddie” Waits (1940-1989), was an original member of M’Boom. Nasheet attended high school with Roach’s twin daughters, Ayo and Dara, and after Freddie Waits passed away, Roach took Nasheet under his wing, eventually hiring him to play with M’Boom.
”Max always used to say that the drums were treated like the nigger in the band—disrespected in terms of your knowledge of music, your ability to be ‘a real musician.’” Waits says. “Nowadays drummers like Tyshawn Sorey and Marcus Gilmore write as well as anybody else. You have to be to be aware of what’s happening on a lot of levels to be able to play the music. Max may have been the first of his kind like that. He was known as a reader. That’s why he got called to play with Duke Ellington when Sonny Greer was ailing. But then, he said, when he got up to play the chart, there was no chart! So it became instinctual. That’s something that he always stressed to me, personally.
”I had the good fortune of being in his presence quite a bit, on a one-on-one basis, setting up drums and just being around the house. I was starting to get back into playing, and I’d be asking him questions, but his answers were always in a parable, always presented as esoteric knowledge, like trying to get information from a griot and receiving it as a riddle. He always emphasized that the key was to find your own voice, your own path. Everything I’ve heard he plays on always sounds like he’s on the edge, always taking chances, taking it to another level, not satisfied playing the role that drummers traditionally play—and still play.”
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1. TRACK: “For Big Sid.”
ARTIST: Max Roach
CD: Drums Unlimited [Atlantic SD1467 / Collectables CD-6256]
Recorded: New York, April 25, 1966
Musicians: Max Roach, drums.
RATING: 100/100
“For Big Sid” is one of three drum solos that Max recorded on Drums Unlimited, along with “The Drum Also Waltzes” and the title track. He had referenced that composition quite a bit, but to my knowledge, this was the first time it was released. Just the fact that he had those drum solos on the album, and the way he presented them, was pretty revolutionary. To me, it’s one of the great albums in the history of jazz music, not only for interspersing the solos between the other songs, but also the quality of those tunes, like “Nommo.” It’s what he played, how he played it. In this music, you always find connections and threads to the history, and even though Max was always forward-thinking, he also referenced the past. This is a perfect example of that.“For Big Sid” references the tune “Mop, Mop,” which Kenny Clarke developed, and is also a direct reference to Sid Catlett who recorded that tune with Art Tatum in 1943. It’s like he’s killing two birds with one stone. Call-and-response is always present in Max’s approach to soloing as well as comping. Here it’s like he’s playing a melody and comping for himself—all of it happens at the same time. It’s a supreme example of theme-and-variation, where he initiates a theme, and answers himself. He continues that pattern all throughout the piece. He takes a motif, flips it around, inverts it, elongates it. Same initial phrase, but it gets longer—different dynamics and so on. Max always said that he didn’t really play melody, that he played form and structure and shape. He meant that within the course of the framework of the song, the harmony and so forth, he was creating those shapes and following the form. But he always did it so cogently, with great clarity. This is a perfect example of that quality.
What he played was individual to who he was, and how he synthesized all of his experiences. He preached that mantra, but he also followed it. He referenced all types of sources—from the Caribbean and Africa, from the church, from Western Classical, rudimental solos, and Wilcoxsen. All of that is expressed when he played, and it’s certainly evident here. You see his technical virtuosity, but you also see how he uses space. It’s almost like the stuff that he isn’t playing is just as important as the stuff that he does play. Regardless of what he played, he always used that call-and-response, but there’s so much call-and-response from phrase to phrase within the context of this solo in the way he builds it and creates the architecture, and the tones he uses to express it. DIGGIT-UH-DUH-UNH, DIGGIT-UH-DUH-UNH, DIGGIT-UH-DUH-UNH-UHN, DAHT-DAHT.] Sometimes Max goes from left to right, right to left, and then he comes out this way. It’s almost looking in a kaleidoscope. You see the shape, then you twist it, which changes that shape. It’s coming from the last one, but it’s still related to what came before it. All his stuff is related to what comes before, and then he recapitulates to the beginning.
2. TRACK: “Dinka Street”
ARTIST: Max Roach
ALBUM: The Max Roach Trio Featuring the Legendary Hassan [Atlantic, Collectables CD-6256
MUSICIANS: Max Roach, drums; Hassan Ibn Ali, piano, composer; Art Davis, bass
RECORDED: New York, December 4, 1964
RATING: 100/100
Jason Moran brought The Max Roach Trio Featuring the Legendary Hassan to my attention, and it really speaks to me. It’s one of my favorite records, period. The whole record is a departure from traditional piano trio playing I’ve heard up to that point, which is late 1964. It wasn’t like the piano player soloing, and then the drummer and bass player are in support mode, like the Oscar Peterson Trio, or any other trio. It’s like everybody is almost soloing at the same time, or collectively, in the sense of New Orleans collective improvisation. That’s the historical reference I draw from it. It’s never that Max is just playing even the swing pattern and comping for Hassan while he takes a solo. They’re always back and forth, a true conversation. Everybody has individual responsibility as to what’s going on.The tune starts with an arco bass thing at the beginning, he plays the melody, then a solo section. There’s no real TING, TING-TA-DING, TING-TA-DING swing going on through it. It’s referenced, it’s intimated, but it’s not really that. And Max isn’t really playing the hi-hat on 2 and 4 either. There’s no regimented feel throughout the course of the piece. Then the rhythm that all of them are using is pretty advanced. Hassan is playing phrases in 5 and in 7, and they’re all playing over the bar, even when on the trading. All of it is right on the edge. All of them are virtuosos, but they’re taking it to the apex in terms of creativity within the framework of a trio. Even Elvin Jones, as influential as he was in terms of phrasing and so on, generally rooted everything with a 2-and-4 thing on the hi-hat. Max abandoned that in certain situations, and this, as you can clearly hear, was one of them. He told me there were certain techniques you could use to play that way and still maintain the groove—the groove isn’t abandoned, but he’s still not playing 2 and 4 on the hi-hat. It’s more of a dancing kind of feel. I’ve heard older musicians say that to drummers and to bass players, like, “Yeah, ok, we’re walking, but I want you to dance.” So there’s more freedom involved in how everybody is approaching the rhythm within this group.
There’s also some ride cymbal distinctions on this tune which also, for me, references back to Kenny Clarke. In terms of the music’s evolution, I always think of Papa Jo Jones establishing that ride cymbal pattern, and then Kenny Clarke embellishing on that with techniques like “dropping bombs,” syncopating more between the bass drum and the snare drum, and also varying the ride cymbal pattern, using the ride cymbal more in terms of accents—so not playing four-on-the-floor all the time. On this particular cut, as on the whole recording, Max takes these ideas to another level in the phrases he’s playing in conjunction with what Hassan and Dr. Davis are playing, terms of the pattern of the ride cymbal associated with the omission of the 2-and-4 on the hi-hat. Everybody is listening hard, too, responding and reacting to each other. It’s not like anybody is just doing their own thing. There’s a true synergy. No automatic pilot.
Max changes the texture when the bass solo occurs by switching to the brushes. So takes the flow from a more interactive quality to just straight quarter notes, and changes the dynamic of the piece—more like a movement in a symphony. They’re constructing the music in a way that goes out of the framework of the regular song. From the bass solo in the introduction, to the piano rubato, to the tune, then back to the bass solo—the tune’s structure, the form of the song is pointing forward, elongating. It’s different than the regular 32-bar or 12-bar blues that some people associate with “jazz music.”
3. TRACK: “Tropical Forest”
ARTIST: Max Roach
CD: Birth and Rebirth (Black Saint (It)BSR0024)
Musicians: Max Roach, drums, percussion; Anthony Braxton, clarinet
Recorded: Milan, September 1978
RATING: 100/100
My younger brother is like a renaissance man; he does all kinds of things. A few years ago, some of his friends would come around to our studio and hang out, playing chess, and they’d put on this record. These people were in their early twenties, they weren’t musicians, but they really got into the music. I found that very interesting. This date is a set of extemporaneous compositions. They’re just hitting. But man, these people played this thing over and over again. Some of them were dancers. It spoke to them in a very powerful way. So I guess music can transcend boundaries of the acceptable or the unacceptable, or what people call “avant-garde” or “free.” This is a jewel right here!It’s all beautiful to me, but on this particular cut what strikes me is that Braxton is playing clarinet, and Max is only playing the hi-hat and also a pitch-bending floor-tom, almost reminiscent of the tympany. Max wasn’t afraid to take chances. I don’t know anybody else who had that on their set—the pitch-bending floor tom with the tympany-like pedal. This piece sounds like, I would think, cut-and-splice—they went in and hit for however long a period of time, and took what they liked. “Ok, this is kind of a song form; let’s deal with this one right here.” This one starts out like that. Max initiates a basic phrase on the hi-hat, Braxton comes in and starts responding to that, they’re still having a conversation, and then Max opens up a little bit to the cymbals, and then he goes to the floor tom and alternates between the floor tom and the hi-hat. That’s it. He doesn’t touch any other part of the set for a little over five minutes. But he creates such a wonderful setting.
I wondered why they called this “Tropical Forest.” But then I realized that Braxton sounds almost reminiscent of those crying birds, like a toucan. I started receiving that kind of imagery from the sound he and Max got. In a lot of Max’s tunes, the title creates a certain image. I started seeing a rainforest setting—tropical colors, yellows and oranges.
This made about as powerful an impression on me as when I heard Roy Haynes play “Subterfuge” on Andrew Hill’s Black Fire. Roy just plays hi-hat the whole track, but still projects the force and drive as if he was playing the ride cymbal. Just that same phrase. I got the same feeling when I heard this track. Sonically, it’s almost a three-part structure, but they transmitted the feeling so effectively. That’s one I’m going to have to go back and revisit a lot. You stumble up on stuff, and then you go, “Wow!” You wind up playing it over and over again. That’s definitely one of those.
4. TRACK: Onomatopoeia
Artist: Max Roach
CD: M’Boom (Columbia JC36247, CK57886
Musicians: Roy Brooks, Joe Chambers, Omar Clay (composer), Freddy King, Freddie Waits, Warren Smith, Max Roach (drums, percussion, vibraphone, marima, xylophone, tympany), Ray Mantilla (conga, bongo, timbales, Latin percussion); Kenyatte Abdur-Rahman (percussion)
Recorded: July 25, 1979
RATING: 100/100
M’Boom is an all-percussion ensemble, a special group formed in 1970; this recording is from 1979, so it had been a while in the making. The initial members were Omar Clay, Warren Smith, Joe Chambers, Roy Brooks, Max, Freddy King, and Freddie Waits, who was my father. Ray Mantilla came in later.
“Onomatopoeia” is a word that describes a sound. M’Boom is an onomatopoeic expression. I’ve always thought of it as bass drum to the bass drum and cymbal — MMMM-BUM. Tympany. This piece is a perfect example of seamless transition. A lot of themes and phrases overlap and others emerge. or phrases or whatever. It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of stuff where it stops and starts—one thing happens, an undercurrent of something under it comes to the forefront, this recedes, something else comes in. Polyphony all the time, shifting dynamics, the different instruments introduced in a staggered way. The piece is in 11, it starts off with the chimes, then the vibes and marimba enter, then after that’s established, the tympany and drumset come in, and they’re kind of soloing over that hemiola that’s repeating in 11—that’s Omar and Joe on drums, I believe, and Warren on tympany. That’s the first portion of the song. Then they make a transition. They stay in 11, but instead of playing [CLAPS 11 QUARTER NOTES], they start playing [CLAPS FOUR HALF-NOTES AND THREE EIGHTH-NOTES] and they go from the marimba and vibes to membrane. I remember playing this song, and they would always be like, ‘Membrane! Membrane!”—meaning going to the skins. If you’re playing a timbale, play the center of the timbale; if you’re playing congas, the center of the conga. No rims. That creates an interesting counter to the xylophone, which is in a different type of register. Max takes the xylophone solo.
Max always used to tell me, “Get to your shit quick” when you’re soloing. He’d go, “Yeah, you’re making some nice statements, but get to your shit quick.” In live performances it might have been different, but for this recording everyone gets their ideas out quick. Regardless how wild or expressive they may be, there’s always that very clear message, to me—not only from Max, but everybody. Warren Smith takes a solo on tympany after Max, then they transfer the phrase from the membrance to the rims—in other words, to the metal. Then he takes a solo on the membrane of a tympany. It switches up. That theme also occurs in a lot of Max’s work, whether solo or with bands—a juxtaposition of different feelings or sounds or meters against each other.
All the members of M’Boom were adept at making those types of rhythmic changes and comfortable with that variation, to the point where the transition from one to the other was seamless. The different textures create a different feeling for the listener. In certain instances, it creates a sense of power, and then when they go to the metal, it sounds a little more frenetic, more like an anticipation of the climax, which is coming next.
5. TRACK: Triptych: Prayer / Protest / Peace
Artist: Max Roach
CD: We Insist: Freedom Now Suite [Candid CCD 79002]
Recorded: New York, September 6, 1960
Musicians: Max Roach (drums); Abbey Lincoln (vocals)
RATING: 100/100
First and foremost, this recording was really important because of its social implications. The liner notes begin with an A. Philip Randolph quote”: “a revolution is unfurling—America’s unfinished revolution. Masses of Negroes are marching onto the stage of history and demanding their freedom now.” That’s where I assume Max copped the title, which was very powerful and definitely indicative of what was happening in the country in 1960. The Civil Rights Bill wouldn’t be signed until 1964. There was a long way to go. Black people in America were living under very severe conditions, and Max was addressing that in the music.
It’s a powerful piece. It’s a duo between Abbey and Max, presented in three parts. Max did a lot of duo work during the course of his career, which speaks to his musical sensitivity, because in every situation, even though he plays some similar language, he presents it differently—and it always seems so fresh and creative. The other day [pianist] Connie Crothers told me they had done a recording on which, he told her, he played some things on brushes that he had never played before. So he was always in tune, always searching for something outside his usual language. We all have language that’s usual to us. I use certain words and phrases more often than others. It’s the same with music. Even a genius and virtuoso such as Max Roach always referenced certain phrases—you can hear them on “Triptych.”
“The Freedom Now Suite,” was a collaborative piece by Max and Oscar Brown, Jr., but “Triptych” is just a duo, which it seems like an extemporaneous composition in three parts. The first part is “Prayer,’ which is the cry of an oppressed people. He starts with a simple phrase. That call-and-response, that antiphony, is always present in his playing. He starts, Abbey is singing, like a prayer, and then the protest emerges from that, where she’s screaming and yelling, and Max is rumbling. There is a definite sense of anger, but there’s also, especially in Max’s playing, a sense of organization. Taking it out of the musical realm and applying it to the social: People had been killed and mistreated for hundreds of years, so there was tremendous anger and resentment, but organization was essential to achieve the goal. I received that message especially in this part, because even though Max is playing aggressively and intensely, there logic in his playing, and he conveys there is also a logic to what he is playing. It’s intense, it’s big, but there’s definitely a logic—and he conveys the message. Abbey as well.The last part is in 5/4. But Max also references that “Drum Also Waltzes” motif in this section of “Triptych.”
So the image that was created with this song was very powerful and pretty clear. “Triptych” is a piece of art that has three panels, usually the middle one being the larger. That definition doesn’t necessarily apply to this piece; the movements all seem almost equal in length. But I got a very clear visual image from it. Not too long after Miles passed, in late ‘91 or early ‘92, Max organized a memorial for Miles at St. John’s The Divine. Judith Jameson was there, Maya Angelou, different people, and there was some dancing going on. I drove up to the church with him, and we were listening to “Bitches Brew” in the car. He went, “oh, man, I can see these evil-assed chicks brewing some shit.” He was hearing the music and he was relating it directly to the title. He said, “I can see them stirring up some brew to fuck up some cat.” He said it sounds like that.
This has the same effect. I got a very clear picture from “Triptych,” referencing clearly what was going on at that time in America. Max had a lot of problems getting work during this period, from making his political statements. He said a lot of times he went somewhere, and they’d say, “I love this music, but can you just not say anything about this?” He’d say, “No, I have to talk about it.” It was taking money out of his pocket—him and Abbey. I know that she suffered quite a bit as a result of them actually taking a stand and being as vocal about it as they were. Financially speaking, their careers took a hit. So Max always put his money where his mouth was. He was really dedicated. Really high integrity. Willing to sacrifice financial security to get across the message.
6. TRACK: “Fleurette Africaine”
ARTIST: Duke Ellington
CD: Money Jungle [Blue Note CDP 7 46398 2]
Recorded: New York, September 17, 1962
Musicians: Duke Ellington (p) Charles Mingus (b) Max Roach (d)
RATING: 100/100
“Fleurette Africaine” is my favorite song off the legendary Money Jungle record with Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus. So how can I not include it as one of my favorite cuts that Max was involved in? The great star power of those three individuals together on a record is phenomenal. Actually, to be truthful, I don’t know if Max and Mingus really had that connection in terms of the rhythm section. In fact, Max told me about some things that happened at the session… What happened is probably legendary.
Max was connected to Duke; he’d played with him at 16, his first gig with a signature person, sitting in for Papa Greer [Sonny Greer] for a few nights while Sonny wasn’t feeling well. Here, twenty years later, Max is somewhat of a star himself, and of course, Duke influenced Mingus so much as a composer. To have them all there is special thing. A lot of times, those kind of pulled-together all-star situations don’t work, but this is one of the best dates of that kind.
The Bandwagon recorded “Wig Wise” from this session. I’d never heard it before we recorded, but when I listened, it definitely sounded like they’re at odds, and there’s a lot of aggression coming from Mingus. I dug it, though! It definitely sounds frantic and tense. But this song doesn’t have that quality, which is maybe why it’s my favorite from the album. It’s melancholy, in a way, almost softly sad.Report this ad
To me, Max provides that calmness. He’s playing mallets, and the feel is subdued throughout. The whole piece sounds like a ballad-fairy-tale song. This is 1962, still the era of the Civil Rights movement, so the fact that they’re referencing something African as beautiful, and equating that with black people, was important. Nowadays it might not necessarily be as important, but then it really was. The “Fleurette Africaine” title references the times—1962 is the year Algeria got its independence from France, and the African nations generally were coming out of the colonial grip. I think the musicians were conscious of that, and were using their music to convey a kinship to those people who were struggling for their independence, because we were doing the same thing over here.
A lot of times it seems that Max is playing the opposite of what Mingus is playing. Mingus goes DING-DING, DING-DING, he’s up in there, and then Max is playing longer. When Mingus is doing the opposite, then Max is rolling. The sound of Max’s playing gives me an image of water in a shallow river bed over small rocks. It sounds like there’s small rocks under what he’s doing. Gentle, sensitive, inobtrusive playing. Very simple melody. Beautiful.
7. TRACK: Donna Lee
ARTIST: Charlie Parker
CD: The Complete Savoy & Dial Master Takes [Savoy Jazz]
Recorded: New York, May 8, 1947
Musicians: Charlie Parker All Stars: Charlie Parker (alto saxophone, composer); Miles Davis (trumpet); Bud Powell (piano); Tommy Potter (bass); Max Roach (drums)
RATING: 100/100
I could have accessed so many pieces from this era, but I really like “Donna Lee.” It’s a great band, a revolutionary band, with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Max, each a legend in the creation of jazz music. And it’s a great piece of music. It’s an abbreviated song—Charlie Parker takes two choruses, Miles and Bud Powell split one, and then they take it out. I like the fact that everyone was able to say so much within that period of time. But this tune also exemplifies how Max could propel a soloist—the way he builds through the course of the song, the way he accompanies the melody and then the soloist. He always pays attention to dynamics; when the piano solo comes, Max takes it down. But during Bird’s solos, he’s never playing anything corny, like when people are using the same rhythmic language to converse. They’re congruent with each other, but they aren’t necessarily using the same language. It’s almost like they’re parallel and connected at the same time. So they’re cross-sectioning, but they’re also parallel—Max is egging Bird on and answering his phrases, like they’re speaking different languages but talking about the same thing. I find that fascinating.
Max was such a risk-taker. He had to have received a lot of criticism for playing that way, because nobody else was playing like that in 1947. He was playing with the people who were at the edge of creativity, and he himself was pushing it forward. Where he was placing his phrases was completely unconventional as far as the rhythmic language of the day. As I listen, I keep wondering, “where is the impetus for you to do that?” The horns were so much out in front on recordings from this time, it’s almost difficult to hear what everybody else was doing! Duke Jordan’s comping is really traditional, playing the turnarounds and so on, and the bass player is just walking, but the interaction between Max and Bird is completely different.
On “Donna Lee,” even when the melody is being played, Max is playing a kind of counter-melody against it. Arthur Taylor used to talk about “Confirmation,” how there are hits in the course of tunes like that, that are the tune. That’s how Max is playing that in “Donna Lee.” He’s playing off of the melody, playing in the holes of that melody, almost like he’s creating an alternate melody, an accompanying rhythmic melody.
8. TRACK: “Un Poco Loco”
Artist: Bud Powell
CD: The Amazing Bud Powell (Blue Note)
Recorded: New York, May 1, 1951.
Musicians: Bud Powell (piano); Curly Russell (bass); Max Roach (drums)
RATING: 100/100
On “Un Poco Loco,” Max played one of the greatest beats ever on a jazz recording, in the same category as the beat Vernell Fournier plays on “Poinciana,” or the beat that Art Blakey plays on “Pensativa.” Max told me that in the studio, he was playing some variations on Caribbean-Afro Cuban rhythms, and Bud said, “You’re supposed to be Max Roach. Can’t you come up with anything slicker than that?” So Max went home and shedded it out, and he came back with this phenomenal beat. Months later he ran into Bud in the street after not seeing him for a while, and Bud said, “Man, you fucked up my record!” I didn’t understand it. I was wondering what about what Max did destroyed it for Bud Powell, because it’s one of my favorites. Of course, Bud may not have been coming from an entirely rational place.
A lot of people have studied the “Un Poco Loco” beat, because it’s in phrases of 5 over the 4, which was way ahead of the curve at the time. Also, the fact that he’s using that cowbell; the sound he’s getting out of the cowbell. It’s obvious that he spent some time dealing with those rhythms. Max had been spending time in Haiti, where he went to study with a guy who had told him that he was greatest drummer in the world. The guy would tell him, “Come here, meet me right here on this corner at 2 o’clock,” Max would get there at 2, and the guy wouldn’t come until 7—he’d leave him waiting! But he said that the guy gave him invaluable information.
Max did a lot of teaching, but he treated his one-on-one drum instruction like oral tradition. He studied from books, and I’ve studied from books, but that’s only a small component of it. Books will give you the facility to execute the stuff that you hear and feel already, but it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the creativity. This is a perfect example. Max distilled all this stuff and immediately hooked it up into an original beat—you’d never heard anything like it before. It’s the beginning of all those phrases based on rhythmic permutations of five over the four—a step into the future in 1951. A lot of people are playing those types of rhythmic permutations now, almost sixty years later. It sounds like he pulled it together the night before, because it’s right on the edge of almost sounding fucked-up. Then when he comes in, what he plays isn’t clean, the way it was clean with Clifford Brown and that band. It’s right on the edge of almost second-take. I’m talking about everybody. It sounds like it’s not quite settled and comfortable. But I think that quality is what makes it a great recording, and the fact that he was able to superimpose that feeling and beat at that particular time and have it work, keep it happening for almost five minutes. Amazing.
9. TRACK: “Garvey’s Ghost”
ARTIST: Max Roach
CD: Percussion Bitter Sweet [Universal Music Special Markets, B0012607-01]
Musicians: Max Roach (drums); Abbey Lincoln (vocals); Eric Dolphy (alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute); Clifford Jordan (tenor saxophone); Booker Little (trumpet); Julian Priester (trombone); Mal Waldron (piano); Art Davis (bass); Carlos Valdez (congas); Carlos Eugenio (cowbell).
Recorded: New York, August 1, 1961
RATING: 100/100
This is one of my favorite cuts of music of all time. It’s another example of how the title really speaks to what’s happening in terms of the music. This references Marcus Garvey, the great Pan-Africanist in the States during the ‘20s and ‘30s, who died in England at a young age, mistreated, and his organization decentralized by the same tactics used against the Black Panthers some years later. The piece references that history, talking about self-determination, but then it’s also really haunting, ghostly—the melody is so powerful, and the fact that Abbey doesn’t sing any words. Max wrote the song. The solos by Booker Little and Clifford Jordan take are straight fire. Then again, we see that juxtaposition of rhythms against each other, because he has Patato playing the congas and Carlos Eugenio playing the cowbell—Max is kind of playing in 6 but also in 3, in the way he’s swinging, and keeps that pattern almost all throughout the piece. But the way he’s comping, it’s almost like he’s soloing. The way he pushes Booker Little and Clifford Jordan through their solos is reminiscent of a solo that he takes, but he keeps that ride cymbal pattern going the whole time, along with the other percussion. But everybody has a certain freedom within what they’re doing. Even the cascara pattern that the cowbell is playing is not fixed. Max’s ride cymbal pattern is, but the other shit he’s playing completely is not. It’s not like any traditional comping. It’s like collective improvisation. Then he solos over that cascara and the congas, and, as he often does, he utilizes a lot of space. He always plays something and then leaves some space, and then plays something else and leaves some space. He calls, he answers, he answers, and then he leaves some space, and then he calls, he answers, and he leaves some space. He always used to say that. There’s always room. “Get to your shit quick, make a statement, and in making that statement, the things that you don’t play are just as important as the things you do.” That always seemed to be a theme for him, and he utilized it in every component of his career. Always some space for others.
That’s the way it seems he led his life in aligning himself with different people, like the record with Hassan, where he gave him the opportunity to present his original music, and even though it was billed as the Max Roach Trio, the title was The Legendary Hassan. That was the only recording that Hassan made except for another Odean Pope recording that I don’t think was ever released. Or the fact that he aligned himself with Clifford Brown and said, “Let’s lead the band together.” I don’t know if he really had to do that. Also the different duo situations. Always on the cusp, but then also, in a sense, very selfless. To be as prolific as he had to have a strong sense of self, as I know because I was around him. That strong sense of self allowed him to let other people shine as well. It was never, “No, it has to be me, and you can’t do your thing.” It was “come on and do your thing.” This is a perfect example. It’s not like he has to growl over the whole thing. He leaves some space, and then he’ll talk to one of the cats, and communicate. Everybody’s listening. This is a year after We Insist, and Max was still on the same path. There’s tunes like “Man From South Africa,” in 7/4. He’s still making that commentary. He’s still on the soapbox, because it’s important and it’s still current, still developing in America.
In 1991, I remember doing a Sacred Drums tour with Max here in America, one of my very first gigs out of town. Tito Puente was on it, and some of these Native American drummers, some koto, stuff like that. Max was playing with Mario Bauza, who had a small orchestra. He was doing multiple things as well as solo stuff, playing with the small band, and this was one of the other portions of the show. Patato was in the band, too. During one of the rehearsals the piano player came up with some arrangements for Max to read, and he called over to me—I was there as a stagehand, his PA, setting up the cymbals and stuff like that. He was just trying to put some money in my pocket and help me out. Max said, “come here, man. Play this.” So he got me down to play the show, and got me my first traveling gig—with Mario Bauza! I had no idea then who he was. I didn’t know what I was doing with clave and so on. I remember Patato looking at me like, “You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.” The other cats in the band were very encouraging, but Patato didn’t want to give it up. Which I understood, though, because I didn’t know what I was doing. Some years later, I did a recording with him and Michael Marcus and Rahn Burton, and he was cool—maybe I had gotten a few things together. But he tuned my snare drum. I don’t know how, because he still didn’t speak any English, but he tightened it in a certain way, and that snare drum still sounds great to this day. He showed me how to tune the bottom a little tighter than the top. He had that pitch. That snare drum was singing for years.
10. TRACK: “Love Is A Many Splendored Thing,”
ARTIST: Max Roach
CD: Clifford Brown And Max Roach At Basin Street [EmArcy MG 36070]
Recorded: New York, February 16, 1956
Musicians: Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet : Clifford Brown (tp) Sonny Rollins (ts) Richie Powell (p,arr) George Morrow (b) Max Roach (d)
RATING: 100/100
Clifford Brown And Max Roach At Basin Street is one of the albums that I played along with the most when I was younger, and—along with Round Midnight by Miles with Philly, Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil, John Coltrane’s Crescent, and Horace Silver’s Silver’s Serenade—it’s one of the classic albums that anybody who is interested in pursuing a career in the music really needs to check out. Even though it was only together for about a year, it’s one of Max’s most important bands, with Sonny Rollins and Clifford Brown on the front line. I love the arrangements and the way that band played together. The stuff was tight. It was a true band—a perfect example of the best. I hate to use that sort of terminology, but that’s the way I feel about it. These cats were executing at such a high level, and the music was so refreshing. It’s still refreshing, to this day.
This one starts off with a little, one-bar intro on the bell of the cymbal, and then they go into five, and then come the solos—Clifford, Sonny, Richie Powell, and Max. One thing that attracts me to this take is the way Richie Powell plays coming out of Max’s solo going back into the top of the song. It’s a seamless transition, like they’re coming together from different places, right into the theme.
It’s important that they were playing in 5/4 in 1956. In American culture most music is in four. It’s just those 5 beats, but with a little lopsided feeling. Now, if we were raised in India or Iraq, we would be accustomed to feeling those rhythms—but we’re not. So the fact that they were using it in “Popular music” meant something in pushing the music forward—initiating something that hadn’t been widely accepted, as happened when Dave Brubeck did “Take Five” a few years later. So this recording is an important document in terms of recorded history. Once an idea is documented, it becomes a possibility. If you were a younger musician in 1956 listening to this for the first time, it may have been the first time you’d heard someone do it, or play a different time signature—and the presentation is so beautiful. Max was part of so many movements where he was ahead of his time, or pointing to the future, part of the vanguard of musicians who always did something challenging.11. TRACK: “Variation On A Familiar Theme”
ARTIST: Max Roach
CD: Max Roach With The Boston Percussion Ensemble
Musicians: Al Portch (frh) Max Roach (d) Irving Farberman, Everette Firth, Lloyd McCausland, Arthur Press, Charles Smith, Harold Thompson, Walter Tokarczyk (per) Corinne Curry (soprano voice) Harold Faberman (cond, dir, arranger)
recorded in Music Barn of the Music Inn, Lenox, Mass. on Aug. 17, 1958.
RATING: 100/100
I only heard this recently, and it’s an amazing piece—another example of seamless transitions. It runs 2-minutes-20-seconds, and it’s a variation of “Pop Goes The Weasel.” Theoretically it’s like a predecessor to M’Boom. I don’t know if that idea had anything to do with Max’s decision to pull these musicians together, but this was something completely different. He was just guest soloist with the Boston Percussion Ensemble. Harold Faberman did the arrangement.
Here Max is playing within the conventions of orchestral percussion, but from the first time you hear him on the brushes it’s unmistakably him—the same phrasing, the same sound out of the instrument. Regardless of the setting, the language was so indigenous to his person, you know it’s Max regardless of the setting. There are several sections. Max initiates some time with the brushes, then they come in with a theme, then they switch up from 4/4 to 3/4, and he makes that transition, too. A different theme is initiated, and then they transition back into four. This often happens in Western Classical music, but here it’s an interesting juxtaposition of time signatures and also of genre. It’s the “jazz feeling” or whatever, because Max is playing some time countered against what the orchestra is doing with the structure of the piece. He kind of solos in it, but he’s also weaving in and out of the piece, and he’s used to accentuate certain portions. It amazes me that Max was so open and flexible and willing to put himself into so many different positions throughout his career.
I have a degree in music, but the way I learned the music was kind of on the street, watching my Pops play and so forth. I’ve never studied Western classical. Now, Max went to Manhattan School of Music and studied it, but here it sounds like he’s using the techniques that he mastered from his experiences, not from the Western pedagogy. Within the framework of this piece, the music has a certain time feel. When I played with orchestra, it was always challenging from the downbeat, because when I see the conductor come down, I’m thinking that’s the downbeat, but it’s not. Then it’s weird. It’s the downbeat-and, and everyone’s responding to that. Visually, it was so challenging to de-condition yourself—in jazz, it’s always the downbeat, so everyone enters there, whereas in the orchestra the AND after the downbeat is the place. So the fact that Max was able to integrate what he does within that setting so seamlessly, to play the music so impeccably, was impressive—to say the least!
12. TRACK: Streams of ConsciousnessArtist: Max Roach
CD: Streams of Consciousness (Baystate (Jap)RVJ-6016)
Musicians: Max Roach, drums, Dollar Brand (aka Abdullah Ibrahim, piano)
Recorded: New York, September 20, 1977
RATING: 100/100
This is another one of Max’s many extemporaneous compositions. On the jacket he writes: “This music is an expression of pure improvisation. Mr. Brand (this is when he was still Dollar Brand) and I had no rehearsals or plans, written or otherwise, as to how or what we were going to record…the resulting cohesiveness, I am sure, had much to do with our environmental similarities.” Another piece on this album is titled “Consanguinity,” and that’s what Max was talking about—the connection between people who are descended from the same ancestry. He’s talking about the fact that he and Abdullah Ibrahim, who was a South African pianist, were equally involved in the struggle for the freedom of their people—or had been involved, because by this time conditions had changed in America, though not in South Africa yet.
But the first cut, which runs about 21 minutes, is called “Stream of Consciousness.” To a certain degree, it’s a spontaneously organized suite that occurs in different movements. They definitely played some construct songs; I don’t know if Abdullah Ibrahim had previously played them, but they were definitely tunes. In between the tunes, a drum solo brings about the transition. That is, in between each statement, there’s a small drum solo, then there was another idea collectively expressed. There are 5 or 6 movements. It goes from drum solo, to interlude, to a 7/4 thing, then the drums initiate a faster 7/4, then they play a couple of blues, a solo—not really any solo piano except when Abdullah Ibrahim plays a little solo at the beginning, and then Max plays some. There are some church inferences after that. You can hear some South African themes, but not as pronounced as you might expect.
It’s another example of Max’s social consciousness and awareness, and also his ability to put himself in an unconventional situation—duo with drums and piano isn’t done that much. In all honesty, the sound is terrible. The bass sounds like a big drum, like he might be using some oil heads or something. The drums themselves don’t sound that good. But the magic between Max and Abdullah is pretty special. It’s obvious that they have a kinship in what’s being played. I think it’s ultimate artistry, not to plan or discuss what’s going to happen, to feel each other out, to let it fly and be open to whatever happens.
Nasheet Waits Equality - Between Nothingness and Infinity
Darius Jones: alto saxophone; Aruan Ortiz: piano; Mark Helias: bass; Nasheet Waits: drums.
Reinforcing his credentials as a bandleader, Nasheet Waits, an impressive drummer from New York, releases a stimulating album on the French label Laborie Jazz.
The percussionist has a flair for straight-ahead jazz and avant-garde categories but moves with equal confidence in post and neo-bop styles. Past collaborations include Antonio Hart, Mark Turner, Andrew Hill, Fred Hersch, David Murray, Jason Moran, and Steve Lehman, while more recently, his groundbreaking drumming techniques were put at the service of Logan Richardson, Miroslav Vitous, Avishai Cohen, Tony Malaby, and Ralph Alessi.
In his new album, philosophically entitled Between Nothingness and Infinity, he leads the completely renewed quartet Equality, which comprises high-caliber artists such as alto saxophonist Darius Jones, pianist Aruan Ortiz, and bassist Mark Helias. They replace Logan Richardson, Jason Moran, and Tarus Mateen, respectively, who were in the recording of Infinity (Fresh Sound New Talent) in 2008.
Waits’ “Korean Bounce” couldn’t be a more exciting opening, boasting an exuberant pulse that works as a recipient for Ortiz’s timely piano voicings and Jones’ rugged saxophone lines, intentionally imbued of Oriental flavor.
Helias’ “Story Line” flows through African-tinged percussive spells. The theme statement is supplied in unison by sax and piano, and the riveting improvisations make us alert at all times. Jones, whose slightly dissonant contortions are never gratuitous or frivolous, proves he’s a quick-witted explorer while Ortiz’s rhythmic sense and levels of inventiveness thrust him into the limelight of modern pianism.
An uncanny dark mood envelops the title track, a solemn piece composed by the bandleader to be performed by piano trio formation. It opposes to the Parisian charm of Andrew Hill’s “Snake Hip Waltz” whose bohemian feel is instantly absorbed. The amiable melodies blown by Jones, who opts for a post-bop language, encounter Ortiz’s titillating voicings. The pianist’s movements demand clever and intuitive responses from Waits, who nails it.
In Sam Rivers' “Unity”, you’ll find Jones and Ortiz
dialoguing over a well-heeled bass-drums incitement while Nasheet is
breathtaking on toms and cymbals.
Envisioning a diversity of pace and color, the quartet delivers “Kush”, a leisurely waltz that recalls Bill Evans, and Parker’s “Koko”,
which has sufficient rhythmic variations to sound fresh. In the latter,
Waits follows Ortiz’s piano mosaics, carrying his chattering percussive
vibes before Helias embarks on a frantic walking bass that seems to ask
for bebop scales, a request that Jones immediately refuses, engaging
instead in an alternative and more interesting soloing concept with a
focus on timbre.
Nasheet Waits unwraps an extraordinary body of work that serves as a showcase for his vibrant driving grooves and impeccable compositions. This is a hidden treasure that every fan of contemporary jazz should look for. Another highlight of the year.
Grade A+
Label: Laborie Jazz
Favorite Tracks:
01 – Korean Bounce ► 02 – Story Line ► 07 – Koko
