Biography
Rashied Ali was born into a musical family; his mother had sung with Jimmie Lunceford. His brother, Muhammad Ali, is also a drummer, who played with Albert Ayler, among others.
Ali moved to New York in 1963 and worked in groups with Bill Dixon and Paul Bley. He has also recorded or performed with Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, Arthur Rhames, James Blood Ulmer and many others. In addition, Ali was scheduled to be the second drummer, alongside Elvin Jones, on John Coltrane's landmark free jazz album, Ascension, but he dropped out just before the recording was to take place. Coltrane did not replace him, and settled for one drummer. Ali began to record with Coltrane from Meditations in November 1965 onwards.
Among his credits is the last recorded work of John Coltrane's life, the Olatunji Concert and Interstellar Space an album of duets with Coltrane, recorded earlier in 1967. Ali "became important in stimulating the most avant-garde kinds of jazz activities". During the early 1970s, he ran an influential loft club in New York, called Ali's Alley. Ali also briefly formed a non-jazz project called Purple Trap with Japanese experimental guitarist Keiji Haino and jazz-fusion bassist Bill Laswell. Their double-CD album, Decided...Already the Motionless Heart of Tranquility, Tangling the Prayer Called "I", was released on John Zorn's Tzadik label in March of 1999.
Rashied Ali though most known for his work in the Jazz idiom has also made his contributions to other experimental art forms including multi-media Performances with The Gift of Eagle Orchestra and Cosmiclegends. Performances such as Devachan and the Monads, Dwarf of Oblivion which have taken place at the Kitchen center for performance Art, and a special tribute to John Cage in Central Park have taken 'Performance Art' to new levels with the addition of fully improvised large scale performances pieces. Other artists of the orchestra and Cosmic Legends have included Hayes Greenfield (sax), Perry Robinson (clarinet), Wayne Lopes (guitar), Dave Douglas (trumpet), Gloria Tropp (vocals), director/pianist Sylvie Degiez along with Poets and actors, Ira Cohen, Taylor Meade, Judith Malina (Living Theater). More recently, Ali has played with Sonny Fortune.
Rashied Ali has recently been playing with his own Quintet, The Rashied Ali Quintet. A double CD entitled "Judgement Day" was released on February 17, 2005 and features: Jumaane Smith on Trumpet, Lawrence Clark on Tenor Sax, Greg Murphy on Piano, Joris Teepe on Bass and Rashied Ali on Drums. This album was recorded at Ali's own Survival Studio which has been running since the 1970s.
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Rashied Ali...
Rashied Ali is a progenitor and leading exponent of multidirectional rhythms/polytonal percussion. A student of Philly Joe Jones and an admirer of Art Blakey, Ali developed the style known as "free jazz" drumming, which liberates the percussionist from the role of human metronome.
A Philadelphia native, Rashied Ali began his percussion career in the U.S. Army and started gigging with rhythm and blues and rock groups when he returned from the service. Cutting his musical teeth with local Philly R&B groups, such as Dick Hart & the Heartaches, Big Maybelle and Lin Holt, Rashied gradually moved on to play in the local jazz scene with such notables as Lee Morgan, Don Patterson and Jimmy Smith. Early in the 1960s the Big Apple beckoned, and soon Rashied Ali was a fixture of the avant-garde jazz scene, backing up the excursions of such musical free spirits as Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Paul Bley, Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon and Albert Ayler. It was during this period that Rashied Ali made his first major recording (On This Night with Archie Shepp, on the Impulse label) and began to sit in with John Coltrane's group at the Half Note and other clubs around Manhattan.
In November 1965 John Coltrane decided to use a two-drummer format for a gig at the Village Gate; the percussionist Trane chose to complement the already legendary Elvin Jones was Rashied Ali. Thus began a musical odyssey whose reverberations are still felt in the music today - Trane probing the outer harmonic limits and changing the melodic language of jazz while Rashied Ali turned the drum kit into a multirhythmic, polytonal propellant, helping fuel Coltrane's flights of free jazz fancy. The rolling, emotion-piercing music generated by the Coltrane/Ali association is still being discussed, analyzed, reviewed and enjoyed in awe as the new compact disk format introduces the era to a new host of the sonically aware. After Coltrane's passing in 1967, Rashied Ali headed for Europe, where he gigged in Copenhagen, Germany and Sweden before settling in for a study period with Philly Joe Jones in England.
Upon his return from the continent, Rashied Ali resumed his place at the forefront of New York's music scene, working and recording with the likes of Jackie McLean, Alice Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Gary Bartz, Dewey Redman and others too numerous to mention here. In response to the decaying New York jazz scene in the early 1970s, Rashied Ali opened the loft-jazz club Ali's Alley in 1973 and also established a companion enterprise, Survival Records. Ali's Alley began as a musical outlet for New York avant-garde but soon became a melting pot of jazz styles. Although the Alley closed in 1979, its legacy continues in the New York jazz scene and Rashied Ali has been busy gigging with a virtual Who's Who in jazz, refining his music and encouraging a host of younger musicians.
Source: bigmagic.com
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Rashied Ali is a progenitor and leading exponent of multidirectional rhythms/polytonal percussion. A student of Philly Joe Jones and an admirer of Art Blakey, Ali developed the style known as "free jazz" drumming, which liberates the percussionist from the role of human metronome. The drummer interfaces both rhythmically and melodically with the music, utilizing meter and sound in a unique fashion. This allows the percussionist to participate in the music in a harmonic sense, coloring both the rhythm and tonality with his personal perception. By adding his voice to the ensemble, the percussionist becomes an equal in the melodics of collective musical creation rather than a "pot banger" who keeps the others all playing at the same speed. Considered radical in the 1960s and scorned by the mediocre, multidirectional rhythms, polytonal drumming is now the landmark of the jazz percussionist.
A Philadelphia native, Rashied Ali began his percussion career in the U.S. Army and started gigging with rhythm and blues and rock groups when he returned from the service. Cutting his musical teeth with local Philly R&B groups, such as Dick Hart & the Heartaches, Big Maybelle and Lin Holt, Rashied gradually moved on to play in the local jazz scene with such notables as Lee Morgan, Don Patterson and Jimmy Smith. Early in the 1960s the Big Apple beckoned, and soon Rashied Ali was a fixture of the avant-garde jazz scene, backing up the excursions of such musical free spirits as Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Paul Bley, Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon and Albert Ayler. It was during this period that Rashied Ali made his first major recording (On This Night with Archie Shepp, on the Impulse label) and began to sit in with John Coltrane's group at the Half Note and other clubs around Manhattan.
In November 1965 John Coltrane decided to use a two-drummer format for a gig at the Village Gate; the percussionist Trane chose to complement the already legendary Elvin Jones was Rashied Ali. Thus began a musical odyssey whose reverberations are still felt in the music today--Trane probing the outer harmonic limits and changing the melodic language of jazz while Rashied Ali turned the drum kit into a multirhythmic, polytonal propellant, helping fuel Coltrane's flights of free jazz fancy. The rolling, emotion-piercing music generated by the Coltrane/Ali association is still being discussed, analyzed, reviewed and enjoyed in awe as the new compact disk format introduces the era to a new host of the sonically aware.
After Coltrane's passing in 1967, Rashied Ali headed for Europe, where he gigged in Copenhagen, Germany and Sweden before settling in for a study period with Philly Joe Jones in England. Upon his return from the continent, Rashied Ali resumed his place at the forefront of New York's music scene, working and recording with the likes of Jackie McLean, Alice Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Gary Bartz, Dewey Redman and others too numerous to mention here. In response to the decaying New York jazz scene in the early 1970s, Rashied Ali opened the loft-jazz club Ali's Alley in 1973 and also established a companion enterprise, Survival Records.
Ali's Alley began as a musical outlet for New York avant-garde but soon became a melting pot of jazz styles. Although the Alley closed in 1979, its legacy continues in the New York jazz scene and Rashied Ali has been busy gigging with a virtual Who's Who in jazz, refining his music and encouraging a host of younger musicians.
Source: http://www.bigmagic.com/bios/rashied.htm
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Rashied Ali By Hank Shteamer
Rashied Ali is a survivor. Best known for replacing Elvin Jones as John Coltrane's drummer of choice in the mid-sixties, Ali has sustained himself as a working, thriving musician right through to the present day. Since his stint with Trane, Ali has founded a label, Survival Records, and a club, Ali's Alley; led countless groups in styles from funk to free; and mentored many young musicians (including John Coltrane's son, Ravi) while constantly refining his remarkable technique.
Ali performs in a duo with saxophonist Sonny Fortune at Sweet Rhythm in April. He recently sat down with All About Jazz New York in his home studio to discuss his current projects, the initial development of his 'multi-directional' rhythms, and his many illustrious musical associations.
AAJ: What can a listener expect from a Rashied Ali / Sonny Fortune duet performance?
RA: Well, what they can expect is to see two cats playing their hearts out. You know, because we just get up there, and we don't hold back anything. And we just do it from the way we were taught to do it by the masters; we just go right after the music.
Sometimes it takes us ten minutes; sometimes it takes us an hour to get it over with. We can play one song for an hour almost before we feel like we've exhausted every means of trying to get to what we were getting to in the music- take it to another level.
The repertoire could be whatever tune we play. It's not really a repertoire; we know so much music. We've been playing together ever since we started playing music back in the fifties or something, and we know so much music. And we were listening to all the great players like Coltrane, who was the cat who raised me in the music, and Sonny as well. And we listened to records with Bird, Clifford Brown- the history of the music, we know about that.
That makes us want to do more with the music. We try to play the music unadulterated ... no watered down stuff; it's just purely as on-the-money as we can. So there's no pretense in it. It's all sheer- well, I wouldn't say sheer brute strength, or that kind of a thing. It's that as well as beautiful melodic lines.
So we could play a standard; we could play Tin Pan Alley tunes; we could play originals. We do that; we go through all of them. We play Irving Berlin's shit; we play Cole Porter's shit; we play Charlie Parker's shit; we play Sonny Fortune's stuff; we play Rashied Ali's stuff. And we treat it all the same way. Say we play a standard like 'Love for Sale' or 'But Not for Me;' we try to exhaust the tune. It's like all of a sudden gravity don't work no more, you know what I mean?
You just go into a thing until it completely becomes like nothing. Everything just starts working together; that's when it's right. You can take any tune and do that. It doesn't have to be an original tune you write; it can be any tune. If it's music, you can do that with it; you can get free.
I mean being free, still playing 'But Not for Me,' but just open and loose. Being a drummer, you can understand what I'm saying, just to be able to play uninhibited, just to do whatever you feel like you want to do, and it's all right in there with what's happening. And that's how I feel about what we're doing musically.
AAJ: You've returned to the duet format throughout your career.
RA: I've dubbed myself 'The Duet Drummer.' I just remember even before Coltrane or any of that, I've always played with just a saxophone player or a piano player, whoever was available. I love playing with rhythm sections; I do. But it was really more open playing just with another instrument- a drummer, whatever. And I've been doing that all my life just about.
And when I did Interstellar Space with Coltrane, that really put it on the map, but if you go back and listen to some of my records before Trane - with Archie Shepp, Marion Brown, Albert Ayler, Cal Massey, just a lot of different people ' you would hear me playing duets with Marion on some cuts, duets with Alan Shorter on some cuts, or duets with Archie Shepp. In fact, Archie Shepp and I, we played duets for almost six months before I went with Coltrane.
That concept came actually from listening to Trane because I first heard Trane play duets with Philly Joe Jones back in the fifties, and then I heard him play with Elvin Jones all the time, just duets. The whole band would split, and [leave] just the drummer and the saxophone. So that kind of got me up on that really.
So by the time I got to play duets with Trane, I was definitely ready for it. And since, I think I have more duo records than any drummer out. That's been one of my fortes, although I love playing with a rhythm section.
AAJ: How did the idea for Interstellar Space come about?
RA: I didn't have a clue what was happening. John told me that we were going to be going in to the studio, and I said, 'Cool.' And I went in there, and I was setting up, and I didn't see Jimmy, I didn't see Alice; I didn't see nobody else. And I was like, 'Where's everybody else?' and he said, 'It's just going to be you and me.' And I went, 'Oh!'
So everything was completely spontaneous except for at times I would ask him to give me some kind of clue as to what was happening, you know like, 'Is this going to be slow like a ballad?' or, 'Is this going to be in a certain time like 3/4 or 4/4? Is it going to be fast? Is it going to be slow?' Because you know, he would just ring the bells, pick up his horn and start playing.
And I'd been playing with him not that long anyways, and I'm like, 'What the fuck?' And you know I would get in there, and I would play, and he would go, 'How do you like that?' and I would say, 'Well, I wasn't quite prepared for it.' And he'd say, 'Well, you want to do it again?' and I'd say, 'Yeah, let's do it again.'
There's probably some other takes of that stuff because we did a few things twice, but [John] didn't really like to do that. But he saw I was in such agony that he would do that for me; that's the kind of cat he was.
And so, that record came about like that. Meditations was like that too, actually. That's why I always wanted a chance to do [Interstellar Space] again at some point, but it's pretty hard to do it without [John], you know?
But I did Meditations again; I recorded that again [with Prima Materia, Ali's group featuring saxophonists Louie Belogenis and Allan Chase]. That turned out ok. Still, I wasn't ready for the original Meditations, but I like the original Meditations better than mine.
AAJ: So, you had never heard the music on Interstellar Space before you recorded it?
RA: No; first time meeting it, first time playing it, and a lot of times it was a first take thing, and then I never heard it again until like twenty-five or thirty years later when they put it out.
AAJ: Did you ever play live duets with Trane?
RA: Well, no, but in the songs sometimes everybody would lay out and just John and I would play for a little bit, and then the rest of the band would come back in. And then on some tunes like 'Ogunde' and some other tunes, the whole band was playing, and then they would all just lay out, and then John and I would go and solo and play, and then the whole band would come back in to close it. So it was that kind of duo thing I did with him before.
But, like I was saying, I was pretty much versed into duos because that was one of my fortes, and it still is very much. I really do dig playing with a duo because I have a lot of freedom, and when I get with a good cat who really knows what's happening up there with the changes and everything, it works out really good.
AAJ: You were one of the first drummers to break away from timekeeping in jazz. How did you come up with your free style of playing?
RA: I came up with playing the way I play by listening to the top drummers of the world like Max Roach, Art Blakey. I say those two cats first because I listened to them a lot as a kid, but they wasn't really my main influences. My main influences was right in my family. Charlie Rice and his brother Bernard was really my main influences because they were really hell of a drummers; they were my second cousins, my father's first cousins.
But I listened to 'Philly' Joe Jones, and although he was playing straight ahead without the avant-garde groove - like Andrew [Cyrille], and Milford [Graves], and Sunny [Murray], and myself ' there were segments in his playing that he broke time up, and that interested me in his playing. Because he would go sometimes like five or six bars just breaking up time before he would go back to his time thing, and I was like, 'Damn, what would happen if you could just extend that?'
So I heard 'Philly' Joe Jones breaking up the time like that, and then I got into listening to Elvin Jones with Coltrane and, wow... I heard 'Philly' Joe Jones with Coltrane first with Miles Davis's band, and there would be times when 'Philly' Joe Jones and Coltrane would just take off ' the rest of the band would just cool out; Miles would go somewhere ' and those cats would just play for like a half-hour, forty-five minutes.
Then I heard John play with Elvin Jones in that same kind of situation, you know. So I was pretty much mesmerized by the sound of the drums and the saxophone, by looking at that. And I think that's where I started trying to find something else to do instead of just trying to play time. Because I was a Max Roach freak, and I love that period in my life because Max Roach turned me on to melodies and how to play the drums in a melodic sense and [how to have] a feel for the structure of the music you're playing and the tune and knowing the tunes and all that. I came up with that, so I had that kind of under my belt.
But when I started hearing these cats play all this free shit in between phrases, that sort of prompted me. Then when I heard Elvin Jones with Trane, I was like, 'Wow, man; I got to get my shit together or find another instrument to play' because it was that kind of a serious thing.
And I just went in to 'shed, and Sunny Murray, who was also in Philadelphia, we was all just trying to play open and free. He split to New York, and he met up with Cecil Taylor. I'm still in Philadelphia, and Sunny comes to New York and fucks people up with this free shit he was playing. Cecil got him and pretty soon I said, 'It's time for me to leave Philly.'
Trane actually told me to leave Philly, and I left Philly and I came to New York and I started playing with people like Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, and I met people like Beaver Harris and Andrew Cyrille and Milford Graves, and there was a whole different kind of a music out here at that point: Don Cherry, Albert Ayler, Archie- they called us the avant-garde 'New Wave' players, you know what I mean?
And we were actually trying to play a different kind of rhythm, and a lot of the drummers started homing in on each other and trying to steal licks from each other, and we just sort of stayed in here with it, and a few of us are still here. And I think it meant a lot because I hear a lot of players playing this type of avant-garde music.
AAJ: Could you talk about your background in R&B?
“And that's what the avant-garde is; it's a very personal kind of a thing; it's stuff that you can do after you learn how to do everything else.”
RA: Well, that was the beginning of my whole drumming thing because that was the first kind of stuff I played as a drummer- rhythm-and-blues and playing backbeats and playing for blues singers: Dick Hart and the Heartaches; Big Maybelle, I played with her a little bit; I played with Muhammad Abibala [sp.?], [who] was kind of a Louis Jordan-type saxophone player, or an Arnett Cobb-type of saxophone player.
I played with a lot of those kinds of rhythm-and-blues groups around Philadelphia; Philadelphia was that kind of a place. In fact, I followed Coltrane in one of them bands because he also played with Abibala, I heard before me.
I mean I was sort of just right there trying to learn how to play and watching and just going through the same grooves like the cats ahead of me went through, just learning how to hold how to hold myself up with the rhythm-and-blues groove, and trying to practice how to play time and listening to Bird and listening to my cousins- they used to play. In fact, actually Bird played at my high-school dance, and my cousin, Bernard Rice, he played drums with Bird at the high-school dance because Bird used to come to Philly, and he wouldn't bring a band; he'd just come and just bring his horn, and he would get a band there; that's how that stuff was there.
So I seen bands like that at my high school; I seen Stan Kenton's band, he played at my high-school dance; Woody Herman's Third Herd with the Four Brothers: Brew Moore, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Allan Eager- they played at my high school dance too! Check that out, right?!
R&B was a hell of an introduction to the drums for me because you've got to use a lot of strength and shit... In the seventies I had a group called the Funky Freeboppers, and we was sort of integrating electric instruments with acoustic instruments. And we was doing a lot of funky things, singing and stuff like that with that band in the seventies actually. And I kept the Funky Freeboppers alive for a couple of years, two or three years; a lot of different guys came through the band.
And then I didn't get tired of the groove, but I wanted to get back into really playing what I felt. And I didn't really feel Funky Freebop like I did playing open. And so we did that; we did a lot of funk shit, and I played as open as I could; I played as far out as I could take it. Then I said, 'Alright, that's it; let me go back to what it is I really love to do.' [The Funky Freeboppers have] never been recorded, but I do have tapes; one day you might get a chance to hear the Funky Freeboppers.
AAJ: With your group Prima Materia, you've recorded recreations of both Albert Ayler's Bells and John Coltrane's Meditations. Were these records an attempt to create a kind of avant-garde jazz repertory?
RA: It's not really the importance of the compositions as it is the importance of the composer. Those cats, man- Albert Ayler to me was a major, major, major force in the music; I don't care what you name it. He was just a very different saxophone player, and he was respected by great saxophone players like Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane and people like that.
And I got a chance to play with [Albert], and he was an incredible musician, and he played stuff sometimes that I couldn't even deal with. But after listening to him for awhile, I could hear where he was coming from.
Albert Ayler was a very creative musician, and everybody realized that, and the contribution that he made, it's too bad that's it's going unsung like it is. I mean nobody knows who Albert Ayler is. You can ask people who've listened to jazz forever, you ask them about Albert Ayler, and they go, 'Who?'
So, that's what's missing. And so, I did [Prima Materia's Bells] because I wanted people to hear Albert's music. Maybe that record would get them to go out and buy an Albert Ayler record, you know what I mean? That record doesn't get out that much anyway, but if they would hear that then they would go, 'Damn, I wonder what the original cat sounds like?'
So, we did that in remembrance of Albert, and we also did two records in remembrance of Coltrane. And that's what Prima Materia was about. We was going to do one for Eric Dolphy as well, but we haven't got to that one yet. But we do have one coming out which I call Configurations, which is Coltrane's music from his album Stellar Regions- 'Configurations' is one of the tunes on Stellar Regions. I finished that last year, and it should be coming out this year. We call that Configurations, and I've got two basses on there, Wilber Morris and Joe Gallant; Allan Chase is playing alto; Louie Belogenis is playing tenor, and Greg Murphy on piano.
AAJ: Could you talk about the history and future of Survival Studios/Records [Ali's personal studio and label]?
RA: Well, this is the studio here. And the label 'we've got some stuff coming out. Actually, Configurations is coming out on Survival as well as Cutting Corners, which is another CD that I did down here with a group that I played the Vision Festival with in 1999: Greg Tardy's playing tenor, James Hurt is the pianist, and Omer Avital's playing bass.
...I've never really recorded on my own, as a leader, with a major record company in the thirty, forty years that I've been working for some reason. With other bands I've played on major record companies, but as a leader, playing my own music and playing with my own band, I never did it with a major company. I don't know if that's because we never agreed on things- I had chances, but it didn't work out
So I developed Survival Records, and most of my stuff has been done on my own label. And I'm glad I did it now because it really works out better for me because I'm building up a catalog and the whole thing, and I've got two more records coming out around the spring, maybe in the summer they'll be coming out: Configurations and Cutting Corners, which I feel like is really good.
And this last one I did, No One In Particular [featuring Ravi Coltrane on tenor and Matthew Garrison, son of Ali's late associate Jimmy Garrison, on bass]... It was really cool because those kids ' well, they're not kids anymore; Ravi will be ... thirty-something years old; Matthew's in his early thirties.
But I knew them when they were inside their mothers! They didn't know me, but I knew them. And I used to see Alice, she used to make sessions with this boy in her, and then when they were born, they were little babies, and I seen them as little babies until I guess Ravi was about six or seven or eight when he moved out to California.
But Matthew, I watched him because he lived right around the corner with his mother, Roberta, and Jimmy. When he died, she stayed there I guess before she moved to Italy with him. He was like about eight or nine or ten, and she moved him to Italy, and I didn't see him no more until he came here to go to school at Berklee.
And then Ravi, I was kind of seeing him because I was making trips out to California ' my father's out there ' plus I was doing gigs with Alice sometimes, and that's how I met Ravi...
So, you know, the rest is history. I sort of got [Ravi] to come here to New York. He came here, and he stayed with us for a little while, and he got himself together. And then I met Matthew through some kid named Gene Shimosato who plays guitar ' he's a good guitar player. [Gene] was teaching, and he was going to Berklee at the same time Matt was going there. He came over, and Matt goes, 'Oh, that's Rashied Ali's house!' and boom, boom, boom... Then I got those cats together, man.
So I took them, and I had this band with Ravi and Matt and Gene and Greg [Murphy]. We went to Europe; we were together a couple of years. I made a few tapes, and I finally got this record out.
And it's a gas to play with those cats, being they're the sons of some great musicians that I respected a lot. And Matthew [laughs], Matthew is a motherfuckin' hell of a bass player, man! Whoo! He plays the shit out of that electric bass! ... I don't know if he ever wanted to play acoustic, but if he ever did, it wouldn't make no difference.
He's an incredible bass player, and Ravi is a very great young saxophone player with all the time in the world to develop ... You know, I did a lot of stuff with Ravi. We did some stuff with Tisziji Munoz [There should be a '~' mark over the 'n.'], and every time we get together we play. So, he's an incredible player.
AAJ: Are you currently composing music?
RA: Well, you know, I haven't really written anything in a long time because, for one thing, a lot of the stuff that I've already written hasn't really been played yet as far as I'm concerned.
But I sit at the piano sometimes, and I get ideas; and I did run across something that I might be doing on my next record. I wrote a couple of ballads. I don't know how I got with two of them; I must have been in kind of a melancholy mode because I am going through certain kinds of weird things in my life right now in my life. I'm having difficulties in certain things, and, thank God [knocks on wood], I'm healthy. I'm just going through different changes and stuff.
So I sat at the piano, and I did some stuff the other night, and I was smart enough to put a tape recorder on so I won't forget it. But then there's a few things I wrote back in the day that I want to record, and I think that's what I'm going to do on my next album. I think I'm going to write all the tunes...
AAJ: Do you listen to other styles of music?
RA: Yeah, man, I like all music. I'm a music freak. I like it all, man, and if I don't like it, it must be bad... You know, I like the cats that's really doing it, and the cats that's bullshitting, hey! [laughs]
AAJ: Are you a teacher?
RA:...There used to be a time back in Philly when I used to teach cats just basics, but actually, man, I teach from the bandstand. Cats come and hear me, and they see what I'm doing. When they do come to my house, I do stress out the fact that you need to try to extend your time. I say, 'If you're playing, you need to extend [time] over the whole set instead of trying to concentrate on beats. Concentrate on what you hear.'
That's how I get it, man. I can play a time, and then I can just take that time and turn it into nothing. The time will still be there, but you won't hear it; you can feel it. I can demonstrate that for you. I can do it right now... [Ali sits down at drums and demonstrates- What a treat!]
And that's what John called 'multi-directional rhythms. He named it; he told me, 'Rashied, what you're playing is multi-directional rhythms.' That's what he put on it, so I just left it there. I guess it means everything going on at once. He said, 'I can pick whatever I want to; I can play as slow as I want, or as fast as I want on the rhythm that you're playing.' And that was some heavy shit when he told me that...
That's the only reason I was [with Coltrane], man. I used to be playing gigs, and Coltrane used to be in the audience watching me. I was playing with Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Marion Brown, Chris Capers, George Coleman ' whoever it was I was playing sessions with. And I would look out sometimes in the audience, and Albert would go, [whispers] 'Hey man, Coltrane!' So he used to scope us out.
But that's not it either. I used to go to his gig and beg, and he'd let me sit in with him; I sat in with the quartet. They had this place, it used to be called the Half Note, it was on Hudson and Spring, and Trane used to play there- if he was off he'd play there for a month, two months, and I would go over there and sit down on the bandstand ... ask them to let me play every day. But I came in there one day when Elvin [Jones] wasn't there, and everybody wanted to play, and [John] said, 'Come on, man,' and that started it. After that, I was playing all the time. I was sitting in on Elvin's drums, and pretty soon I started working with Elvin, two drummers.
But from the beginning, I would just go over there and sit in and just play with the band. And other people would sit in too. I'd bring people like Pharaoh [Sanders]; we'd come together, and we'd both sit in with Trane. And then [John] started changing his band around.
[Playing in tandem with Elvin Jones] was an incredible experience, man; I'll never forget that. Although, it was kind of rough at first, but, whew, man, that was something. I learned a lot from it. That was great. Too bad it didn't last long, but it lasted long enough for me to understand what it was all about.
AAJ: It seems like there has been a resurgence of interest in avant-garde jazz in the past few years. Do you feel like people are starting to come around to your music?
RA: I really do... Trane left us, and that was a big blow to the avant-garde because he was the biggest name, and he had more clout to get it out there than anybody else... And when Trane actually left that music, and Miles Davis and Teo Macero and those cats got the music moved into a different direction with the fusion thing, that just sort of put the dampers on the avant-garde; that just sort of put it out. And I guess that's what prompted me to try to get a record label, get a club because we needed a place to play, we needed a place to record, and all that shit.
But I think now that the music is starting to resurface again. I mean, just like I said, you can't go but so far in it man; you've got to do something else. You just can't sit around and say, 'Ok, let's go to Louis Armstrong; let's play Louis Armstrong for awhile; let's play some Bird for awhile; let's play some Coltrane of the sixties for awhile or some Coltrane of the fifties for awhile.' After awhile, you've got to make a stand, man, and start playing yourself.
And that's what the avant-garde is; it's a very personal kind of a thing; it's stuff that you can do after you learn how to do everything else. You've got to first know where it's all coming from before you can take something- I always call the avant-garde taking absolutely nothing and turning it into something; in other words, just going for it, just start playing... You know, just start! Just do that, and keep turning it over and turning over until it starts making sense. That's the shit man; that's the stuff, man, to be able to play like that.
And I feel like the music is making that kind of a thing because I get with young kids from the New School, from Julliard, and I don't even want to name these kids, but when they come down here to my studio, they don't want to play no 'Scrapple from the Apple;' they want to play some different stuff. They don't just want to hear no time; they just want to play. I'll say, 'What do you want to play?' and they'll say, 'Let's just play! Let's just hit.'
And so I'm feeling like that's where the music is, and it's cool to hear young people wanting to play like that. That's not putting anything on anything because I stress the fact that, hey man, if you don't know how to play 'But Not for Me,' if you don't know how to play 'Cherokee,' or if you don't know how to play 'Giant Steps' ... then you can't play avant-garde because you've got to play that first. You've got to know where that shit's coming from before you can play this.
And that's what motivates me, man, is they learn that shit. I call anything I want to call, and they can play it, ... and if they don't know how to play it, they go learn it. And, hey, that's where the music is to me.
Source: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=243
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A Fireside Chat With Rashied Ali
I was really into Elvin because he was the featured drummer on A Love Supreme. I still am to some degree (having spent a hundred and fifty bucks on his Mosaic Blue Note box), but when it comes to Trane drummers, I appreciate what Rashied Ali brought to the table. I can't imagine another drummer being able to duel with Trane on Interstellar Space. Or how killer is the practically hour long "My Favorite Things" on the Live in Japan record? I get the best of both worlds on Meditations (both Ali and Jones play). Ali continues to pay tribute to Trane's legacy. A classic Touchin' on Trane (Charles Gayle and William Parker), a fine In the Spirit of John Coltrane (Sonny Fortune), and a rendition of Meditations with his Prima Materia band. The force is strong in this one my friends. I sat down with Rashied and the drummer spoke about his respect for Trane and his efforts to be the standard bearer, as always, unedited and in his own words.
FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning
RASHIED ALI: Well, actually my family was a very musical kind of a family. My mother and her four sisters were all piano players and then my grandmother was a minister and she had a Baptist church, sort of a little, small corner church. Her daughters sang and played at the church. And my father, he's a music lover. He's a jazz buff. He likes music. His first cousins, which were the Rices, Charlie Rice and Bernard Rice, they were both drummers. Charlie Rice was more professional. He played with people like Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane, people like that in Philadelphia years ago. I just was around music all my life and so it was just natural that I would be a musician I guess. I started with piano, but I didn't really get that far. I learned enough just to read music and play the piano. Then I wanted to be a trombone player, but I never got that. I wanted to play the trumpet. I was going through a lot of different changes. Actually, the drums just really took over being around my cousins and friends that I knew. My aunt married a drummer also. I just sort of gravitated towards the drum set. But actually, I started playing congas and hand percussion instruments before I really became sort of professional in drums.
FJ: How did you come to play with Trane?
RASHIED ALI: Actually, I was born and raised in Philadelphia and John Coltrane lived in Philadelphia all of his young life. He moved from North Carolina as a kid up to Philly. So actually, I first met John in Philadelphia back in '59, '58, while he was still playing with Miles Davis, but I wasn't considering myself as really good enough to play with John Coltrane in those days. I admired the man so much and I would go hear him play when he was working with Miles Davis and he lived about four blocks, five blocks away from me and I used to go sit on his porch and listen to him practice because Mrs. Alice Coltrane wouldn't let us go upstairs, that's his mom, while he was practicing and stuff like that and so we would just sit outside and listen to him and then we would leave. When I really got enough experience to try and play with him, he was down in Philadelphia and I asked him a couple of times if I could sit in with him, but he said, "Not right now." He encouraged me to go to New York and stuff like that and so I did. I came to New York and then I got a chance to sit and play with him in New York and the rest is history. That is when I joined the band in 1965.
FJ: Was it competitive between Rashied Ali and Elvin Jones?
RASHIED ALI: Not at all, Fred. In those days, things were kind of different and I was an upstart. I was just trying to get my rhythm off and so there was a few misunderstandings between the old band and the new band. Elvin was one of my heroes. He was one of the guys that really got me started to play something different. By listening to Elvin Jones, I was able to find Rashied Ali.
FJ: Many who document the music have cheapened the innovations of Coltrane's lessening the impact or in some circumstances, ignoring the heavyweight's later years entirely.
RASHIED ALI: Yeah, that's a shame too, Fred, because that is a stepping stone to what is going on right now. Well, actually, I wouldn't say it was ignored that much. At the time, I would like to also think of myself as really working with John and helping him create that sound. It was just that John was really instrumental in that kind of music because even with his former quartet with Elvin. They were playing very avant-garde kind of music and the people dug it because he had this thing going with Miles Davis and with his band. When he really, really decided that he wanted to get out of chord changes and get out of time, rhythm, and meters, that is when things started changing as far as the public is concerned. That went on for a while, but it was actually embraced by a lot of musicians while John was alive because when he was alive, I played with a lot of people like Sonny Rollins and Grachan Moncur and Don Byas and they were embracing the free kind of music, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor. That stuff was really happening in the Sixties and when John left us here, that is when the music made a change. Miles Davis went to Bitches Brew and they got into a fusion thing and all kinds of different things happened and it just sort of kind of dropped out of the public's eye, but not for me because I stayed in the game and I'm still in it now, Fred. Right now, I see the music is resurging again. It is starting to come up a little bit more because I've been doing a lot of playing lately and it is not that I don't play conventional jazz because I do enjoy playing it, but I'd much rather play more experimental stuff than conventional stuff. I think when John was here, the music was hanging in there, but a lot of people were so used to him playing certain kind of things. I think if he had stayed here, it would be the music hat we'd be playing today. It is actually because I'm still here and the music right now, a lot of youngsters are embracing this music and I've been doing pretty well with it right now.
FJ: Did you continue to legacy with Alice?
RASHIED ALI: For a little while. I played with Alice for about a year or so after, maybe a couple of years after Coltrane passed. I did most of the stuff with my own band. I had a lot of different bands in those times and not only did I have different bands, I also had a club that I opened in New York called Ali's Alley. That club lasted for about five or six years and that way, I was able to play a lot with my band and different bands that I put together and getting other avant-garde bands to play because it was at a point in the early Seventies where there wasn't too many places out here that an avant-garde band could play. So Ali's Alley was one of those places. That went from 1973 to 1979. It was a great club and the club got a lot of props. People from Europe, Japan, all over the world came to hear the club and so Ali's Alley produced a lot of avant-garde music in those days.
FJ: The music being documented on Survival Records.
RASHIED ALI: Yes, it is. It exactly is.
FJ: So titles reissued on CD by Knit Media.
RASHIED ALI: Yes.
FJ: A session with a practically unknown Frank Lowe.
RASHIED ALI: Yes, and in fact, Fred, I just recorded something with Frank Lowe earlier this year that I am going to put out. That is the second time that we've recorded since the very first time I recorded with him as a duo on Survival Records.
FJ: And James Blood Ulmer.
RASHIED ALI: Oh, yeah, James Blood is another one. In fact, we've got a band now we call the New York Art Quartet with James Blood, Reggie Workman, and John Hicks. We were just out in Seattle, Washington with that band a couple of times. I had Leroy Jenkins and Hamiet Bluiett on a couple of things that I did and Sonny Murray. He played at Ali's Alley. Clifford Jordan's quintet played at Ali's Alley. There was a lot of good things happening at that club.
FJ: With Ulmer, you formed Phalanx.
RASHIED ALI: Blood Ulmer, George Adams, and Sirone on bass. We did two records with that group. George passed and so we didn't really find a replacement for George and so that band sort of disbanded.
FJ: You still have the Prima Materia band?
RASHIED ALI: Well, you know, we've got a new record coming out with Prima Materia. We did Configurations, which is all Coltrane's music from his album Stellar Regions. We just did that, which will be coming out right after Christmas, around the first of the year on Survival Records as well. Survival Records is coming out with three brand new releases and I just did one, the latest one that just came out, I have Ravi Coltrane.
FJ: No One in Particular.
RASHIED ALI: Yeah, you have that already. I have Ravi and Matthew Garrison, which is Jimmy Garrison's son. So I got both of the kids there and that is ironic because I knew those kids before they knew themselves. I knew their mothers when they were pregnant with them guys. Alice used to play with Ravi still yet to be born and so I got Matthew and Ravi on No One in Particular. Since I'm not one of those record companies with the power of good distributing, it is pretty hard to find my records, but they are in some companies, but I don't know exactly which stores to find them in. I suggest that they mail, they would just send to the company and we will mail the stuff out to them. They can order it from Survival Records. They can get it at Survival Records, 77 Green Street, New York, New York 10012. The stuff that we did over at the Knitting Factory is the stuff that we did live a Ali's Alley and Knitting Factory in conjunction with Survival Records will put out more of those records that were done live at Ali's Alley. Most of that is from the period of 1974 to 1975. That is the stuff that Knit Media and Survival Records is going to jointly release. We've got something coming out right now, which is Rashied Ali with voices. The players is Hamiet Bluiett, Benny Wilson, Jimmy Vass, and Charles Eubanks. Then I have another one coming out. This is all voices with the late Eddie Jefferson, Eddie Jefferson with the Rashied Ali Quartet. We're trying to talk to Knitting Factory, well, actually, we are going to do it and put out those two as another wave of coming from that era of 1974 to 1979.
FJ: The Prima band did a faithful rendition of Meditations.
RASHIED ALI: Oh, thank you, Fred. We tried to keep it as close to the way Trane did it as we possibly could. In fact, I really want to do a lot of that music over again because at that time, I was really younger and I wasn't quite sure of how much I was into what I was into in the music. I was still trying to put it together. That is one reason why I jumped at the chance to do that again. So we did Meditations. We also did, the first record we did of Coltrane's music and we did one of Albert Ayler's music as well.
FJ: Bells.
RASHIED ALI: Bells, yeah. Well, you know, Albert, he was an incredible musician and it is too bad that a lot of people don't know too much about Albert Ayler because he was a tremendous musician. I remember a time when we played at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and it was called Jazz Titans and it was Sonny Rollins, Yusef Lateef, and John Coltrane were the featured artists. John Coltrane got Albert and his brother Donny Ayler to play with us and that was really cool. Coltrane was that kind of a guy, Fred. He was always searching and looking for different things to play and he was always open to the younger musicians. He really was a guru to all of us.
FJ: And the future?
RASHIED ALI: I've got three more Survival Records that should come out the first of the year. Right now, I am working tomorrow night. I've been doing things with my own band as well as doing things with Sonny Fortune. Sonny Fortune and I, we go all the way back to Philadelphia. We were both born there and raised there and got our music together there and we're completely Trane fanatics. So we're doing a lot of duo work now. In fact, we are working at this club in New York called Sweet Basil, well, it is not Sweet Basil anymore, it is called Sweet Rhythm. We're starting a month of Tuesday nights in November and we will be playing there for the month of November on Tuesday nights, just a duo. I think it is a pretty exciting duo. I'm very active now. In fact, I am playing more now than I did in the Eighties and the Nineties was a pretty good decade for the stuff. I am really looking forward to doing a lot of stuff, Fred. It is definitely not over.
FJ: Thank God.
RASHIED ALI: It was hard, a long hard road, but I think it is all coming back around because I have so many young kids interested in what I'm doing. I've got a bunch of kids from Julliard Music School and Manhattan Music School, a lot of kids that are into jazz now are looking for something different to play and naturally, they just go right to that. That is the thing that gets them all excited, the avant-garde music, the free form music is what is exciting most of the younger players now and that is pretty cool.
Source: http://www.jazzweekly.com/interviews/rali.htm
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Discography
As leader
1971 - New Directions In Modern Music (Knit Classics) with Carlos Ward, Fred Simmons, Stafford James
1972 - Duo Exchange (Knit Classics) with Frank Lowe
1973 - Swift Are The Winds Of Life (Knit Classics) with Leroy Jenkins
1973 - Rashied Ali Quintet (Knit Classics) with James Blood Ulmer
1974 - Moon Flight (Knitting Factory)
1975 - N.Y. Ain't So Bad (Knit Classics)
1994 - Peace On Earth (Knitting Factory) with John Zorn, Allan Chase
1995 - Medeitations (Knitting Factory) with Greg Murphy
1995 - Bells (Knitting Factory)
1999 - Rings of Saturn (Knitting Factory)
2000 - Live At Tonic (DIW) with Wilber Morris
As sideman
With John Coltrane
Meditations (1965)
Live in Japan (1965) (1966)
Live at the Village Vanguard Again! (1966)
Interstellar Space (1967)
Stellar Regions (1967)
Expression (1967)
The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording (1967)
Cosmic Music (1968)
With Alan Shorter
Orgasm (1968)
he was studying with who taught in the drum shop two doors down from Frank's Drum Shop and so I started studying with him, with this guy that Adam had been studying with. From the interest in the hand drums and the congas, I started to develop an interest in other forms of hand drumming, which naturally took me to start to investigate and appreciate the different styles of music from Africa, first starting with hand drums. Fortunately, at that time, there was a very good record shop also in downtown Chicago called Rose's Records and they sold music from everywhere. At that time, it was albums of course. I started going to Rose's Records and just looking in the record bins, first for music from Cuba and South America. Since I was playing congas, that would be a good place to start. I began buying records of people like Mongo Santamaria. From there, my interest started to drift across the Atlantic to the continent itself, to the origin of congas and various types of conga derivative type hand drums. From there, the interest in African music developed more and more until in 1977, Adam Rudolph, along with myself and a kora player from the Gambia named Foday Musa Suso, we started this group called the Mandingo Griot Society. Suso, he was a Griot and kora player from the Gambia. From that experience, the interest developed even more and it became more of a lived experience because now I was actually playing in situations where there was someone from the continent who also played a very important instrument from West Africa.
grown and it brings out people of diverse backgrounds and people with their children. The phenomenal thing is that now, for the last several years, we have been only doing early morning performances starting at six in the morning. We still get packed houses at six in the morning of people coming to see this music to see drums and percussions. The nice things about working with Michael is over the years, we have had time to develop a way of communicating with each other and really to develop our own duet style not only from the Winter Solstice concerts that we do, but also from working together with various ensembles, but particularly with Peter Brotzmann and the Chicago Tentet.
oldest drums in the world. We see it in all the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, old Greek statues of people playing frame drums. It is basically a wooden hoop with a large stretched string or skin draped over it. So basically, it is a string instrument also. The frame drum is a type of, musicologists call it menbranophones. The frame drum is one of the oldest drums in existence. The only difference between frame drums and your modern, standard drum kit is that the modern, standard drum kit is played with the sticks. Traditionally, most frame drums with the exception of a few are played with the hands, skin on skin. There are some cultures that do play frame drums with sticks, primarily the Celtic culture from Britain. Some Native American cultures play the frame drum with a stick or a mallet. Frame drum is just a type of, one of the many varieties of drums that we find in existence today. Another unique quality of the frame drum is usually when people play the frame drum, they sing also. It is the drum that is easy to sing with. It is the same with congas. Very seldom do you see players of the drumset singing as they play. That doesn't seem to be a part of the tradition of drumset playing.
Partial discography
The DWB keeps Dave very busy, but he still enjoys sideman work. Dave regularly joins guitarist Mike Stern, among others. When off the road, Dave keeps busy with session and production work at his home studio in Los Angeles. He also accepts a limited number of private students - and offers classes through the Virtual Drummer School. Additionally, Dave has many instructional video/DVDs and play-along packages on the market (see the "instructional" dropdown menu at the top of the page).
and sonic realms). Refining the inspirational drumming of Steve Gadd to profound levels of intricacy, flow and finesse, Weckl was also perhaps the first drummer to focus on sound as much as style. Using his own custom built sound system, sometimes aided by electronics, he redefined the drummer's role in the improvisational unit as no one since.
Dave Weckl has enjoyed massive success as a drummer for hire, as well as the sense of satisfaction that comes from being a contributing member to an extremely popular jazz outfit. Regarding his early days on the New York session scene, Weckl is not sentimental. Like most forward thinking artists, the drummer-leader knows that nostalgia is a trap: 'I am very steady working now, but mostly as a leader of my own band, and as an educator with my instructional products. I do work occasionally as a sideman, but I don't have a lot of time for that these days, not that I don't like to do it, because I do! The biggest difference is that I am fairly at peace with who I am as a drummer now, although I am still always looking for the next level, trying to broaden my musical scope.'
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