Hearken, Hearken to the Reed! – Jalal al-Din Rumi

Poor Herbie Mann doesn’t get much respect from the critics or the cranky old guys who post on the jazz boards. Admittedly, Herbie never seemed to meet a musical fad he didn’t like (disco!), but he did make what I think is a substantial contribution to integrating African and Middle Eastern music into jazz. The first Herbie Mann track I ever listened to was Baghdad/Asia Minor from The Common Ground: The Herbie Mann Afro-Jazz Sextet + Four Trumpets.  That album featured Nabil “Knobby” Totah, a Palestinian, on bass, and my all-time favorite Babatunde Olatunji on African percussion, along with Ray Barretto on bongos and Ray Mantilla on congas.

My favorite, though, is The Wailing Dervishes, a 1967 live date with a coterie of Middle Eastern-derived musicians like oudist Chick Ganimian, dümbek player Moulay “Ali” Hafid, and clarinetist Hacheg T. Kazarian. In addition to featuring the unique Rufus Harley, the premier jazz bagpiper, on one track, it includes an absolutely mesmerizing version of Norwegian Wood. This piece really reaches out in an almost ecstatic, Sufi-like way, trying to fulfill the verse of Rumi on the back of the LP: “Hearken to this reed forlorn/Breathing ever since ‘twas torn/From its rush bed, a strain/Of impassioned love and pain.” Mann, Roy Ayers on vibes, and Reggie Workman on bass all seem to catch the spirit on this one.  I wish we had more recordings like this one and fewer like Push Push, but give Herbie Mann full credit for pushing forward a world music ethos in jazz when it was much more uncommon than it is now.

Here's Norwegian Wood.

Drums of Passion

Once upon a time in a decade far, far away, a big-time record producer named John Hammond heard some African drumming at a concert and -- here's the fairy tale aspect -- without the use of focus groups or checking with the suits, just because he liked the music, he signed the artist to a record contract. The result? Babatunde Olatunji's Drums of Passion, perhaps the first "world music" record released commercially, sold 5 million copies and became one of the most influential recordings of its time. It's been 50 years, but its impact still reverberates today.

When I was growing up in New Jersey, I listened regularly to WINS in New York. It's all-news now, but in those days, it was a key rock and roll station. In the evening, the jock was Murray Kaufman, or "Murray the K", as he liked to call himself.(Later, he dubbed himself "The Fifth Beatle" -- no way). As background music, he sometimes played an African-sounding piece of music that featured a vocalist singing what sounded like "Akiwawa"; this became a catchphrase in my set. When I started listening to Symphony Sid Torin's all-night jazz show on WADO, he played the same piece, identifying the artist as Babatunde Olatunji and the album from which it was taken as Drums of Passion. He also played Odunde (Happy New Year) and Shango, an invocation to the Yoruba god of thunder. I was hooked. I asked my dad to buy me the album and, good dad that he was, he complied, although my parents thought popular music ended when Glenn Miller's plane went down. Looking back, it was a gateway though which I heightened my appreciation of all kinds of music.

I wasn't the only one. Bob Dylan referenced Olatunji on The Freewheling Bob Dylan" and John Coltrane, Freddy Hubbard, and other jazz musicians listened and learned, as did Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead. I believe Baba's music was key to the development not only of Coltrane's music but, through Trane, of the whole corpus of late Sixties and Seventies "spiritual jazz", of which I'll have more to say in future posts. Baba joined Martin Luther King's March on Washington but made his greatest contribution to America and the world by making his music available to listeners everywhere. Drums of Passion is available on CD, so do yourself a favor and pick it up. Odunde!