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The pianist, composer, and bandleader Randy Weston is one of the world's most influential jazz musicians and a remarkable storyteller whose career has spanned five continents and more than six decades. Packed with fascinating anecdotes, African Rhythms is Weston's life story, as told by him to the music journalist Willard Jenkins. It encompasses Weston's childhood in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood-where his parents and other members of their generation imbued him with pride in his African heritage-and his introduction to jazz and early years as a musician in the artistic ferment of mid-twentieth-century New York. His music has taken him around the world: he has performed in eighteen African countries, in Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, in the Canterbury Cathedral, and at the grand opening of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina: The New Library of Alexandria.
Africa is at the core of Weston's music and spirituality. He has traversed the continent on a continuous quest to learn about its musical traditions, produced its first major jazz festival, and lived for years in Morocco, where he opened a popular jazz club, the African Rhythms Club, in Tangier. Weston's narrative is replete with tales of the people he has met and befriended, and with whom he has worked. He describes his unique partnerships with Langston Hughes, the musician and arranger Melba Liston, and the jazz scholar Marshall Stearns, as well as his friendships and collaborations with Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk, Billy Strayhorn, Max Roach, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, the novelist Paul Bowles, the Cuban percussionist Candido Camero, the Ghanaian jazz artist Kofi Ghanaba, the Gnawa musicians of Morocco, and many others. With African Rhythms, an international jazz virtuoso continues to create cultural history.
Contents
Arranger's Preface / Willard Jenkins xi Acknowledgments xix Introduction 1 1. Origins 5 2. Growing Up in Brooklyn 18 3. The Scene Shifts to the Pacific 28 4. Postwar: Escaping the Panic 37 5. Post-Berkshires: Succumbing to the Irresistible Lure 55 6. Enter Melba Liston 70 7. Uhuru Afrika: Freedom Africa 82 8. Making the Pilgrimage 102 9. Touring the Motherland 114 10. Making a Home in Africa 135 11. Connecting with the Gnawa 171 12. Building a Life in Tangier: The African Rhythm Club 183 13. Festival Blues, Then Divine Intervention: Blue Moses 194 14. Post Morroco and the Ellington Connection 206 15. Compositions and Sessions 220 16. The African Rhythms Quintet 235 17. The African Queen 252 18. The Adventures of Randy Weston 262 19. Ancient Future 278 Conclusion: Randy Weston ... Philosophically Yours 299 Discography 305 Awards and Citations 323 Index 325
