sathima bea benjamin

Join UCLA historian Robin D. G. Kelley and me, KCRW DJ Tom Schnabel for a conversation and listening session that revisits the late 1950s and early 1960s, when African musicians began to swing and American Jazz artists turned to Africa in an attempt to nudge the art form beyond bebop. Kelley and Schnabel discuss the struggles faced by four little-known trailblazers who dared to mix African influences and jazz: the late Ghanaian drummer Guy Warren; American pianist Randy Weston; the late American bassist and oud player Ahmed Abdul-Malik; and South African vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin. After the talk, Kelley will sign copies of his new book Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times.

This was a fascinating read for me and I learned a lot from it. Among other things, I became re-acquainted with South African Singer Sathima Bea Benjamin, and discovered her gem-like 1963 session with 3 giants called A Morning in Paris: Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, and Abdullah Ibrahim, the South African pianist formerly known as Dollar Brand, whom Duke Ellington brought into the world’s limelight after hearing him in a Zurich club in 1966.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Original Website: Rhythm Planet

Tom Harrell Number Five High Note

Tom Harrell is a veteran jazz trumpeter with many albums to his credit. His latest shows him at his best. It features top performers like saxophonist Wayne Escoffery, pianist Danny Grissett, and drummer Johnathan Blake. It is jazz at its finest.

Aha! Quintet Freespace Jazz Compass

Another fine new jazz cd, very straight ahead and accessible, featuring a fine pianist from the midwest, Steve Allee, along with Bob Sheppard playing reeds and flute. Another LA-based musician, Steve Houghton, plays drums.

Heiner Goebbels Stifters Dinge ECM

If you want something deconstructed and far out, this is the album for you. Veteran German avant-gardist Goebbels has put together a musical concoction featuring five mechanical pianos, water, wind, fog, rain metal, stones, ice, and texts from Claude Levi-Strauss, and Malcolm X. It’s more of a soundscape than music, very dada and wild.

Redisoveries:

Jaki Byard “Two Different Worlds” from his 1964 album Out Front! Prestige

This is one of the most beautiful and beguiling ballads I’ve ever heard.

Sathima Bea Benjamin A Morning in Paris Ekapa

I’ve known about this South African jazz singer for a long time, but I never heard this early album from 1963 until very recently, as I was preparing to moderate a panel with UCLA professor Robin D.G. Kelley, author of the recent study Africa Speaks, America Answers. This will take place at UCLA’s wonderful Fowler Museum on Thursday, August 9th. Kelley profiled Sathima in his new stufy. Benjamin, wife of pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand), made this album very early in her career, and she has a clear, pure, and utterly innocent vocal style and delivery. I’m reminded of early Abbey Lincoln’s early work for Riverside Records. With no less than Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, and Dollar Brand on piano. I was smitten.