BLP 4097

Art Blakey - The African Beat

Released - October 1962

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, January 24, 1962
Yusef Lateef, oboe, tenor sax, flute, cowbell, thumb piano; Ahmed Abdul-Malik, bass; Art Blakey, drums, timpani, gong, telegraph drums; Montego Joe, Bambara drums, double gong, corboro drums, log drums; James Ola Folami, congas; Chief Bay, congas, telegraph drums, double gong; Curtis Fuller, timpani; Robert Crowder, bata drum, congas; Garvin Masseaux, chekere, African maracas, congas; Solomon Ilori, vocals, penny whistle, talking drum.

tk.1 Prayer By Solomon G. Ilori
tk.2/4 Ife L'Ayo (There Is Happiness In Love)
tk.10 Ero Ti Nr'ojeje
tk.16 The Mystery Of Love
tk.17 Ayiko Ayiko (Welcome, Welcome My Darling)
tk.25 Obirin African (Woman Of Africa)
tk.26 Tobi Ilu

Session Photos

Photos: © Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images 
https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Prayer by Solomon G. Ilori	Solomon Ilori	24 January 1962
Ife L'ayo (There Is Happiness in Love)	Solomon Ilori	24 January 1962
Obirin African (Woman of Africa)	Garvin Masseaux	24 January 1962
Love, The Mystery of	Guy Warren	24 January 1962
Side Two
Ero Ti Nr'Ojeje	Solomon Ilori	24 January 1962
Ayiko, Ayiko (Welcome, Welcome, My Darling)	Solomon Ilori	24 January 1962
Tobi Ilu	James H. Bey	24 January 1962

Liner Notes

ART BLAKEY is a man of many bristling passions. Three of the most durable and consuming of his concerns are: jazz, African rhythms, and the limitless potential of the drum. All kinds of drums. In this unique album, Art has fused these three complementary enthusiasms into a musical experience which he considers more satisfying than any other percussion album he has ever made.

For one thing,” Art explains, ”this is the first time I've been able to use so many African drummers along with American jazzmen. Secondly, unlike most gatherings of drummers, this is really an ensemble, not a cutting contest. The music come first, not egos. Third, I’m convinced that these performances show that it is possible to blend African and American rhythms without strain or self-consciousness. One test was that these are spontaneous performances, and as you’ll hear, everybody on the session fell easily into even the most complex patterns.

"Another reason for this meeting of the two continents,” Blakey continued, ”was to show how wide a range of emotions it is possible to draw from the drums. It is in this area that African drummers are so capable. They get inside the instrument and inside themselves so that they do much more than create rhythms. In America, the drum was considered a bastard instrument for much too long a time. Jazz has helped to indicate how expressive drums can be, and now this combination of jazz and African practices makes especially clear that the drum can be an instrument of unusual beauty.”

In choosing the members of his Afro-Drum Ensemble, Blakey assembled a provocatively heterogeneous unit - Solomon G. Ilori and James Ola. Folami (Nigeria); Chief Bey (Senegal); Montego Joe (Jamaica); and Ahmed Abdul-Malik, whose father came from the Sudan and who is an expert in North African and Middle Eastern music. The American contingent includes Garvin Masseaux, Robert Crowder, Curtis Fuller (in an unaccustomed role as tympanist), and Yusef Lateef, the preteen instrumentalist. At the whirling center of the ensemble is Art Blakey.

“Blakey,” says Solomon Ilori, ”was able to make this fusion succeed, because that fusion already exists in him. He has listened by now to a great many African recordings and has also heard as many African drummers as he could in live performance. The basic period of absorption is over for him. These African rhythms are now inside him. And in this album, he has shown new ways in which African and American musicians can enrich each other.“

The Opening prayer is spoken by Solomon G. Ilori. “The prayer,” says Ilori, ”is a traditional Nigerian one. It is our custom to pray before most activities."

llori composed lfe L’Ayo (There Is Happiness in Love) on which he also plays pennywhistle. (The flutist in the duet with Ilori is Yusef Lateef.) The rhythm patterns are based on Nigerian folk practices. The melody is infectiously light-hearted and there is bracing contrast between the airy pennywhistle and the crackling, sometimes explosive, drums. The scraper which punctuates this track and is heard elsewhere in the album is played by Yusef Lateef on a cow horn.

Obirin African can be translated Woman of Africa. The composer, Garvin Masseaux, has been studying the Yoruba culture of West Africa, and the song has a Nigerian flavor. The sinuous, multi-colored flute solo is by Yusef Lateef.

Guy Warren, who wrote Love, The Mystery of, is from Ghana and performed in America during the late 1950’s. He wrote this song for a show he produced at the African Room in New York. It accompanied a dance which portrayed, says Warren, "a youth and a maid brought together for the first time by that mysterious force of love.” Yusef Lateef is heard on oboe, and the vocals are principally by Ilori, Folami, Masseaux, and Chief Bey.

Solomon Ilori contributed Ero Ti Nr’Oieie. It is based on a folk song which is traditionally sung ”when people tell tales in the night.” This particular story is about a young boy whose mother has left him. His stepmother soon begins to treat him badly. Hurt and bewildered, the boy begins to sing this tune as a message to his mother. Ilori is the lead singer, and the flutist is Yusef Lateef. The opening theme, tender and yearning, is played by Lateef with exceptional sensitivity. The rest of the performance is invigorating proof of Blakey‘s conviction that the African and American rhythmic languages can be stimulatingly combined without the character of either being blurred.

Ilori’s Ayiko Ayiko (Welcome, Welcome, My Darling) is a song from Ghana and is an ebullient example of the “high life” dance music which is so merrily pervasive in that country and elsewhere in West Africa. The rollicking tenor saxophone solo is by Yusef Lateef.

According to Montego Joe, the final Tobi Ilu by Chief Bey is based on the ceremonial Igbin rhythms of Nigeria. The thumb piano is played by the ubiquitous Yusef Lateef, who can also be heard on the scraper. The piece surges ahead through a series of whirlpoolish, polyrhythmic climaxes, and is an aptly exhilarating conclusion to a remarkable ensemble performance that presages more Blakey explorations in this area.

"I cannot emphasize too much,” says Solomon Ilori, ”how sincere Blakey is about bridging our cultures, and accordingly, I can understand why this album is so important to him in the body of his work. Certainly African rhythms in general are more complex than the usual jazz pulsation up to now, but as we have demonstrated here, there is a basic bond between the two‘ approaches, and this mixture of rhythms can become an exceptionally challenging base over which jazz musicians can improvise.“

"Now I know,” says Art Blakey, "that I'm going to have to add African drummers to my regular band. In this way, there is so much more that the drums can say. This album is, I’m sure, an important step forward toward making American jazz rhythms more pliable and more resourceful. And above all, toward making it possible for all of us to get more of our emotions into our music.”

- NAT HENTOFF

ARTISTS ON COVER

1st row: Art Blakey, James Olo, Folami
2nd row: Ahmed Abdul-Malik, Chief Bey, Robert Crowder, Solomon Ilori
3rd row: Montego Joe, Garvin Masseaux

Cover Photos by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

CURTIS FULLER PERFORMS BY COURTESY OF ANFAR RECORDS