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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.
List of 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
About the author
Randy Weston
Summary
African Rhythms is the autobiography of the important jazz pianist, composer and band leader Randy Weston. He tells of his childhood in Brooklyn, his six decades long musical career, his time living in Morocco, and his lifelong quest to learn about the musical and cultural traditions of Africa.
