RANDY WESTON / Ancient Future
Randy Weston (piano)
"In African music," Randy Weston observed in a 1998 interview, "there aren't the categories of the past, the present and the future. Music is a timeless thing." He proves it every time he touches a piano or puts pencil to composition paper. Weston descends from a long line of seers who build on what the ancestors left us to create music of startling originality-music of the future. This is why Ancient Future (a title lovingly borrowed from Dr. Wayne Chandler's new book Ancient Future: The Teachings and Prophetic Wisdom of the Seven Hermetic Laws of Ancient Egypt) so perfectly defines Weston's approach to music and life. Like Dr. Chandler's book, Weston's music reveals the wisdom of the ancient world, where art, science, and spirituality were one, where music was not entertainment-for-sale but a life-force at the core of civilization itself. Weston demolishes distinctions between traditional and modern, composition and improvisation, enveloping us with what really counts: the music's spiritual essence. And what better way to capture the spiritual dimensions of this great music than Weston, in his solitude, singing, praying, meditating, shouting, through the medium of Bosendorfer piano which he transforms into a giant talking drum or a 97-stringed kora?
"Ancient Future" is a meditation on music's origins. "I thought about Osiris," Weston recalled, "when he was assigned to teach man about civilization and he used music to do it." Spare, contemplative, "Ancient Future" is evocative of William Grant Still's "Africa (A Poem for Orchestra in Three Movements)" (1928).
"Roots of the Nile" and "Kom Ombo" were inspired by Weston's recent travels to Southern Egypt, where the Nubians created a powerful civilization that shaped much of Africa and the Western world. "Roots" is a spiritual; each delicate line drifts over a rubato cadence with such sheer melodic beauty it's as if every note were scored. "Kom Ombo," named after a Nubian temple, paints a vivid image in 6/4 time: Weston's left-hand is a rumbling, majestic drum chorus while his right hand is a spirited circle of dancers.
"Bambara," known to many of us as the introduction to Weston's composition "Blue Moses," is a musical history of the roots of the Gnawa-descendants of slaves brought to Morocco by way of the Saharan trade. One of the great city-states of the Mali Empire, Bambara was remembered as an ancestral homeland for the Gnawa and a source of their rich sacred music.
"Portrait of Oum Keltoum" and "Isis" are beautiful meditations written for great Egyptian women. When Weston first heard Keltoum sing in Morocco in 1969, he was reminded of Mahalia Jackson. "Isis" might be described as a prayer to this great goddess of fertility; in little over two minutes, Weston distills thousands of years of history into an elegant, soulful praise song.
Everything Weston plays is a praise song to the ancestors, especially his musical predecessors. He has absorbed the spirits of all the great "ticklers"-Duke, Art Tatum, Earl Hines, Nat Cole, Monk, all of them. "Ballad for T" celebrates Monk-not just his music but his whole personality.
Weston never tries to play like Monk, but Monk's musical spirit resounds in practically every note. He opens by paraphrasing the first bar of Monk's virtually forgotten song, "Sixteen," and proceeds to create an intimate portrait of a great artist who embodies the passion and humor of his music.
Likewise, listen to "Blues for CB" and you'll feel how Count Basie swung his piano and the whole band. Ellington is everywhere, in Weston's extremely funky two-fisted, foot-stomping interpretation of "It Don't Mean a Thing," Part I reminds us of Duke's roots in the blues, evoking his piano style with those rolling fifths in the bass, while Part II pays tribute to Jimmy Blanton on the left hand, and the orchestra's tremendous horn section on the right. Here Weston makes more music in less than a minute and a half than many cats make in an hour. In between "Double Duke" Weston plays a warm, poetic rendition of Benny Golson's "Out of the Past," a fitting homage to a composer who deserves a lot more attention.
"Sketch of Melba" was written for Weston's long-time collaborator Melba Liston-master arranger, composer, and trombonist. The beautiful musical relationship they established compares with that of Ellington and Strayhorn. The lush voicings Liston brought to Weston's magnificent melodies are captured so tenderly in "Sketch for Melba"; it deserves a place alongside the great ballads: Strayhorn's "Lush Life," Thad Jones's "A Child is Born," Monk's "Crepuscule with Nellie," and Johnny Green's "Body and Soul."
Speaking of "Body and Soul," Weston's virtuoso performance of that classic song deserves an entire essay. Delivering a fresh, innovative take on one of the most recorded songs in history is not an easy task. Louis Armstrong, Chu Berry, Roy Eldridge, Jimmy Blanton and Ellington, Charlie Parker, Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Nat Cole, Monk, and of course the incomparable Coleman Hawkins, each recorded "Body and Soul" and changed the music forever. Weston took the challenge and gave us a rendering that will be studied for years to come. Like Hawkins's legendary 1939 recording, Weston never fully states the melody but you hear it throughout. Following an absolutely stunning rubato introduction, each whispering phrase builds perfectly on the previous phrase, eventually slipping into a lovely waltz-a meter Weston has mastered. He plays with such spiritual conviction that he succeeds in turning a torch song into a church song. And he is humbled by the implications: "dig the title of that song: 'Body and Soul.' Deep." "PCN" (which stands for Panama, Cuba, Nigeria) is not the last cut on the CD but for me it completes the circle, the Ancient and the Future. It represents the global movements of African rhythms, the birth place of his father Frank Weston (Panama), the land where Randy first felt African soil (Nigeria), the lands tied together by Yoruba culture (Cuba-Nigeria), the lands where African Rhythms meet and mingle. Listen to Chano Pozo and James P. Johnson do the ring shout in the left hand, or Dizzy's high life notes in the right hand. Listen to both hands and you'll hear the fertile imagination of Randy Weston, brilliant pianist, composer, teacher, and medium for the ancestors. . . our ear to the past, our voice for the future. - Robin D. G. Kelley
TRACK LIST
CD 1: ANCIENT FUTURE
Ancient Future (2:12)
Roots of the Nile (5:34)
Kom Ombo (4:31)
Bambara (4:49)
Portrait of Oum Keltoum (4:34)
Ballad for T (5:17)
Isis (2:20)
Blues for CB (3:11)
PCN (4:36)
It Don't Mean a Thing (2:24)
Body and Soul (4:40)
Double Duke Pt. 1 (3:01)
Out of the Past (3:10)
Double Duke Pt. 2 (3:10)
Come Sunday (2:36
Sketch of Melba (4:16)
CD 2: BLUE
Penny Packer Blues (7:24)
Earth Birth (4:34)
The Last Day (4:46)
Lagos (5:15)
Blue in Tunisia (7:05)
Mystery of Love (5:09)
Ellington Tusk (7:36)
REVIEWS
Ancient future, yes, and not-so-distant blue past. Randy Weston's mastery and inventiveness as a piano soloist is beautifully celebrated on this two-cd package, combining a 1983 recording originally issued on 1750 Arch Records with a new, previously unreleased session recorded 17 years later. No decisive breaks or radical new directions are charted during that span. Instead, the set's two parts basically feel cut from te same cloth, maybe like they're bookends on this period in Weston's creative life. It's as if the recent recording is addressed to the older one-an answer for the unanswered questions of the first LP, slightly more solemn in tone, but just as plump with ideas.
Indeed, along with solemnity, the other aspect that's markedly different is the rhythmic variety, which is more pronounced on Blue. "Earth Birth," for instance, has snatches of stride that rarely appear on Ancient Future, where such flashes of sunlight often seem obscured by shadows. Weston is, of course, one of the great pan-Africanists, a synthesizer of many of the continent's diverse musical traditions and a scholar of diasporic afro-musical dispersion as well. Even when his solo music grows contemplative, it never loses its sense of inherent tension, internal drama and communicative strength. And importantly the pedal never drowns the digits-Weston's always had one of the most palpable touches in jazz. These aspects of his approach seem to relate, as much as any specific melodic or rhythmic material, to his immersion in African culture. If Weston's music is African in character, it's because of a sensibility, a saturation with African musical values, not simply because it simply sounds African (which, it must be acknowledged, it sometimes certainly does).
This package illustrates this point well. A piece like Guy Warren's "Mystery of Love," with its suggestive left-hand ostinato and right-hand fantasia, carries some of the solo balaphon tradition into the music. Weston plays restive high lines against a rumbling low drone on "Blue in Tunisia" before recapping an aching theme that defers its return to the tonic the way an Arabic melsimatic singer might. "Portrait of Oum Keltoum," the best-known such singer, on the other hand, is earthy and rather sad, not particularly Arabic at all. Needn't be; good dedications don't have to be caricatures. Across the two discs one finds classic Ellington elements-the terseness, the matter-of-fact voicings that often include unpianistically high notes as part of block chords, a sprightly take on "It Don't Mean A Thing," a two-part dedication, and naturally some Monk, dealt with most openly on the tribute "Ballad for T." The dedication "Sketch of Melba," written for Weston's frequent musical partner, trombonist ad arranger Melba Liston, is the new session's compositional revelation, a glorious ballad that would sound great worked over by a thougtful tenor saxophonist; a new standard in the making. But there are lots of heavy tunes here, played with the immense intelligence and character of one of our most important living musicians.
Dan Warburton, Signal to Noise
If the reissue of Blue - originally recorded on Tom Buckner's 1750 Arch label in 1983 when pianist Randy Weston was already nearly 57 years old - is cause for celebration, the accompanying Ancient Future, dating from just two years ago, is even more so: it's not that Randy Weston has been "unjustly neglected", but, like Ahmad Jamal, he's an elegant stylist rather than an iconoclast, and they don't grab as many headlines these days. Though already well versed in fats Waller, Basie and Ellington before his stint in the US Army. It was Monk who crystallized Weston's playing into shape at the end of the 1940s. After a handful of fine albums at the end of the 1950s, he traveled to Africa in 16 as part of a delegation including Langston Hughes, Lionel Hampton and Nina Simone, and eventually settled there in the mid 1960s (he ran a club called African Rhythms in Tangier, Morocco, right across the street from the legendary Parade Bar). As a result, Weston managed to iss out on the seismic revolutions of free jazz, seeming to be more influenced by the music of his adopted continent - his son Niles even changed his name to Azzedin and took up with the local musicians.
All these elements are on display in Blue, from the solid grounding in stride and swing on "Penny Packer Blues", via the angular turns of line culled from Monk and the tribal rhythmics of "Lagos" to the smoky late night piano bar lyricism of "Blue in Tunisia" and the powerful anthem "Mystery of Love" (which is just crying out for the full Ellington Orchestra). Ancient Future takes advantage of the CD format to include nearly an hour's worth of music, and for once I'm not complaining. The title track, which segues into "Roots of the Nile", is a superbly understated study in chiaroscuro, Jay Newland's June 2001 stunning recording of Weston's Bosendorfer capturing every nuance of the pianist's touch. At times introspective ("Portrait of Oum Keltoum", "Isis"), at times incisive ("Ballad for T"), t all times acutely conscious of of the history of jazz piano (Robin Kelley's right to point out that "Ellington is everywhere", but Basie and Thelonious Monk are too), it's a total triumph. And if you thought there were enough superb readings of "Body and Soul" out there, you'd better think again.
François Couture, All-Music Guide
Thomas Buckner launched the record label Mutable Music in 2000 to release new music by himself and his friends and to reissue the catalog of 1750 Arch Records, his previous label from the 1980s. This 2-CD set by Randy Weston combines the two, attaching the pianist's 1984 solo LP Blue to the brand new session Ancient Future. More than a twofer, the set brings to light the man's evolution, his change of perspective too. Ancient Future was recorded in June 2001. Sound quality is exemplary. Weston's playing remains mostly introspective, shining in ballads like "Ballad for T.," "Roots of the Nile" and "Body and Soul" (yes, the "Body and Soul" but here given a different reading as Weston uses the melody to tie a knot around his fingers). His study of African music has been so fully integrated one hardly notices it per se, while his love for bop seems to resurface. A contemplative album, it can feel too immersed in itself at times. The contrast with the opening stabs of "Penny Packer Blues," the first track on Blue, is stunning. On this number and a couple more, the playing is vivid, even excessive. Dissonances abound, the speed of the fingers occasionally pass Cecil Taylor. The two CDs complete each other well, making a good album from a lesser-known figure of post-bop jazz and a much "straighter" release than usual from Mutable Music.
