African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston (Refiguring American Music) - Hardcover

Weston, Randy; Jenkins, Willard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822347849 ISBN 13: 9780822347842

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2010

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Randy Weston is an internationally renowned pianist, composer, and bandleader living in Brooklyn, New York. He has made more than forty albums and performed throughout the world. Weston has been inducted into the ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame, designated a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, and named Jazz Composer of the Year three times by DownBeat magazine. He is the recipient of many other honors and awards, including France’s Order of Arts and Letters, the Black Star Award from the Arts Critics and Reviewers Association of Ghana, and a five-night tribute at the Montreal Jazz Festival.

Willard Jenkins is an independent arts consultant, producer, educator, and print and broadcast journalist. His writing has been featured in JazzTimes, DownBeat, Jazz Report, Jazz Forum, All About Jazz, Jazzwise, and many other publications. He contributed two chapters to Ain’t Nothing like the Real Thing: How the Apollo Theater Shaped American Entertainment.

From the Back Cover

""African Rhythms" is unlike anything I've ever read. Randy Weston--pianist, composer, bandleader, activist, ambassador, visionary, griot--takes the reader on a most spectacular spiritual journey from Brooklyn to Africa, around the world and back again. He tells a story of this great music that has never been told in print: tracing its African roots and branches, acknowledging the ancestors who helped bring him to the music and draw the music from his soul, singing praise songs for those artistic and intellectual giants whose paths he crossed, from Langston Hughes to Melba Liston, Dizzy to Monk, Marshall Stearns to Cheikh Anta Diop. And in the process, Mr. Weston bares his soul, revealing a man overflowing with ancient wisdom, humility, respect for history, and a capacity for creating some of the most astoundingly beautiful music the modern world has ever experienced."--Robin D. G. Kelley, author of "Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original "

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

AFRICAN RHYTHMS

The Autobiography of Randy WestonBy Randy Weston Willard Jenkins

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2010 Randy Weston and Willard Jenkins
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-4784-2

Contents

Arranger's Preface............................................................xiAcknowledgments...............................................................xixIntroduction..................................................................11 : Origins...................................................................52 : Growing Up in Brooklyn....................................................183 : The Scene Shifts to the Pacific...........................................284 : Postwar: Escaping the Panic...............................................375 : Post-Berkshires: Succumbing to the Irresistible Lure......................556 : Enter Melba Liston........................................................707 : Uhuru Afrika: Freedom Africa..............................................828 : Making the Pilgrimage.....................................................1029 : Touring the Motherland....................................................11410 : Making a Home in Africa..................................................13511 : Connecting with the Gnawa................................................17112 : Building a Life in Tangier: The African Rhythms Club.....................18313 : Festival Blues, Then Divine Intervention: Blue Moses.....................19414 : Post-Morocco and the Ellington Connection................................20615 : Compositions and Sessions................................................21816 : The African Rhythms Quintet..............................................23317 : The African Queen........................................................25018 : The Adventures of Randy Weston...........................................26019 : Ancient Future...........................................................276Conclusion: Randy Weston ... Philosophically Yours............................297Discography...................................................................303Awards and Citations..........................................................321Index.........................................................................323

Chapter One

ORIGINS

My dad, Frank Edward Weston, came from a Jamaican family that was descended from the Maroons, a fierce and legendary people who never surrendered to the English during colonization. The Maroons were ferocious fighters-they escaped captivity and preferred freedom in the Blue Mountains over bondage-and that spirit was deep in my dad's blood, but he was actually born and grew up in Panama. My paternal grandmother, who I never knew, had a bakery near the Panama Canal. My dad and his cousin Frisco, the famous entertainer and bon vivant Frisco of Europe who I'll get to later, grew up together as kids. They used to take the train across the canal all the time. According to dad, Frisco was forever the clown, always the actor, the singer, and the dancer ... obviously a budding showman, even as a child. On this train Frisco would dance and perform for the passengers' amusement, and my father and another young guy would come behind him and collect the money. My dad was a true West Indian man through and through: he had a potent combination of Panama and Jamaica, Spanish and Caribbean.

Dad and Frisco left Panama as teenagers and my father spent the next seven years living in Cuba. Then he came up to Brooklyn, where he eventually met my mother, Vivian Moore, a wise but unassuming woman who was from Meredithville, Virginia. They got together, eventually got married, and they produced me. I was born April 6, 1926, at Peck Memorial Hospital in Brooklyn. My dad used to claim I was just about the first black baby born in that hospital. Remember, segregation was real deep back then. My mother and father separated when I was just three years old, and I went to live with my dad, though my mother and I remained close and were often together. Eventually my dad remarried two more times, but my mother never did. You would think my parents separating would have been a traumatic experience for such a young kid, but to tell you the truth it really wasn't. In retrospect their separation and eventual divorce was probably a good thing. Because my dad was such a powerhouse, such a thoroughly domineering man; he was a real strong, totally macho Caribbean brother. On the other hand, my mother was this quiet, demure southern sister from Virginia: a very peaceful, spiritual lady who never once asked me for anything in my entire life. Whatever I wanted to do she supported me 100 percent. I don't want to suggest that my father was physically abusive toward mom, but he was a powerful and all-consuming presence. Luckily my mother and father always loved each other in such a way that they never said a disparaging word about each other, at least not around me. That was a relief because they had such thoroughly different personalities.

My mother was a very small woman who was very tender, but at the same time she was quite strong and independent in her own sweet way. She was a domestic worker. When I wrote "African Lady" for my 1960 suite Uhuru Afrika she was my inspiration, she and all those strong sisters like her who had to toil and scrub folks' floors to make that measly $15 a week, and they would never complain, never beg; such dignity I can't even begin to describe. Mom was always kinda laid back, but she had a great sense of humor. She and my older sister Gladys always had me cracking up. I found out later, from my sister, that mom used to go dancing at the Savoy Ballroom when she was young, but that part of my mother I never knew, she never talked about that.

My dad was about 6'2?, which in those days was really tall. I guess my eventual 6'7? would have been circus material back then! He was a clean-shaven, handsome, dignified man, always dressed sharply and sort of a ladies' man. My dad raised me from the time I was three years old, and my sister Gladys lived with my mother. I would go and stay with mom and Gladys every weekend, at my father's insistence. My dad and I lived at several locations in Brooklyn, mainly in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area. Our first place was on Albany Avenue, where my mother, father, and sister were living when I was born. Then we moved to Pacific Avenue, and then after that we moved over to Putnam Avenue. My mother, who always lived in Brooklyn too after they split, lived on Decatur Street, on Eastern Parkway near Prospect Place for a while, and her last home was on Empire Avenue. Every weekend I'd be with my mother and my sister, and they'd have me in church every Sunday; that was the law. That church experience proved very important to my music later in life.

My dad loved to cook, and I think one of the reasons I'm so big is because he was such a wonderful cook. Between my dad's African-Caribbean style cooking and my mother's down-home Virginia cooking, I was blessed with great food. Man, we were economically poor but we never felt that, we lived like kings and queens. My dad always had his women, a variety of different ladies, but no matter what woman he was seeing or married to, the first thing he insisted upon is that they had better take good care of his only son. He spoiled me like you would not believe; spoiled me with love, not with material things, so I wasn't corrupted in that way. I never had a whole lot of clothes; I would get one new suit a year, at Easter, that was it ... and I'd better keep that suit looking good for the rest of the year. If I ever got a hole in my sneakers, I'd put paper in those sneakers to cover that hole 'till it was time to get a new pair, and that might not be for a while. We once, thank goodness only temporarily, lived in an apartment with no steam heat and no hot water; we'd have to heat the water on the stove. And remember, I'm not talking about Mississippi or Georgia; I'm talking about wintertime up north in Brooklyn, New York!

But we were so culturally rich and had so much love, so much discipline ... Like all kids we didn't appreciate it at the time, but getting older we sure recognized the beauty of all that love and discipline. My dad was a very political guy, always reading the newspaper and various books, always quick to share his opinions on things. There was a spiritual side of him that he never talked about, but you could sure sense it. People from the Caribbean islands have this deep connection to Africa and sometimes they tell their children who grew up in the U.S. about that, but they don't always tell you everything. My dad was like that. As a result there was a mystery and magic about this man, to the point that during the time he was dying in the hospital from cancer, at age eighty-seven, I went to see him and he told me something deep; this was after I had traveled a bit as a musician. He said, "You go all around the world talking about freedom." I said, "Yes, sir, that comes from you and your teachings." He said, "Well, since you talk about freedom so much, I want my freedom, get me the hell outta this hospital!" I laughed, but he also told me something else; he said, "You are protected." I never really probed him for what he meant by that, but when I look at my life, I have been protected, by some spirit; by some ancestor that has guided me to the right people, to the right places. I've fallen down and been able to right myself, so obviously what he meant by protection was a combination of these things.

Dad always preached about being independent, he always emphasized how black people should strive to own their own businesses, work for themselves, be independent of the white man. That's why he appreciated Marcus Garvey's black empowerment movement so much, because that's what Dad stood for. Dad was a very proud man. Like I said, he was always very sharply dressed and cut an impressive figure. He used to drive his Cadillac wearing beaver hats and spats. Guys were sharp in his day; they knew how to dress, not like so many guys today. But when he'd get in that car, you'd better beware. Dad loved to drive fast; he'd jam his foot on the gas and bam, he was gone. One day while driving in his Cadillac he actually hit this white pedestrian crossing the street, and as he described the scene to me later, this guy flew way up in the air on impact. They had to call an ambulance and take this poor guy to the hospital, he was messed up. So my father ran home, went into the kitchen, and made a big pot of soup, then he went down to the hospital and took this guy some homemade soup. Nowadays he'd be sued for everything he owned. What are you gonna do with a man like that?

He loved to cook and he loved children. Every child in that community was his child. If he saw a kid getting out of line, he'd grab them in a minute and say, "Straighten up" ... and the kids all listened. And every kid in the neighborhood was like his kid. He didn't care whether you were black, Italian, or Irish, if he saw you doing something wrong he would grab you in a minute and straighten you out. He was very straight ahead, the kind of person who would speak whatever was on his mind; whatever he was thinking he'd tell you to your face. That's the way we grew up. He was all those things. But in essence he gave me Africa; he gave me music ... so he gave me everything.

My mother was kinda small in stature, with short, dark hair; I remember she had unusually long arms. She was one of those very quiet, unassuming, modest, Sunday go-to-meetin' kinda sisters; just a gentle southern sister from Virginia. After mom and dad broke up, during the week I would stay with my father, but I had to go stay with my mother and sister every weekend, my father would make sure of that. After mom and dad separated I never saw her with another man the rest of her life. I didn't really appreciate how great she was until after she died. She was a church lady through and through; worked hard every day, but she was very independent and very sweet-natured. She wasn't nearly the disciplinarian my father was, so I always looked forward to staying with her those weekends, that was freedom.

My sister Gladys was wonderful. During school days she was my bodyguard. She's five years older than me, and in those days we had some pretty tough people out there in our neighborhood, which was a predominantly black neighborhood of African Americans and African Caribbean people, with a few folks straight from the African continent. My sister protected me, she would whip somebody's butt in a minute; you better not mess with her little brother. Sometimes I'd get in trouble and I'd call her. I'd tell people, "You mess with me, I'll get my sister on you," and the cats would back off. My sister used to tell me how our mother would discipline her, but I never really saw that side of mom. That's when I realized how strong my mother was.

My mother may have been a staunch church lady, but my dad never went to church because he didn't trust certain ministers. He felt like all they were doing was jiving, conning, and ripping off black people. He thought some of them were nothing but fried-chicken-eating frauds that saved the best for themselves and threw the bones to their congregation. Unfortunately this was true sometimes. But my mother was always devoted to the church, she gave me that wonderful spirituality, and despite his personal objections to those ministers, my dad saw the value in it and really wanted me to go to church, so there was no conflict there. My mother worked every day, doing domestic work, taking care of folk's children, washing, cleaning, that kinda thing. She was a real queen in every sense of the word, never complained for a moment.

I got a lot of my spirituality from dad as well. Though he had no use for those ministers and didn't go to church, he would always read the bible and quote the scriptures. My dad came up in that period in time when black people were really active in the struggle for freedom and independence, so he was very aggressive in making sure I had pride in my people. He made sure I knew about Paul Robeson, all the great black artists, and that I knew who our illustrious leaders were; he always made real sure of that. Dad was always in tune with the news and the sports pages.

As a kid I was very shy despite my size; in many ways I was insecure because my dad was such a powerhouse, so fast, so formidable, and he wanted me to be likewise. But it just wasn't in me. I was very nervous growing up because Dad was such a strong presence. He was forever trying to challenge and quiz me on various things. He'd say, "How much is 145 times 10?," or he would put a clock in front of me when I was ten years old or so and if I didn't have the right answer as quickly as he wanted it, he would whoop me. I got a whole lotta whippings, so I grew up very, very insecure because I wasn't fast or a quick learner like he was. My father was a very physical man; he'd kick my butt, either with his hands or it could be a belt, a club, could be anything. At the time that was just how it was, very typical of how kids were raised in my neighborhood. That's particularly how those Caribbean people were, they didn't spare the rod. I may have felt abused and nowadays they'd probably call it that, but at the time they didn't call it abuse, they just thought of it as proper parenting. One time he whooped me so bad I got dramatic and stuck my head outta the window screaming for the police, the fire department, my buddies, the neighbors ... just about ANYBODY who might help me. "Somebody, please, come rescue me!" But everybody's parents did it. So we didn't call it abuse back then: that was just the way it was. All the guys I grew up with were later very grateful for that kind of upbringing, because the streets were really tough in those days and it was so easy for us kids to get outta line. But despite that rather harsh discipline, at the same time he gave me love, so it was kind of paradoxical.

We really didn't have much in the way of material goods growing up. I used to tell my own children, "we grew up with no TV; no hot water ... that kinda lack didn't just happen in the South." No matter what our financial situation was, my daddy could take the smallest, most insignificant piece of meat and make a delicious feast out of it. So I really didn't care if I didn't have a lot of things, we made do with what little we had, it was all we knew. We had so much love in our family that we didn't really care about material things.

Our neighborhood-Bedford-Stuyvesant, or Bed-Stuy as it's known-was a really vibrant community at the time, with a wonderful mix of black people from the South, from the Caribbean, and even a few from Africa. There were many Jewish-owned stores in the area, and there were a few Italians and Irish in the neighborhood. You had the black folks in one area, the Irish in another, the Italians in their area, the Germans in their space, and the Jews had their own separate blocks. Sometimes when we'd come in too close contact with each other in school there would be fights between ethnic groups. We had our gangs in the community, though not as violent as gang life today, and these ethnic gangs would control certain territory. If you stumbled into the wrong territory you might get your butt kicked, or at the very least be run outta there unless you knew somebody. But one thing we all pretty much had in common, at least among black folks, was music; and back then there was lots of opportunity to learn music in school. Plus there was music coming out of every window and musicians living all over the neighborhood. There were several ballrooms in the area, including the Sonia Ballroom, and there would be big-band rehearsals there at 11:00 a.m. or 12:00 noon. There were also lots of blues groups playing at various bars in Brooklyn, which at that time in the '30s and '40s had way more bars and clubs than Manhattan.

By the time I got to high school I was only beginning to immerse myself in all this music. My interests were mainly like any normal kid at that age, playing ball, going to the movies, that kind of thing. We'd go to school and study during the week, and if we stayed out of trouble our parents would allow us to go to the movies every Saturday; for about 25 cents we would stay all afternoon. At first I would always have to go to the movies with my sister Gladys, because I was too young to go by myself. When I went to the movies with Gladys she would bring a pot of greens and a fork with her. When we got inside the theater, I'd split from her and go sit with my boys. She'd sit there by herself and eat those aromatic greens with that fork, but nobody better not say nothin' to her.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822347849
• ISBN 13: 9780822347842
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352