THU., FEBRUARY 23, 2006
Wadada Leo Smith: Space Man Visits Many Worlds
by Kevin Whitehead
There are a few pigeonhole-resistant artists in modern music, composer-improvisers whose work flows through various fields: jazz, free play and the sort of "new music" filed under classical. Think Anthony Davis, Anthony Braxton, Misha Mengelberg or John Zorn. Or Wadada Leo Smith. Pretty much any attempt to categorize his music will be thwarted by the breadth of that music itself: spare solo trumpeting, jazz reggae grooves, Japanese-culture studies, chamber and orchestra music — and the blues he played as a Mississippi teenager in the '50s, working alongside stepdad Little Bill Wallace.
The standard line is, Smith is a quietist, a believer in the equivalence of sound and silence. In the '60s, he was a key contributor to the Chicago AACM co-op's new-school avant garde, which valued open space and calm as well as New York-style density and high energy. He and Braxton were close duo and trio collaborators then, and that new openness is all over the early work together. (Braxton, years later: "I have never known a time when Leo Smith was not developing something... The man is a genius.")
Sometimes Smith's sound-silence equivalence is literal: a three-beat trumpet phrase might call for three beats of silence, to let the sound sink in. His solo records offer the best examples, starting with 1971's Creative Music: 1: Six Solo Improvisations, a mix of trumpet and non-idiomatic percussion solos. It's been reissued as the first half-dozen tracks on Tzadik's valuable compilation of his self-produced material, Kabell Years 1971-1979. On the horn, he gets a full, rosy tone with plenty of colorful shading — rasps and broken tones that acknowledge his kinship with Don Cherry and Lester Bowie. Smith's unhurried, careful approach is often tagged as lyrical, and with good reason: it's pastoral, almost. The solo Red Sulphur Sky, released in 2001, shows how he's stayed the course. If anything, his sound has gotten more rarefied — more airy.
But then what to make of Yo Miles!, the busy, almost jam-band-y electric Miles revival project he co-leads with guitarist Henry Kaiser? (Say this for it: it made a lot more people aware of Wadada Leo Smith.) Miles was associated with a generous use of space too, but neither he nor Wadada are obliged to be consistent. And it's not like Smith doesn't continue to leave space around his own phrases, no matter how the rest of the crew carries on.
As veteran jazz critic John Litweiler wrote in his book The Freedom Principle, Smith's respect for musical space extends into the realm of personal space. In a 1973 text excerpted on his very informative website, Smith explained that improvisers in a group should pursue independent lines, and not worry about "dependent re-action" — that is, the close listening many observers hear as central to successful improvising. Never mind the close interplay he achieves with his fellow players on a 2003 reunion concert with Braxton (issued as Organic Resonance and Saturn, Conjunct the Grand Canyon in a Sweet Embrace) or in a spontaneous trio with Zorn and drummer Susie Ibarra heard on Zorn's 50th Birthday Celebration, Vol. 8.
There's nothing new in music that superimposes distinct layers of activity; remember Charles Ives's dueling marches. (Smith once said he moved to Connecticut in the '70s to be close to where thinkers like Ives and Thoreau had developed their ideas.) That independent streak has paid off. Listen to the 1974 concert by his classic if little-known group New Dalta [sic] Akhri — with bassist Wes Brown, pianist (and composer) Anthony Davis, and Smith again doubling on percussion — on disc two of the Kabell set. The trio's musical mobiles move in space without colliding or interacting in any obvious way, while still creating music of great and passing beauty. (That description makes it sound a bit new-agey, but Davis's rangy piano will scare off the white-keys crowd.)
I'm no big booster of the laptop as the axe for our time — too much grey hissing — but on the remarkable Luminous Axis, Smith effectively squares off against four California computer jocks (including the very musical Tim Perkis), and plays duets with Ikue Mori, also on electronics. Where, say, Evan Parker or Axel Dörner on their electro-acoustic stuff blur the line between one and the other (albeit in different ways), Smith respects the autonomy of both worlds; his trumpet is a trumpet, singing brass and breath not noise-generator, and it occupies its own musical space. Ditto William Winant's kettle drums in the bass range, helping to inspire a rhythmic hubbub you might trace back through '70s Miles all the way to rainforest drum choirs. But then Smith sees them all as part of an ongoing continuum of black creativity.
Fans of his Miles-y stuff might check out "Al-Madinah" by Smith's Golden Quartet, on 2002's The Year of the Elephant. There, the trumpet pentatonics and funky riffing crop up in the course of organic improvising. The quartet has a more traditional rhythm vibe than New Dalta Akhri, despite the return of Anthony Davis. Drummer Jack DeJohnette and (the late) Art Ensemble of Chicago bassist Malachi Favors Maghostut rounded out that version of the band, which explored open space and rode deep grooves, both. With rhythmagician DeJohnette aboard, why neglect the latter? The reggae-inflected 14-beat bump of "Miles Star"'s last bit finds the rhythm trio locked and loaded.
Smith can get dense on his own, too. His large-ensemble album Lake Biwa shows how much ground he can cover within a single extended composition. (Start with "Africana World" — and you tell me what genre that sprawling epic falls into.) Given his penchant for long-arc pieces, Smith should find favor with eMusic's marathon-track bargain-hunters.
All of which just scratches the surface: some artists just won't be summed up in a column.
The standard line is, Smith is a quietist, a believer in the equivalence of sound and silence. In the '60s, he was a key contributor to the Chicago AACM co-op's new-school avant garde, which valued open space and calm as well as New York-style density and high energy. He and Braxton were close duo and trio collaborators then, and that new openness is all over the early work together. (Braxton, years later: "I have never known a time when Leo Smith was not developing something... The man is a genius.")
Sometimes Smith's sound-silence equivalence is literal: a three-beat trumpet phrase might call for three beats of silence, to let the sound sink in. His solo records offer the best examples, starting with 1971's Creative Music: 1: Six Solo Improvisations, a mix of trumpet and non-idiomatic percussion solos. It's been reissued as the first half-dozen tracks on Tzadik's valuable compilation of his self-produced material, Kabell Years 1971-1979. On the horn, he gets a full, rosy tone with plenty of colorful shading — rasps and broken tones that acknowledge his kinship with Don Cherry and Lester Bowie. Smith's unhurried, careful approach is often tagged as lyrical, and with good reason: it's pastoral, almost. The solo Red Sulphur Sky, released in 2001, shows how he's stayed the course. If anything, his sound has gotten more rarefied — more airy.
But then what to make of Yo Miles!, the busy, almost jam-band-y electric Miles revival project he co-leads with guitarist Henry Kaiser? (Say this for it: it made a lot more people aware of Wadada Leo Smith.) Miles was associated with a generous use of space too, but neither he nor Wadada are obliged to be consistent. And it's not like Smith doesn't continue to leave space around his own phrases, no matter how the rest of the crew carries on.
As veteran jazz critic John Litweiler wrote in his book The Freedom Principle, Smith's respect for musical space extends into the realm of personal space. In a 1973 text excerpted on his very informative website, Smith explained that improvisers in a group should pursue independent lines, and not worry about "dependent re-action" — that is, the close listening many observers hear as central to successful improvising. Never mind the close interplay he achieves with his fellow players on a 2003 reunion concert with Braxton (issued as Organic Resonance and Saturn, Conjunct the Grand Canyon in a Sweet Embrace) or in a spontaneous trio with Zorn and drummer Susie Ibarra heard on Zorn's 50th Birthday Celebration, Vol. 8.
There's nothing new in music that superimposes distinct layers of activity; remember Charles Ives's dueling marches. (Smith once said he moved to Connecticut in the '70s to be close to where thinkers like Ives and Thoreau had developed their ideas.) That independent streak has paid off. Listen to the 1974 concert by his classic if little-known group New Dalta [sic] Akhri — with bassist Wes Brown, pianist (and composer) Anthony Davis, and Smith again doubling on percussion — on disc two of the Kabell set. The trio's musical mobiles move in space without colliding or interacting in any obvious way, while still creating music of great and passing beauty. (That description makes it sound a bit new-agey, but Davis's rangy piano will scare off the white-keys crowd.)
I'm no big booster of the laptop as the axe for our time — too much grey hissing — but on the remarkable Luminous Axis, Smith effectively squares off against four California computer jocks (including the very musical Tim Perkis), and plays duets with Ikue Mori, also on electronics. Where, say, Evan Parker or Axel Dörner on their electro-acoustic stuff blur the line between one and the other (albeit in different ways), Smith respects the autonomy of both worlds; his trumpet is a trumpet, singing brass and breath not noise-generator, and it occupies its own musical space. Ditto William Winant's kettle drums in the bass range, helping to inspire a rhythmic hubbub you might trace back through '70s Miles all the way to rainforest drum choirs. But then Smith sees them all as part of an ongoing continuum of black creativity.
Fans of his Miles-y stuff might check out "Al-Madinah" by Smith's Golden Quartet, on 2002's The Year of the Elephant. There, the trumpet pentatonics and funky riffing crop up in the course of organic improvising. The quartet has a more traditional rhythm vibe than New Dalta Akhri, despite the return of Anthony Davis. Drummer Jack DeJohnette and (the late) Art Ensemble of Chicago bassist Malachi Favors Maghostut rounded out that version of the band, which explored open space and rode deep grooves, both. With rhythmagician DeJohnette aboard, why neglect the latter? The reggae-inflected 14-beat bump of "Miles Star"'s last bit finds the rhythm trio locked and loaded.
Smith can get dense on his own, too. His large-ensemble album Lake Biwa shows how much ground he can cover within a single extended composition. (Start with "Africana World" — and you tell me what genre that sprawling epic falls into.) Given his penchant for long-arc pieces, Smith should find favor with eMusic's marathon-track bargain-hunters.
All of which just scratches the surface: some artists just won't be summed up in a column.
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