The ‘60s Jazz Revolutionary Who’s Time Has Finally
Come
Performance
and CD review by John Pietaro
THE MUSIC OF CAL MASSEY: A TRIBUTE
Performance: February 22, 2012, the Red Rooster, New York
City
Compact Disc: Mutable
Music, NY. Produced by Fred Ho and Quincy Saul, Scientific Soul Sessions –
www.scientificsoulsessions.com
Harlem’s historic Red Rooster was a house afire as the music
of radical jazz composer Cal Massey commanded the space within. In honor of
Black History Month and coinciding with the birth anniversary of Malcolm X, the
outspokenly dissident musician Fred Ho feted the music that leapt off of the
manuscript through the fifteen hand-picked musicians under his direction. The walls
appeared to almost quake under the weight of this band, driven not only by the
expansive vision of Massey’s composition but the deft improvisatory ear of the
leader who included free sections within the already post-modernist score. Ho
demonstrated a form of conduction that appeared much like upper-torso modern
dance as he waved in cues and embraced the sheets of sound about him.
Though the music being presented was written more than forty
years ago, it remained urgent, immediate. Cal Massey was a trumpeter and
composer who worked with a who’s who of jazz greats including Coltrane, Parker,
Monk, Billie Holiday, Carmen McCrae, McCoy Tyner, Jay McShann, and most notably
Archie Shepp who recorded the greatest number of Massey’s pieces. But the
composer’s name will not be known to most jazz connoisseurs as he, like other
militant African American artists before him, has largely been erased from
music history. He was a leader of the
Black Arts Movement and a close associate of the Black Panther Party who had
come of age in the heat of the 1960s’ political conscience. Largely blacklisted
by the jazz industry and major labels, he embarked on a career based in the
concept of Black self-determination, producing concerts independently.
As is the case with much of Massey’s work, it was written in
conjunction with Romulus Franceschini, a socialist musician who specialized in
chamber jazz composition. Both worked with artists such as Shepp and Coltrane and
their bond was a testament of the progressive scope, Black Nationalist and
Italian-American radical standing together. Franceschini is another
marginalized figure in jazz history, most noted for conducting Coltrane’s
Africa Brass recording. He worked closely with Massey, usually in the role of
orchestrator but their collaboration also involved co-writing credits and the
two led the RoMas Orchestra together. Unfortunately they would have little
chance to continue this relevant work as Massey died in 1972, a mere 44 years
of age. Franceschini updated the arrangements in 1986 in preparation for an
earlier series of concerts Ho produced in honor of Massey.
THE CONCERT AT THE RED ROOSTER was not only about the welcome
resurfacing of Massey, but of his work The
Black Liberation Movement Suite, commissioned by Eldridge Cleaver in 1969.
Massey wrote this 9-movement work for expanded jazz ensemble of reeds, brass, strings
and rhythm as a fundraiser for the Black Panther Party. It has rarely been
heard beyond the tumult of those times and only segments of it have been
recorded—by Shepp--before this project undertaken by Ho and two younger
musicians, the baritone saxophonist Ben Barson and clarinetist Quincy Saul (who
does not perform in this piece as the arrangements were kept true to the
original, but acted as a producer). As explosive as it is introspective, The Black Liberation Movement Suite
stands out as a sonic tour through the African American revolutionary experience,
brandishing movements with radical fervor:
Prayer, (Hey Goddamnit) Things Gotta Change, Man at Peace in Algiers
(for Eldridge Cleaver), the Black Saint (for Malcolm X), the Peaceful Warrior
(for Martin Luther King Jr), the Damned Don’t Cry (for Huey P Newton),
Reminiscing About Dear John (for John Coltrane), Babylon, and Back to Africa
(for Marcus Garvey). Appropriately so, the Suite includes various sounds
evoking jazz history with points of defined free jazz, be-bop, swing, New
Orleans and ‘third-stream’ jazz which incorporated contemporary classical
traditions.
As Fred Ho stood before them, the musicians played with an
intensity that spoke of the piece’s inherent activism. The ensemble passages
and solos, swinging, cruising the airspace, exploded with passion and rage. The
music not only reflected 1969 but the radicalism of now, from anti-war and
labor struggles to Wisconsin to the Occupy Movement and the ongoing fight
against racism. Among the primary soloists of the evening were tenor
saxophonists Bhinda Keidal, who brought an almost Dexter Gordon-like quality to
the proceedings with her smoky, searching instrumental voice, and Salim
Washington (who doubled on flute), noted free jazz musician and scholar who
offered a point of chaotic intensity that slowly rounded out into a haunting
melody and then disappeared into a whisper. However, the first solo of the
evening was deftly executed by alto saxophonist Darius Jones whose fingers
raced over his instrument’s keys, soaring over the orchestral mass each time he
stood to play. Ben Barson’s baritone saxophone offered a fresh voice, pulled
from the lower depths of his horn and then upward. The brass section included Nabate
Isles, Satish Robertson and James Zollar’s trumpets as well as Aaron Johnson’s
trombone and David Talyor’s bass trombone. Each offered masterful solos,
ranging from the growl trumpet sound with plunger mute to Gillespie-ish flights
to gutbucket bursts. Charles Burnham, violin, and Adam Fisher, cello, comprised
the string section. Both were visionary soloists whose ensemble parts emphasized
the textural possibilities, blending into and then leaping out from the winds.
The rhythm section of Arthur Hirahara, electric piano,
Julian Litwack, electric guitar, Wayne Batchelor, upright bass and Royal
Hartigan, drums and percussion functioned as much more than support. One moment
laying it down, the next kicking it up over the heads of the house, they were
equally comfortable in every mode. Special attention must be paid to Hartigan,
a learned percussion master who embarks in world music explorations each time
he sits down at his drumkit, which includes temple and wood blocks and other
‘traps’ including a talking drum and a gong. Of note to percussionists
(including this writer), Hartigan can often be heard playing his gong like a
ride cymbal for a ‘kerr-ang’ that no cymbal can supply. Ever the traditionalist
in a setting comprised of musical emulsion, Hartigan said that he often feels a
sense of guilt playing ethnic instruments apart from their tradition. But this
evening was about the amalgamation of sounds that spoke to the people at large.
The compact disc, ‘The Music of Cal Massey: a Tribute’, was
officially released at the Harlem concert. This disc is the first complete recording
of Massey’s monumental Suite and thereby stands as historic unto itself. But
Ho, who produced this recording with Quincy Saul, took the tribute further
still. He also arranged a series of shorter Massey compositions for the CD, Goodbye Sweet Pops (for Louis Armstrong),
The Cry of My People and Quiet Dawn, which was originally
composed for the Duke Ellington Orchestra. These works together with the Suite
serve now as the ultimate Massey compilation. For the recording, Ho brought in
conductor Whitney George and much of the band heard at the Red Rooster, but for
the record, the disc line-up is: along with Bobby Zankel (alto saxophone), Binda
Keidel and Salim Washington (tenor saxophones), Ben Barson (baritone saxophone);
Jackie Coleman, Nabate Isles and James Chandler (trumpets), Frank Kuumba Lacy and
Aaron Johnson (trombones), Art Hirahara (piano), Wes Brown (bass), Royal Hartigan
(drums and African percussion), Melanie Dyer (viola), Dorothy Lawson (cello). A
revolutionary artist like Massey, lost to time and by the hand of the
reactionaries, is in need of rediscovery by a new generation hungry for the
culture of dissent. Add this CD to your collection and file it along with your ‘Autobiography
of Malcolm X’, collection of Langston Hughes poetry, your favorite old Woody
Guthrie records and DVD of ‘Salt of the Earth’.
Here’s a recording that will stand the test of our time and
place…..and as you read of the latest hateful, divisive rhetoric of a Rick
Santorum, a Newt Gingrich or an Eric Cantor, it will remind you of the need for
real social change in our current society. Speak to us Cal Massey, speak.
-John Pietaro is a musician and
writer from Brooklyn NY. His website is www.DissidentArts.com. This piece was
originally published on The Cultural Worker blog
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