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Reviewed by:
  • Tabligh
  • Jeff Schwartz
Tabligh. Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet. “Rosa Parks”; “DeJohnette”; “Caravan of Winter”; “Tabligh.” Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet. Vijay Iyer, piano, Fender Rhodes and synthesizer. John Lindberg, bass. Shannon Jackson, drums. 2008. Cuneiform Records. Rune 270.

Idiosyncratic composer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith (b. 1941) has over the past forty years quietly produced a major body of work in free jazz and improvised music. Tabligh, Smith’s first release on Cuneiform Records, appeared in 2008 (the word “Tabligh” means the work done by Muslims to call others to Allah). The recording features an edited version of the Golden Quartet’s West Coast debut on November 19, 2005, at the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater, an experimental space in the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The performance was part of the annual CalArts Creative Music Festival, which in 2005 was dedicated to Smith’s music. Cuneiform’s recording is the fourth document of the work of the Golden Quartet, following two earlier recordings and a DVD.

Smith has slowly and carefully developed his career, preserving his artistic integrity. An early member of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), he appears on late 1960s’ AACM recordings including Muhal Richard Abrams’s Young at Heart/Wise in Time and Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre’s Humility in the Light of the Creator. Between 1968 and 1970 the Creative Construction Company, a cooperative group consisting of Smith, reeds player Anthony Braxton, violinist Leroy Jenkins, and drummer Steve McCall, released four LPs under Braxton’s name and two credited to the CC. Smith’s debut as a leader was his 1972 collection of solo performances, Creative Music, on his own Kabell label.1 For most of the 1970s, he recorded only for Kabell, seeking complete creative, legal, and economic control of his work. Choosing obscurity over compromise, he asked that his music not be reviewed, resisting outside influence on its reception. His 1973 self-published book Notes (8 Pieces) Source a New World Music: Creative Music (New Haven, 1973) is a rare example of an African American experimental musician issuing a manifesto near the [End Page 389] beginning of his career. In the late 1970s Smith began recording for a variety of independent labels, including FMP, ECM, Black Saint, Sackville, Moers, Nessa, and Nine Winds.

In 1993 Smith became a professor of music at the California Institute of the Arts and has since been named director of the MFA program in African-American Improvised Music. With regular recording opportunities, the security of his academic position, and recognition in the form of major grants, including his recent 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, Smith is prolifically creating music that is both adventurous and assured.

The Golden Quartet addresses materials from the jazz tradition more directly and in a more sustained manner than his previous work, beginning with the instrumentation. In Notes Smith writes that in “creative music,” his preferred genre label, all performers are responsible for all aspects of the music and all instruments are capable of filling all ensemble roles. Beginning with the CC, he has often chosen to not use a rhythm section and when bass and drums are present in his groups they often do not play a propulsive role. Much of Smith’s music, like that of Braxton and many other AACM members, resists the idea that jazz must have a overt driving rhythm and he chooses to express time by placing sounds in silence rather than over an accompaniment. He has stated, however, that the Golden Quartet is specifically a trumpet and rhythm section.

In 1998, two years before forming his Golden Quartet, Smith fronted Yo Miles!, guitarist Henry Kaiser’s band covering Miles Davis’s music of the 1970s. This music was focused on the rhythm section, with multiple guitars, keyboards, and percussion creating layered grooves based on funk, Latin, and African musics. While Smith played as a sideman to many of his peers throughout his career, Yo Miles! was his first recording of pieces established by another artist. For a trumpet player to confront the legacy of Miles Davis was also a bold move, for not only was Davis a celebrity but such...

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