Interview by Sean Barlow, January 2008, Brooklyn, NY

Afropop’s Sean Barlow visited our the internationally acclaimed jazz artist Randy Weston at his home in Brooklyn. Randy told us the story of growing up surrounded by the rich cultural life of his beloved Brooklyn. Randy is a pianist, band leader and recording artist who has over 46 albums to his credit. Randy first traveled to Africa in 1961 which was the start of a life long love affair with the continent. He was a ground-breaking ambassador back home in the U.S. for the beauty and spiritual power of African music. Now in his 80’s and still going strong, Randy maintains a busy performing schedule around the world. The audio version of this interview is featured in our one hour profile Afropop Worldwide program “Spirit of the Ancestors: Randy Weston from Brooklyn and Beyond” is now available on-demand streaming via www.afropop.org. Thanks to RaShonda Reeves for transcribing this interview.

S.B:  Here we are in Randy Weston’s study in Brooklyn. Thank you for welcoming us. Tell me, how long have you been here in this house?

R.W:  In Brooklyn? Since 1945. My dad got this house.

S.B:  And we’re surrounded by photos of your musical friends and acclamations and awards. Is there anything in particular you would like to point out in your room here?

R.W:  As you can tell, its Africa everywhere…most of my books are about African culture and that’s simply it…communication.

S.B:  Well let’s start from the beginning. You grew up in Brooklyn. What part?

R.W:  In what they call Bedstuy—Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. We were living on Albany Avenue in Brooklyn, NY. I was born 1926, April 6^th. My father was Frank Edward Weston. My mother was Vivian Moore. My dad was from Jamaica by way of Panama and Costa Rica. That’s my family on my father’s side. My mother’s side is from Virginia and Baltimore. And my mom and dad met in New York and created my sister and myself. Her name is Gladys.

S.B:  Can you paint a kind of word picture of Brooklyn at the time you where growing up. What did it look like? What did it sound like? What were some of your memories of growing up in Brooklyn?

R.W:  My memories of growing up in Brooklyn were so rich and cultured. It was just incredible. You know, we had more jazz clubs than they had in Harlem. Brooklyn had tremendous ballrooms. They had theaters where you have live acts and live orchestras. You could find organ trios in little bars on the corner. That was during the time where there were no discos and no television sets so everything was live. The African American community was a collection of African people from different parts of the world. So you had people from the southern part of the United States; had people directly from Africa. You had people from South America. From the Caribbean, so it as a wonderful mix. So we grew up in an area where it was not considered wealthy by any means. It was a poor area economically.

But at the same time, we were so cultured. We had the black church. You could catch rehearsals of big bands at 11 or 12’o clock in the morning in ballrooms. There were singers, entertainers, dancers….a wonderful collection of all kinds of talent. So it was very, very rich. And when you grow up in an environment like that… I always refer to my mother and father because they were so much into music and it was just a natural thing that they might come in with a record of Ellington. They might come in with a Mahalia Jackson. They might come in with Calypso. They might come in with European Classical music. They might come in with any kind of music. And there was no big deal. So when you grow up in an environment like that—which I appreciate so much—I mean it’s incredible. Plus in addition to all that, all the best musicians had to come to New York, you see. So between Manhattan and Brooklyn, we heard the best…whether it was Charlie Parker or Willie Lyon Smith or Dizzie Gillespie, it was a wonderful, wonderful period.

S.B:  That sounds wonderful. Can you pick one or two artists who are your special favorites, not favorite, but some remembrances of seeing some of the greats?

R.W:  I’ll only mention two artists. And the reason I want to mention these two artists is because I used to be in their two homes all the time. And between their two homes you’d almost see everybody. Especially of the so called “bebop” period, that period of the late ‘40s right after the Second World War. So the first is Max Roach’s house in Brooklyn; that’s were I spent a lot of my time. That’s were I met Miles Davis and Dizzie Gillespie, George Russell…and many great musicians who played with Max. And the other house was Thelonius Monk’s house in Manhattan. So at Monk’s house, you’d find tremendous musicians like Bud Powell, Elmore Hope,  Danny Kubeck. I mention these two artists, but to try to mention all the artists that I have heard and had contact with would take a very long time. And the reason why I say that Sean, is because I was lucky enough to grow up at an era when the Big Band was still prominent and modern music was just coming in.  So that meant I used go to Eubie Blakes house right in Brooklyn on Stuyvesant Avenue. Eubie was close to one-hundred years old. I sat in Eubie’s house and he told me all kinds of wonderful stories about the music. I used to hang out with Willie Lyon Smith, a great ragtime pianist. At the same time from Brooklyn was Max Roach, we had Ernie Henry, we had Cecil Payne, we had Duke Jordan, we had many great musicians you know? And there was a time in Brooklyn when Miles Davis lived in Brooklyn. Charlie Parker spent a lot of time here. So it was a very, very rich experience.

S.B:  Amazing! How about choosing for instance that environment of Thelonius Monk’s home. Was he a mentor to you?

R.W:  Oh definitely, definitely but not in the way you might think. Monk never gave me a piano lesson. Yet every moment I was with him I was getting a musical lesson. And I discovered Monk because Coleman Hawkins was my idol. He did Body and Soul in 1937. It was a big hit, a jazz masterpiece. And so I loved that recording so much, when I was a kid I bought two or three copies I would hide two, and I would play one. So I followed his career, and through Coleman Hawkins, who was considered the father of the tenor saxophone, he was the one who created the whole style of tenor saxophone.  But he was so incredible that he played the early days of Bessie Smith, the early days of Fletcher Henderson, to be the first one to record Dizzie Gillespie, and the first one to record so called “Bebop” music. So when I heard Monk with Coleman Hawkins…and when I heard Monk I heard something… incredible. The way he played, what he played. But I had other influences on piano before him. My first was Count Basie. My second was Nat King Cole. My third was Art Tatum— that we call the greatest of all. And then Thelonius Monk and then after, Duke Ellington. So these five pianists I think made the biggest impact on the way I play and the way I see things musically.

S.B:  Can you tell us just the story of how you started your musical training and playing and so on? How did you get turned on to the piano?

R.W:  (Laughter and pointing to the wall of photos). Well you see that gentleman up there on the right in the photograph up there? That’s my father, that’s my mother and that’s the two of them together. They arranged everything, they totally programmed me. Why do I say this? My father was totally into Africa. He was a great follower of Marcus Garvey. And he always kept in our home many maps, many photographs of Africa. When I was a kid, he always told me about the greatness of African civilizations. When I would go to school I would get the reverse or I go to the movies, Africa was always a place to be ashamed of. So my dad he kept many books on Africa, he told me many stories about Africa. So my dad he really set the stage as far as that is concerned. In addition to that, he made me take piano lessons. Because you know when I was 12 years old I was about six foot tall and I was into sports. I always liked to play sports: football, baseball. But my dad, he made me take piano lessons. My mother gave me the black church. So from my parents, I was programmed at a very early age. So everything I’m doing now came because of their guidance and their beliefs and their spirituality.

S.B:  So very strong extremes there?

R.W:  Oh very strong. My daddy…ooh I better practice the piano or else you know (laughter). I don’t know whether he knew I was gonna be a professional musician. I didn’t think I had any particular talent, but somehow it happened.

S.B:  So starting from 12 you were taking piano lessons?

R.W:  No I started very late. I started taking piano lessons at 14. I started very late and I had a piano teacher and this teacher stayed with me for about three years. She told my father to save his money; I would never play the piano. (laughs) because I would never practice. I was always wanting to do something else. Then he got another teacher. Because the first piano teacher, she only gave me European classical music, and I couldn’t identify with the music because everything I heard was blues, jazz, calypso, Latin music you know etcetera, etcetera. But my Dad got this other guy and he not only knew the classics but he also knew popular music. So well with him I kind of developed.

S.B:  Great, great. So your dad was very African focused in the household. And your Mom was a very religious person?

R.W:  Exactly.

S.B:  Did you go to church every Sunday?

R.W:  I had to go; I had no choice (laughs). But I’m very happy that I didn’t have a choice. Because you know as we say, according to African traditions—certainly here—they say “you first music lesson is when you’re in your mother’s womb.” That’s your first school. And your second school is the black church, you see. And almost all of the great jazz musicians come out of the black church. And that’s because our music is really based upon—which is true of Africa—is based upon a spiritual foundation you see. So we have that spiritual training by going every Sunday and listening to that music and feeling the power of the people…It was incredible.

S.B:  So you more like a part of the congregation? You weren’t performing so much?

R.W:  No, no, no, not at all. I was not performing at all. Just being with mama you know.

S.B:  So from that point of being a teenager, jumping forward a bit, how did your musical career grow from there?

R.W:  Ok. At that time we had many local bands because that point before there was no disco there was no television. So everything was live. So most of the music of jazz was done for dancing you see. So we had a lot of ballrooms and what not. And so we used to get little small groups together, Ray Copeland the trumpet player, Ahmed Abdul Ali the great bassist and oudist, Ernie Henry, Cecil Payne, Duke Jordan, Ray Abrams. These are just some of the musicians who I grew up with in Brooklyn and they were all excellent musicians. Linda Gaskin, Cliff Smalls, these are all wonderful musicians. And also musicians were very highly respected. If you were a musician and you wanted to go to the market and buy anything, you had to have on your tie and your shirt and your shoes had to be shined. So to be a musician was a very high position. And so we took it very seriously as young boys.

In those days you could get top arrangements for a big band for like seventy-five cents. So you could get Count Basie’s Jumpin on the Woodside, You could get 1 o‘clock Jump. So we’d all get together as kids 17- and 18- and 16-years old and we’d practice and form little bands, and we’d also play with local bands. So we got use to reading music, playing different kinds of music. And at that time we had African American musician’s clubs at that particular time. So these were clubs that we had one in Brooklyn, one up in Harlem and throughout the African American community because that was a time of serious segregation. So the black community had its own way and these clubs were really great because you could meet the older musicians. And they would advise you what to do, how to change a mouthpiece, what piano tune to get, you know if you’re gonna play at this particular club make sure you get two dollars, don’t get one dollar, but just wonderful contact with the elders that we had you see. And everybody loved music and there was no separation between the musicians and the people who loved the music. And the people who loved the music they knew the music as well as we did. And so therefore when we performed, we had to be quite serious because if you didn’t play well, it would not be very nice, you know. You would not want people to say you didn’t play well, that would be very embarrassing. So that’s how serious the music was for us despite the fact that it was joyous and happy.

S.B:  So it was primarily like a social and a dance scene growing up and then you say bebop came in. Please describe that turnaround, the evolution?

R.W:  Well it’s plain. It seems the music seems to precede everything. It seems that to certain periods, generation, I don’t know what you would call it every 10 years, but it’s always a music that arrives to describe what’s going on. And I don’t know how Thelonius Monk, Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillespie, Max Roach, Kenny Clark—I don’t know how that all happen to get  together and the same time to create this music is one of the mysteries. How somebody like Coleman Hawkins who goes back to the early ‘20s, heard the beauty and the power of this music and loved it and started to play it and hired the young musicians to play it. And it was wonderful because it was that period—a good example is three trumpet players for example —Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, and Dizzie Gillespie, ok. They all come out of Louie, being the first superstar. But from Louie, as things change as far as I don’t know if you have jet planes if you have things faster, the music gets faster, the music gets faster it seems you know. Although they had fast music in the 20s also, but it just seemed that the music seemed to capture that particular period. After the Second World War, a new music arrived. And these guys came from different cities. Dizzie came from South Caroline. Charlie Parker came from Kansas City. Max Roach is from Brooklyn. Kenny Clark, I think is from Pittsburgh. But they all came and created this wonderful music.

S.B:  So then it became more of a sit down thing?

R.W:  Exactly. But that really happened at the beginning of Bebop. When they had the big bands, the Bebop big bands would also play for dancers. Billy Eckstein had a fantastic band, it was a dance band. Dizzie Gillespie also had a fantastic dance band. Art Blakey, Max Roach, so many other musicians had great bands. But what happened during the Second World War, they put something like a very high tax on places of dance, see. So a lot of the ballrooms closed down. And that’s when dance and jazz began separated. But before that, they were inseparable. If you were a jazz musician, you had to play for people to dance. And every time the musicians would create new music, they would get the best dancers to create new dances to go with the music. I’m speaking about places like the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem for example. So there was no separation between the two.

S.B:  Even back then, was there a rivalry between Brooklyn and Harlem?

R.W:  Oh definitely.

S.B:  How would you characterize it?

R.W:   Well it’s hard to say. It was just there

S.B:  What did Harlem people say about Brooklyn, what did Brooklyn people say about Harlem?

R.W:  It was kinda a competition. It wasn’t even just Brooklyn and Harlem. It was individual neighborhoods in Brooklyn, individual neighborhoods in Harlem. The gangs at that particular time... if you were in a certain neighborhood and they didn’t know you, you might be in trouble. So it was just that kinda of—and not just Harlem and Brooklyn—but I think this kind of happened in all the communities of New York in a way. You know. It was just kinda, I don’t know maybe New York was getting its own rhythm together of this collection of people from different parts of the planet all living in this incredible city. But you had this kind of competition everywhere.

S.B:  Yea. Friendly competition for the most part?

R.W: It could be sometimes not friendly. It could vary.

S.B:  It sounds like a very rich time to grow up.

R.W:  Very rich (laughs) you know. But there’d be a lot of fighting too…between different gangs, between different neighborhoods. Yea.

S.B:  But musicians didn’t fight did they?

R.W:  No, basically no. Musicians were very laid back. They can fight but no, you know most musicians no, they were the healers. Their music made people happy or sad depending on the occasion.

S.B:  Let’s move forward in your story a little bit. For instance, when were the first recordings you ever made?

R.W:  1954. I have the cover. Because they did a tribute in San Francisco in October to the man who formed the recording company. It was called Riverside records. Ironically I was the first artist to record for the company. And that happened because I spent about ten summers in the Berkshires in Massachusetts early 1950s.And the reason for that is because the drugs hit the black community in the late ‘40s.It wasn’t publicized, it wasn’t known about. But it was terrible.

S.B:  What drugs?

R.W:  Heroin. It destroyed many, many young people late ‘40s see. And I was so depressed, I was so upset about this, because I lost good friends you know. And nobody knew what it was…just something that spread like a terrible plague. And a friend of mine told me about the Berkshires and said it was a great place, you can go up there–beautiful weather, you know, fresh air—and go up there and work just for a while. Because before that my dad and I were in the restaurant business before that. And I went up there. I chopped down trees. I did some dishwashing, I carried bags, and I helped old people. But all these estates up there they all had great pianos. I and usta play the piano at night when I wasn’t working. And people heard me. And it was good for me because the people up there, they were basically people who were either into the Blues or to European Classical music. Some of them were into Jazz also, but it was a wonderful collection of people, but the whole emphasis was on Tanglewood. Every summer the Boston Symphony Orchestra—Leonard Bernstein, all the great composers, orchestra, opera, chamber music. So I was lucky finally, to establish myself as a pianist up there. And I would go up there every summer. I would take my children with me and spend two months of the year up in the Berkshires.

And that’s where the people from Riverside Records heard me. And the two owners where called Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer. They just honored Orrin Keepnews last October. And I went to San Francisco and I did their first recording. And what’s interesting is they put out a magazine called the Record Changer. And they had a lot of information about Jazz. And they had great piano rolls. And through them I heard a lot of these piano rolls and old recordings. They even had two or three recordings on Africa. And so I came in contact with Fats Waller, Jimmy Yancey; a lot of the older musicians. My first recording was all Cole Porter because they wanted me to do a popular American composer. They wanted me to do piano solo. I was scared to death to do piano solo, I wanted to do trio. So we compromised for a duo. And that’s the story of the first recording.

S.B:  I have one here. Will you tell me about it?

R.W:  This is 1955. That’s interesting because this is the third recording I did, not the second. The first one was Cole Porter. The second one was with Art Blakey. And this one, Get Happy, was the first 12-inch LP I did for Riverside. The bassist was Mr. Sam Gill; he was on my first recording. He eventually left Jazz and now he’s been with the Denver Symphony Orchestra for some 35 years now. So I always think about him. He’s from Brooklyn, we’re very close. He was the first Black to be with the orchestra. And so he’s on this recording…and Wilbert Hogan. He died much too young. He usta play with Lionel Hampton’s Band. He was a great drummer and he lived in Brooklyn too. Except for Art Blakey, my first three recordings more or less where Brooklyn musicians, or musicians that lived in Brooklyn.

S.B:  And these are your compositions or were you covering other artists?

R.W:  No. I’m not doing much composing. I’m just charting. I have one tune Under Blunder, that’s it. Yea, this is pre…you know I was starting to do compositions but I didn’t really see myself as a composer at that time so I was playing more standards. And plus, not being known as a composer, the recording companies I think prefer you to do standards too—different arrangements of popular stuff.

S.B:  Tell me a little bit about that whole environment up there in the Berkshires. Different musicians you encountered and so on while you were there. Because I remember you said it kinda opened up worlds for you.

R.W.:  It’s hard to imagine this. I mean I truly believe in destiny without a question with a lot of variations on the term. But now I was lucky to leave Brooklyn—when I say leave I mean for two months of the year—to leave the richness of Brooklyn, growing up in Brooklyn, despite the fact that this heroin had just tore a hole in the Black communities. But I was able to go there and listen to and experience some of the best musicians in the world who came to Tanglewood to study. I came in touch with the Boston Symphony, and I came in contact with young students who where coming to study opera and chamber music. So up there I had access to people who were totally into the music of Europe and European classical music. Not to mention Aaron Copeland and great American composers.

In addition to that, I was very fortunate to be in a place called the Music Inn which was owned by Stephanie Barber and her husband Phil Barber. And for some reason—and I never understood how and why they did this—but they had a Pan-African concept of culture even back then; which meant that they would bring in this place a man who specialized in field cry hollers of the plantations in the south when the Africans were slaves …[and he would discuss] what these hollers meant. That’s were they had Obabatunde Olatunji from Nigeria. They had Candido from Cuba. They had a Jeffrey Holum from Trinidad. And they had concerts from people from Monk to Duke. They would have Mahalia Jackson and Dr. Marshall Stearns who when I first went to this place called the Music Inn, he was giving a lecture on the history of Jazz. And unlike other critics at that particular time, he started off at West Africa. Now as I told you before, my father had already groomed me into Africa. So when I heard Marshall Stearns start off with West Africa, and then he went to New Orleans and so forth and so on, I was fascinated. So all these people would somehow meet and I went to the Berkshires about 10 straight years, 10 straight summers. I worked in different resorts. The Music Inn became the Jazz School. After that I had people like Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie as teachers. I would be up there playing solo piano at different places. So it was incredible because I had this wonderful mixture of music. It was just incredible. For example, I played in a place called Avalock, which was near Music Inn. And people would come over after the concert so many musicians from the symphony orchestra would come in, sit in. Maybe the guy, Pascoli—he played the viola—he’d come in and we’d play together. One of the opera singers might come over and sing and I’d play. So it was incredible. I met a lot of incredible people up there. I had my first recording up there. And that’s why this year I was very happy because I was able to do a solo concert at Tanglewood itself. And to me that’s just amazing because at that time that was the unthinkable. There was no Jazz up there at that time anyhow. But it was just unthinkable that I would one day end up doing solo piano there at Tanglewood, you see. So that’s a very wonderful period.

S.B:  Of those artist that you named—Jeffrey Holum and Candido and so on is there anyone in particular that stand out that you think I should track down?

R.W:  Well Jeffrey’s a dancer, a choreographer and he’s got a great voice but I don’t think he’s done any recording. Babatunde Olatunji, you know he has a lot stuff you know. Candido has early things. He’s playing on Uhura Africa. He solos on Bantu—him and Amanda Peraza from Cuba. And Candido, he’s played with everybody—Dizzie Gillespie. Because Chando Pozo died, Candido came from Cuba and he joined Dizzie Gillespie’s orchestra, you see what I’m saying. So he’s done a number of things in that period and he’s still active. He’s gonna play with me in February. And Marshall Stearns you know the whole Rutgers collection of Jazz you know is Marshall Stearns’ collection. Plus, which I did forget to mention, that because of Marshall Stearns, we where the first ones to do the history of Jazz in the school system. And Marshall encouraged me to learn the older styles of piano and he developed a program, a history of Jazz with musicians. So we went to major universities. This was done by 1958.And what happened later… Marshall had a heart attack and he couldn’t do the narration anymore. So he told me to do the narration and I continued and we would do it in elementary schools in New York. Sometimes we’d start off at 7 o’clock in the morning and we’d give a history of Jazz for the children starting with Africa, the black church, New Orleans, the Blues, a kind of 45 minutes to 1-hour history of American music and explain that this music is the true art form of America, it is very important that it be part of the curriculum for the children. And we were hoping to break that ground. So we covered…we did a number of schools. Unfortunately, we couldn’t continue. We had support from Pepsi Cola, we had support from our union, but at that time, Pepsi Cola went on strike. I’m talking about like 1964 and we lost our sponsorship. But it was…also from the Berkshires the whole concept of doing the history of jazz, which many people were doing afterwards. But I think I can truly say, I think we were the first because of Marshall.

S.B:  Has Marshall written? Does he have published work?
R.W:  Yes, yes, his book on Jazz is a classic. And Dan Morgenstern at the Institute of Jazz, he’s the director of the collection that Marshall gave. It’s a very wonderful book. See because Marshall Stearns was one of the first jazz scholars. We didn’t have jazz scholars; he’s one of the first.

S.B:  To take it seriously and to write?
R.W:  Absolutely. And one more thing about him I’m jumping the gun, but I have to do that to say to you that in 1967 I was chosen to do a state department tour of Africa, and he [Marshall Stearns] died. And I found out later that he was on the board in Washington. So I’m sure that he was one of the people that suggested I go. So he played a very major role in my life

S.B:  In the late ‘50s and early ‘60s with all the African independence movements coming into fruition and countries were becoming independent, what was your awareness of what was going on in Africa then? What was the kind of vibe then about Africa from your point of view?

R.W:  Well I was always into Africa because my father was always into Africa. From the time I was a child I was always reading—reading current events, political events, cultural events, going to the library. So that was something that happened from the time I was quite small. So with the Liberation movement I just continued from early days going back to Haile Selassie and the evasion of Ethiopia by Italy, and going way back. So my dad was very much into Africa. So we stayed up to date.

S.B:  What would you say was the effect in the circle of jazz musicians you hung with? What was picked up about the African independence movements and so on? Was there much consciousness of it?
R.W:  Absolutely. You have Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, John Coltrane, Charlie Mingus, and Oliver Nelson. Many jazz musicians and composers wrote music at that time. Because you have to remember it was a very exciting time period because not only were the countries in Africa starting to get their independence, but at the same time, we had the great Civil Rights Movement here in America. So it was in the air. And as I said to you before, I believe that music precedes everything. So I think when the music changes, everything changes. I believe that. And so naturally to describe that particular spirit, that movement…what happens in life when things change –we know and we don’t know—it’s a mystery. And yet at the same time we have certain facts but at certain times why do some people get together at the same time? Why do we have a Malcolm X and a Martin Luther King around the same time, etcetera. The music it was at that time was…we were conscious. Plus being in New York—we had the United Nations in New York—we were able to have contact with African people from all parts of the world that we may have not had the opportunity if we didn’t live in New York, see.

S.B:  Let’s jump to the first opportunity you had to travel to Africa in 1961.

R.W:   There was an organization called the American Society of African Culture and there were twenty-nine of us and the ideal was to go to Nigeria and spend ten days in Lagos and to see what was the relationship between the culture of African Americans and the culture of Nigeria in particular. And on that trip were Lionel Hampton and eight member of his band. I had two with me, Clarence Stroman who was a dancer and a drummer and I also had Book Erwin, the great, great tenor saxophonist with me. And Hail Woodrift the great printer, Langston Hughes was there. Babatunde Olutunji went back to Nigeria with us and we had Jeffrey Holum, Brock Peters…Natalie Henderas, she was a great classical pianist. Al Mims and Leon James were two great jazz dancers from the Savoy Ballroom. And Nina Simone was there also. Ahmed Abdul Malik was there and I’m probably leaving out some folks. But the whole idea was we spent ten days in Lagos and we had discussions about African culture, particularly West Africa, Yoruba culture. And then we’d have concerts at night. They might have some traditional dance on one side of the stage and have the Jazz dancer on the other side of the stage and see what the relationship was. It was great and I made it my business to hang out all night, meet the people in Nigeria because I wanted to go back. By this time I knew that these ten days just in Africa, I wanted these ten days to start me off to spend more time in Africa. So I made a lot of friends. There was a wonderful club in Lagos called the Cabin Bamboo owned by Bobby Benson. Bobby Benson was a wonderful drummer and guitarist who had spent time in the USO playing for American soldiers I believe. And he opened this wonderful club. And in this club I met people like Fela. I met many young West African musicians. At the same time experienced the High Life. At the same time a little bit of the tradition. And so that was it. And it was great because it gave us the opportunity to put our foot on the soil which for us, and certainly myself, was sacred to touch the continent of Africa. It’s our true homeland and many of us will never be able to have the opportunity to do that you see. And for Africa for me Africa was a spiritual return…a spiritual voyage; go back to the home of the ancestors, see. So it was wonderful and I was very lucky because I made it my business to circulate and meet people. I was invited to go back in 1963. I went with a writer named Elton Fax. Elton Fax was an illustrator. And he would take photographs of African faces and then he would do drawings. And the two of us we spent ten days together and I went to some schools, some universities in Nigeria showing the connection between African American music and African music you know saying how I felt. It was wonderful.

S.B:  So from those first impressions what can you say especially surprised you?
R.W:  You know I never was surprised. It’s funny. Amazed, overwhelmed. But somehow never surprised. I guess because maybe we never left. My father…maybe we never left the continent you know. But like I almost knew how it was going to be. And I say that…I don’t mean to say that I knew the language or the customs or anything like that. But it was just a spiritual contact there. And I love people and I think I have a warm personality and I used it because I wanted to learn. I wanted to find out more—why I do what I do. Why I play the piano like I play, where’s this African music. And so I talked to as many people as I possibly could. And so it was a tremendous learning experience. I think I forgot your question.

Oh, so I wanted to tell you a story. So when we got off the plan, we arrived in Lagos about 11 o’clock at night and we were coming down from the plane and a guy runs up to me and he says, “well, you’ve been gone almost 400 years. It’s about time you come back home.” You know like that, and tears came to my eyes when he said this. I said wow…and the smells of Africa and that’s what blew my mind. When you get that— smells of Africa—it’s a certain smell (sniffs) and I knew I was in Africa. Many of us kissed the ground because for us it wasn’t just a visit you know. And it was okay, it was okay. Luckily we went to a country like Nigeria where I could speak English so I didn’t have a…it wasn’t a big language problem.

S.B:  I’m interested in that highlife scene that you dropped into. Can you describe a little more? I think it’d be fun to play some Bobby Benson. Describe his music and his scene there.
R.W:  Absolutely. Well his club was fantastic. It was really open air like those West African clubs are. A big round, huge circle, huge. And the tables where wall to wall in the circle. And people would dance, and he’d have the Highlife bands. But he’d have the young guys playing Jazz with the Highlife. And then on weekends he’d have the people come from the country and he had traditional music. So it was very gay, very nice. And Bobby played some very interesting things. I mean he’d play some very dynamic drums and many different guitars. I didn’t know anybody that played guitar like he did. It was something really different you know. And he was so nice, so cordial. He took good care of me. Yeah he was very nice. I love that man very much. And of course he helped me to understand Nigeria better.

S.B:  So your album here, Uhura Africa/Highlife, was that your artistic response to returning to Africa?

R.W.:  Well that CD…those are two LP’s put on a CD. Uhura Africa was recorded in 1960 and Highlife was recorded in 1964. So 1958 I decided that I wanted to try to write some music for the independence of African countries. Either it was happening or about to happen. So I worked with Melba Liston.

S.B:  She’s the arranger?

R.W:  Yes she’s the arranger. And we had been working together since ’59. We started in ’59 with this idea. And the thing was I wanted to use an African language because I usta be furious at seeing those Tarzan movies and you know seeing the Africans in positions of servants and having them speak as if they had no language. And so for me it was important to have an African language, I spent time in the United Nations. I spoke with many different African Ambassadors, people who are into Africa.[I asked them] which language would they suggest to cover this huge continent that has so many different dialects and languages. So the general consensus was Kiswahili —it would cover north and south. And I asked Langston Hughes to write a freedom poem for me and to also write lyrics for a song I call African lady…which Langston did; he was such a wonderful man. We were very close at that time. And I met a man from Tanzania. His name was Tutameki Songa. He was a diplomat, also a professor of Kiswahili. So he translated Langston’s poem into Kiswahili it was a freedom poem. And then I decided to get the greatest musicians I could put together in this orchestra. I put together a tremendous orchestra. Clark Terry on trumpet. Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Richard Williams on trumpet, Slyde Hampton on trombone, Quenton Jackson, Jimmy Cleveland on trombone. Sax section was Cecil Payne, Yousef Lateef, Saheeb Shuhab, Gigi Grice, uh Jerome Richardson, Kenny Burrell on guitar, Les Band playing guitar also doubling up on flute.

The rhythm section was so powerful—Charlie Persip playing jazz drums, Max Roach on Marimba, Candido and Amanda Peraza playing congas and bongas from Cuba. Babatundi Olatunji from Nigeria on percussion also. And we had two bass players, Ron Carter and George Deriveau, two Jazz masters. And then we had Martha Flower who was a classical European singer, sing the female line on African Lady. I got Brock Peters who was a baritone, and we all got in the studio. And what was so incredible about this work of music—it’s in four parts—Uhura Kwanzaa, which in Kiswahili means “freedom first.” The second movement was African Lady. The third movement was “Bantu.” The fourth movement was Kucheza Blues. Kucheza was the day when African people get their freedom it’s gonna be one fantastic party all over the planet. And we started rehearsing and it was incredible because we recorded this in 1960 and the African countries were just getting there independence around that time. And Melba listened to the arrangement and she conducted the orchestra. And it was wonderful to see this beautiful woman could take on all these great musicians. And why for me it was such a powerful work, musically and spiritually is because we had to record 9 o’clock in the morning two days in a row and nobody was late. And that’s something. If we can look at that lineup…So that was Uhura Africa.

S.B:  Great. The one I especially like is the third movement: Bantu. Can you tell me a little more about that?
R.W:  Well Bantu is…remember we spoke earlier about competition. Well it’s always been like that in music—jazz, in blues, in calypso. The whole idea is that you try to outdo the person before you. So the same thing happens in African music. So with Bantu, it’s kinda like this trumpet battle between two great trumpet players. Clark Terry, who’s very lyrical and very pretty and Ritchie Williams who’s very powerful and strong. So you have the battle of the two trumpet players-after the melody, after my solo. And then—by the way I forgot to mention Julius Watkins on French horn—and then what happens Babatunde Olatunji he starts to play the Membira you know. And then we have, I’m playing the jaw of the donkey. And then we have the Cubans come in and so the solo is slowly building. So we have Africa and then we have the Caribbean you have Africa again and finally Olatunji’s playing this huge drum you know. Meanwhile the music is building and building. And the last soloist is Charlie Bassip playing the jazz drums. And then he take some 8-bar phrases and then he brings the orchestra back in.

So the purpose was to show that this is all African music despite the fact that it has been given many names. You say Jazz, you say Blues, you say Bossa Nova, you say Samba, you say Salsa, you give all these names of music of the West Hemisphere, but for me it’s simply African music. Mother Africa she’s so rich and when she sends her children out—whether they were taken forcefully or they decided to go on themselves—they take some of her with them. And African people, whatever they come in contact wit, it can be a matchbox, a piano, it can be a lampshade, a shoe, it can be a handclap…they have to make music out of it, see? So the purpose of that was to show that we are African people from different parts of the world. But when we come together musically, it’s the same music. And that was the theme, going ahead a little bit…in 1977 in Lagos when they had Festtak, when they had African people from 60 countries in the world come together and the last concert was Miriam Makeba and Osabisa and Stevie Wonder. That was the last concert of one month of music. The result of one month of music from everywhere, even Aborigines from Australia, from Mexico—Black Mexicans, Brazil, Columbia, America and 20,000 artists and we spent one month together. So at the end of all that everybody says, “our music is different.” But our music is the same.

S.B. Can you describe some of the musical continuities…the key things that survived from Africa in the New World?
R.W:  Spirituality is always one. That’s always there. That’s why when people say to me Jazz music is not spiritual, they don’t know what they’re talking about. Because all our music is based upon spirituality number one. You got the call and response everywhere because African people—music is so important to our people that we talk with music. So in our music, there always has to be a leader (da, da, da, da) and the response (ba, ba, ba, ba). We are polyrhythmic people. Africa is a polyrhythmic continent for me. Wherever you find our people you’re gonna find music as polyrhythmic even when I play the piano, one hand is doing one thing, left hand is doing something else.  My foot is doing something else; my head is doing something else. And also the use of the body…we have to put our bodies into the music. So if I go to the black church, if I see some of the guys play, when we play our instruments, we don’t just play. But somehow our whole body gets involved in the instrument—that’s pure Africa. Some people call it improvisation. I tend to call it spontaneous creativity. This means we have to compose at the spur of the moment. You find all these basic elements in black music worldwide. This music has influenced the world because African music is as old as Africa itself. So it comes from thousands of years of tradition. But we basically follow the same rules of our ancestors.

S.B:  What would you say, knowing Africa as intimately as you do—especially North and West Africa and the great musics of America especially—what evolved in its own distinctive or special way here? What happened here?
R.W:  Well here is really wild. I mean number one Congo Square…We had contact with European instruments. We had the Black Church. We had to use the English language, the bible. So we came in contact with Europe—marching bands. But no matter what we touched, it had to swing. The drums where taken because we used them for communication, for rebellion, we still remember the power of the African drum. We are rhythmic people. We put those rhythms into our handclaps and stomps and in the saxophones and pianos. And that’s how we got the Louis Armstrongs, Coleman Hawkins’, Art Tatums, Ellington….Still a mystery to me how these people could come here as slaves and come into contact with Europe and still make this spiritual music. I read about it. I’m part of it but to me it really is amazing. It’s a phenomenon.

S.B:  I agree. I think that’s the best of America how different peoples have come here and learned from each other and somehow contribute to what is another stage of evolution.
R.W:  I have some Art Tatum on piano. When I first met him, he frightened me, because someone that could play the piano so well must have been from another planet. He played with no effort. Now when I play him he sounds even better than he did 30 years ago. And this was coming out of a few decades after slavery. How many great players we have produced in this country! It’s hard for us to have grief over one particular artist because we produce so many. I attribute it to mother Africa. Wherever we take it, we’re taking her with us. We give such beauty and spiritual upliftment to the world. We are truly healing folks. Any of our music you find, there is a connection. We have a way of projecting mother Africa, that cultural memory is there. And when we come into contact with each other, it strengthens us. When I go to Cuba or Africa I get inspired. Trace her children. Trace where we have been taken, trace where have settled and contributed. It’s enormous. It’s a mystery

S.B:  That’s a beautiful statement. You spoke earlier about the musical aesthetics of the music and of performing—the movements and rhythmic element. Do you think of your instrument, the piano, as a drum in a way as well as an anchor in the ensemble. How do you think of the piano?
R.W:  I see the piano as an orchestra by itself. It’s the king of the instruments. I can get drum rhythms in the left hand. The flutes in the left. Most of the great musicians always go back to the piano. I approach the piano as an African instrument. Because inside the piano is a harp, okay? And the harp is one of the oldest African instruments coming out of ancient Egypt and Ethiopia. So Africa was already inside the piano. And before the piano, to get the real touch of the piano is ivory. It has a wonderful feel on your hands. Some pianos today have plastic keys, but the ivory is the best. And well to get the ivory you have to deal with the elephant. So the spirit of Africa is already in the piano. So I approach it as such. Not to take anything from Europe, it was created in Europe, I just mean that the whole foundation of music came out of Africa itself, which set the direction of music—wherever it’s played.

S.B:  That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of the harp inside the piano. It’s also interesting how balafon players of West Africa use keys over resonating gourds.

R.W:   Yes absolutely. I think every single instrument you can connect back to Africa.

S.B:  Can you tell me about Congolese Children and Blues to Africa?

R.W:  Congolese children was inspired by some traditional music I heard near Lake Kivu in the Congo. And I’ve always loved to write songs about children. We also had lyrics to that song. And Blues to Africa was a blues written for the whole continent of Africa. Being African American, most of us can’t claim a particular country or society, so we claim all of Africa. This piece was symbolic of the rhythm of the way the elephant walks. Because the elephant is very powerful and a symbol, to me, of Africa. All that power. There’s another piece on here which was inspired by the New Orleans funeral which came out of West Africa that when someone died—it’s very sad when their taking the body to the cemetery. And then when their done with that, everybody comes out and parties. This one is called In Memory of.

S.B:  Tell us, when you came back from Africa and began composing more explicitly about Africa and talking about Africa at your concerts, what was the American public’s reaction…from the record labels, from your jazz colleagues, press?

R.W:  Well let’s put it this way. Africa was still the “Dark Continent.” Most people didn’t know much about it. I stayed around people that were in the know. A lot of the Jazz masters already knew about Africa. I just wanted to explore more stories about Africa. I wanted to tell more African stories. The problem is we don’t hear good stories about Africa. All we hear is the negative. We never get the real beauty of this continent. At that time people were not really into Africa. Some were nervous, some weren’t interested, some couldn’t deal with it, and some were encouraging. But overall it was just sheer ignorance. Luckily I had a father that taught me. So at the time, it was not popular. I went to Africa before I ever played a note in Europe.

S.B:  What about the label?

R.W:  I was with little small companies…United Artists; Roulette. But there was great music coming from young musicians. There was a lot of creativeness in the air. You couldn’t sound like someone else.

S.B:  Let’s jump ahead a little. When did you go to Morocco?

R.W:  1967. It was part of the state department tour. I also went to Senegal, Mail, Niger, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Sierra Leon, Ghana, Gabon Cameroon, Egypt, Beirut, Tunisia, and Morocco. It was a three month tour, with a band of six—The Randy Weston sextet. I also took my 15 year old son with me.

S.B:  Tell us about your first impressions and experience with Morocco?

R.W:  Well we had a tremendously successful tour overall. I liked it very much. I stayed there to finish my report to submit to the state department. At that time, rock music and commercial music came in. And that’s when I wanted to move to Africa. So I was looking for a country to settle in so I could be close to the traditional music.

S.B:  Particularly with rock music, was it that you didn’t like the electric guitars?
R.W:  Just the whole commercial stuff that was coming. Acoustic instruments went out. If you didn’t put a plug in the wall you couldn’t make music. I was an acoustic musician and I loved acoustic sound. The thing that made our music unique was our sound. You not only had to be a good player, but you had to have a good sound. I can tell Louie Armstrong anywhere. Same with Duke and Count Basie. But with the synthesizer, the sound became the same. So I wanted to move to Africa. I went back to New York for two months trying to decide where I wanted to move and I got a letter from the USIS saying people are crazy about your music; they want you to come back to Morocco. So I did.

S.B:  Did you meet the Gnawa for the first time? Tell us about your experiences with the Gnawa (West African who came to Morocco in the 1600’s as slaves of the Moroccan kingdom and earned places in the society as royal soldiers, musicians and healers.)
R.W:  Well even before the Gnawa I decided I wanted to have a little club of music inspired by Bobby Benson. I found a place in Tangiers. And whenever I traveled I always wanted to know where to find the traditional music. And I was told by a young English professor that if I wanted to get the pure traditional music of Morocco, it has to be the Gnawa. Aubdella Ogord came to my little apartment and played his instrument called a Hajooj. At that time we called it the gimbri, but officially it’s called the hajooj. He reminded me of Jimmy Blanton the famous bassist from the Duke Ellington orchestra that freed the string bass. Before him, the bass was played like a Tuba in essence. And when I heard Gnawa, I said, that’s where it comes from. So I featured them a lot at my club and we would play together. I went to many Gnawan ceremonies. I went to several rituals and became a part of them. They enriched my life and I feel we enriched theirs by making people aware of the greatness and spirituality of their music.

S.B:  Why don’t you explain how Gnawa are not only involved in music, but also their role in the spiritual life, the healing of their communities.

R.W:  They are like Grios or the Jali. They serve the people. They give the messages and tell the stories. They tell the stories. They have the rituals where they cure people. They play a very important role in their societies. I had the wonderful opportunity to attend one of their ceremonies  and it was very deep for me. At a certain point, their music had reached such a spiritual high point for me…it was like experience Jazz, Blues, and Calypso all at the same time.  After that, I was almost in transfer. My body was trying to interpret this music. It was so beauty and powerful. They played an important role in my life because they in on North Africa and sometimes people don’t know about North Africa. So my discovery of them is extremely rewarding.. They’ve taught me so much about music. Every night when the Gnawa would play, all of us would listen intently. It’s almost like listening to your origins. It’s like they are always a little bit stronger. We are children of this music. The music gives thanks and keeps us into the earth. That was my wonderful experience with Gnawa.

S.B:  It’s interesting that you chose—through destiny or attraction –a place in Africa where the Sub-Saharan or black Africans were also minority and were brought there against their will. What’s that about?

R.W:  Well we’re both from the same school. We’re both the minority. We were brought here against our will, but look at our contributions here. So the same thing happened. But they just didn’t get the same recognition. So to be with them, we’re the same people. We were just taken out of Africa while they stayed in Africa.

S.B:  So back at your club you’re playing solo piano?

R.W:  No, my son also played percussion with me. He’s an excellent percussionist. He’s known in Morocco. But we had all kinds of music from Blues in Chicago to Gnawa music. The club was called African Rhythms club. There was no separation between the Caribbean and America or Africa. For the young kids we had music of Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles, and Stevie Wonder. Our original trio included my son, a dancer and myself. It was a crazy experience. We organized a festival in 1972 where we brought over forty American musicians and forty musicians from Morocco and we had a three day festival. We had Jazz and Berber flutes. It showed this wonderful spirit of cooperation and cut down those false boundaries.

S.B:  Tell me how you found a common ground with Gnawa?
R.W:  Well first was respect for the traditions. So I had to live with the people before I started playing with them. Just like with Jazz, I would spend hours of the day just listening and watching. I tried to understand how the society functions and what the music means. I listened intently before I began to play. A lot of rhythms are taking out of Africa and people don’t know what they mean. I had to respect them first. They are wonderful and I love them and they love me because I went to them as a student and child of Africa coming back home.

S.B:  So once you built that respect and trust, then what happened?

R.W:  Once I learned to play some of the music I was asked not to play it in public because this was spiritual  music and I respected that. I did not play for about 1 year. But then I felt it was time for the world to hear this music and have this spiritual experience. So I went to the chief of Gnawa, his name was Fata and asked him if I could play the music in public because I’m not going to commercialize it, but that I felt people need to hear this music. And he allowed me.

S.B:  What kind of recordings did you make with you collaborations with Gnawa?

R.W:  No professional recordings just some tapes we made together. But really it was to see how I could make this adjustment to make the piano adapt and work with the Hajooj Which is hard to explain, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

S.B:  Is the Hajooj pentatonic?

R.W:  Yes. And I played pentatonic scales with them. Ain’t nothing but the blues anyhow.

S.B: At what point did you make recordings that you thought were good enough to release to the world?

R.W:  I felt good about the fact that we were able to record nine master Gnawa musicians. Because the problem with Africa is that when an elder dies secrets go with them. That’s true here also, my father knew many things I didn’t know. We traveled all around Morocco and gathered these masters. It’s a historical document of these masters. I’m only on one piece. Challo Bate, which is a spiritual piece about the Gnawa being in slavery and how they’re asking God to help free them and for the musicians before them to help them. Two great things happened for me and Gnawa. We were asked to play at the sacred festival of Fez last year with my quartet and Gnawa. There was music from all parts of the world but we represented Morocco. We also went to a conference of the Mediterranean and we performed with the Gnawa. We respect tradition and at the same time we present ourselves. We harmonize with each other and produce great music.

S.B:  Just a few more questions. Do you have any thoughts in general now on how Africa is being presented in the States? Do you see an evolution?

R.W:  It’s very slow. The media is not kind to us at all. The television media is not kind to us. It’s absolutely necessary but it’s a very very slow change. You don’t see Jazz in this country. You hardly ever see it now. The rest of the world is totally in love with it. Why television…why they don’t present Jazz music is a mystery to me. It should be part of the curriculum. It’s an important part of the American History. This music brought the races together. That’s how powerful this music was. People were separate before Jazz. It’s highly acclaimed—it’s a great music. I’m a great fan, even before I was a musician. Things are moving much too slow. I’m hoping the pace will speed up so young people can be exposed to who Louis Armstrong was and what he contributed, what the music meant.

S.B:  What do you think of black pop music today? Specifically hip hop (even though it’s broadened beyond the black community to be a global phenomenon of course.)

R.W:  Well its pop music. I’m not connected to it. But that’s the expression of the young people…what they’re going through. They don’t have what we had. We had everything: dancers, live music, and human contact. But this is their life. Just as Jazz and Bebop was ours.

S.B:  So is it less rich to you?

R.W:  Well it’s still very African. I mean when I hear the rhythms and the lyrics, its very African. But African society is so diverse where you have some societies where the music is not as important as the lyrics. And that’s what rap is and Hip-Hop. So it’s still part of it and it describes what’s going on in their world. It’s their expression. All I try to do is help them to know that we’re all standing on the shoulders of our ancestors. I think the connection is happening slowly but surely.

S.B:  Do you see bright spots coming up for Africa?

R.W:  I always see bright spots. You can stop truth for long. The music will have to be recognized. There should be huge cultural centers for Jazz music here in the States. It’s our classical music even though we don’t treat it as such. But it’ll change.

S.B:  Now before we sign off here, I have some of your albums here. Earth Birth and Spirits of our Ancestors, what years did those come out?

R.W:  May of 1997 and 1994 or 1993.And before that was Volcano Blues. We presented blues from Africa and all over America. We brought the Blues over from Africa. How to get a message across in a few words and our parents were incredible masters of that. There’s no greater music for communication than the Blues.

S.B:  Are their any recordings of yours that stand out in your mind?


R.W:  Tonga in 1973. All the Verve recordings, the Gnawa recording that I produced, the solo CD I did in Marrakech called In the Cool of Evening. I did that album one hour without stopping. Volcano, Earth Birth, Spirit of our Ancestors, and some works that were re-released. Also Monterrey ’66. I did that one with Big Black—one of the greatest percussionist anywhere. We toured Brazil together-just piano and percussion. I wrote a piece of him called Afroblack.  He has an African style.

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