Here, he is performing “Brother John”

 

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Remembering the great Yusef Lateef who was born on this day in 1920. Known for having been an innovator in the blending of jazz with “Eastern” music, Lateef played non-western instruments such as the bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, xun, arghul and koto alongside the tenor saxophone and flute which were his main instruments.

At a time when jazz musicians in the United States rarely sought inspiration any farther geographically than Latin America, Lateef looked well beyond the Western Hemisphere. Anticipating the cross-cultural fusions of later decades, he flavored his music with scales, drones and percussion effects borrowed from Asia and the Middle East. He played world music before world music had a name.

In later years he incorporated elements of contemporary concert music and composed symphonic and chamber works. African influences became more noticeable in his music when he spent four years studying and teaching in Nigeria in the early 1980s. He professed to find the word “jazz” limiting and degrading; he preferred “autophysiopsychic music,” a term he invented.


Here, he is performing “Brother John” on an oboe with Cannonball Adderley on saxophone, Nat Adderley on trumpet, Joe Zawinul on piano, Sam Jones on bass and Louis Hayes on drums live in Germany, 1963.