(New) Air live in the 80s

As many live jazz videos that have been uploaded to You Tube, coming across one of Air or even (New) Air (heck there aren't even one of Henry Threadgill's great 80s Sextet(t)), have proven a fruitless. That is, until yesterday.

While the video was uploaded a year or so ago, it was buried several pages into a search for "Threadgill" that I conducted last night. The video is taken from a film called A Place For Jazz, filmed live at the 1369 Jazz Club in Somerville, Ma., as part of a documentary on that venue, which closed in 1988. There is more info on the club and the documentary here:

Andrew Cyrille joins Henry Threadgill and Fred Hopkins here, which suggests this was filmed sometime around 1986, when Cyrille also joined Hopkins and Threadgill for gigs in Europe under the name (New) Air (Pheeroan AkLaff had taken over the drum stool after Steve McCall left in 1982).

It's a short clip, and not one of the band at their most ferocious or, *ahem* killing, but a gem nonetheless.

Treasure: Griot Galaxy "Androgyny" - live in 1984

Music history is filled with artists and recordings that remain rare or obscure to us for a myriad of reasons. Jazz arguably more so than other genres. Some may have been projects, one offs or long standing, that for whatever reasons never officially recorded (the Henry Threadgill Society Situation Dance Band is a famous example). Others may be bands and artists that may have recorded their music, but did so for small and independent labels that eventually (and perhaps inevitably) folded and that time forgot. Even in this day and age of crate digging, specialists re-issue labels and the like, not everything gets picked up, and as such many a recording has faded into obscurity.

Griot Galaxy belong to the latter category, 'though given the length of their existence and the extent of their touring, one might argue they somehow fit in the former as well. Formed in Detroit, Michigan, sometime around 1972 by saxophonist and poet Faruq Z. Bey, who sadly passed away last year, Griot Galaxy only recorded one proper album: the fabulously weird, free, sci-fi jazz-funk of Kins, released by Black & White Records in 1982.

Griot Galaxy consisted of Bey, saxophonist Anthony Holland, bassist Jaribu Shahid and drummer Tani Tabbal. Other musicians have also been part of the group, among them percussionist Panda O'Bryan, who appears on the live album Opus Krampus, recorded while the band was on tour in Europe in 1984, and notably saxophonist David McMurray, who played on both Kins and GG's other live recording, Live at the D.I.A.. Their music had elements of rambunctious free jazz and propulsive funk, perhaps reminiscent of some of Ornette Coleman's harmolodic bands, as well as a hint of The Art Ensemble of Chicago, not least in their expressive and eye catching imagery.

 GG disbanded in 1989 some time after Faruq Z. Bey had been seriously injured in a motorbike accident. From what I can find, Anthony Holland seems to have done little in terms of music since then. On the other hand, David McMurray have played with everyone from Was (Not Was), Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop and Khaled, while Tani Tabbal and Jaribu Shahid have remained more closely involved in jazz. The both appear on some of James Carter's early recordings, for example, and they have both played with David Murray at various times. In fact, I was lucky enough to see Shahid play with Murray's Black Saint Quartet at Molde Jazz Festival in 2008, though at the time I was not aware that the bassist I was seeing and hearing was the very same that had played on Kins.

This leads me to this amazing recent discovery on YouTube: a live video, no less, of Griot Galaxy playing a tune called "Androgeny", recorded in 1984 at St. Andrews Hall for the Metro Times Music Awards. The picture is good, and the sound is surprisingly good, too. On this evidence, they must have been some live band in their day. (From left: Anthony Holland, David McMurray, Faruq Z. Bey, Tani Tabbal and Jaribu Shahid).

 

Decades

A few days ago, I finished a quick piece for the fanzine I write for (FAN) about music from 1984, 'though in part it was also about how I feel 1980s popular culture have been misrepresented and treated with unfair disdain. I think, possibly, this was in part because many of the critics of 80s culture grew up in the 60s and 70s, a time where rock (and related) music was a shared thing - almost what you could call a monoculture - between most young people everywhere. Of course, there may have been Stones vs. Beatles feuds, but everybody knew who they were. (Now, I'm not saying there werent obscure and/or underground artists. Just wanted to set the record straight).

But by the 80s (or even late 70s), the shear amount of music - in part because of the spread of DIY on the one side and easier, cheaper, and faster ways to mass produce music (e.g. Stock Aitken Waterman) on the other - may have lead to the situation where the older critics just couldn't keep up. What had previously been a shared youth culture was by the 80s many separate youth cultures. Add to this, the birth of MTV lead to increased focus on image, something critics of rockist leanings would dislike, and images tend to stay in the consciousness for a while. So, since many popstars of that time wore bright colors and puffy clothes (to get noticed, you know), that's what they remember, and not the kids who wore jeans and Chuck Taylors at the R.E.M. gig, just what some might wear today.

Mostly, though, my gripe has been with Norwegian critics. I feel it's been different in other countries. The Brits have been proud of how the Smiths and the Housmartins were parts of their popular culture, while Americans have understood more than most others that there were several plains in popular culture in the eighties, e.g. the birth of AmerIndie, the birth of hip-hop, as well as mainstream giants like Springsteen and Prince (who at the same time, may have shared many values with the underground cultures at the time). Few critics have been better at writing about the music of the 80s than Robert Cristagau. He found, and still does find, values and sounds to be treasured or loathed all across the board. My kind of listener.

But I waffle. I just thought it a funny coincidence that I had just recently been writing about how a decade has been (mis-?)perceived, and that this week Pitchfork have started a 2000s countdown, with lists, essays and what not. Now, I like history and a can enjoy a good list like any other jerk, and I may have a "Best Jazz of 2000-09" or something to that effect by the end of the year myself, but I thought this was a bit too early. I had almost forgotten we'd come to the end of a deade.

Anyway. Decades, huh? Strange, isn't it.