Listening to Prestige 595: Ahmed Abdul-Malik

LISTEN TO ONE: Sa-Ra-Ga' Ya-Hindi

 Ahmed Abdul-Malik moved out of the mainstream and into a stream of his own. At a time when Coleman, Coltrane, Dolphy and others were redefining the mainstream, he was not following their lead, either, although he had played with Coltrane. 

Critics didn't always know what to call his music--which was, like the music of Yusef Lateef, strongly influenced by Middle Eastern music and by his Islamic belief. Even supporters like Dan Morgenstern, who wrote the liner notes for the album, refer to his "Oriental" music, while correctly noting that Abdul-Malik goes his own way:

Thus he has sometimes had to suffer the criticisms of self-styled musicologists on the one hand, and narrow-minded jazz musicians on the other. "These people would say that I was playing things out of place, and that I couldn't discipline myself."

Perhaps these criticisms are part of the reason why Abdul-Malik's recording career was so short. He had essentially stopped recording after 1964, except for a 1973 appearance on a Randy Weston session, where played the oud and took the part of "narrator."

But seen from a distance, Abdul-Malik's music is very much a part of a broader mainstream that has come to encompass world music. It now needs only to be judged as music; and as music, and as jazz, it holds up  very well. 

Morgenstern quotes Abdul-Malik on his attitude toward music:

When I'm playing with a group, my first concern is to blend with it. The objective is to have an open mind -- to try to understand how others feel about music.

Which is interesting in that in his recordings as leader, he is so clearly the leader, creating his own

sound and his own direction. His most constant collaborator is Bilal Abdurrahman, who did not have much of a recording or touring career outside of his work with Abdul-Malik, although he was to have quite a respected career as an educator. But-- again in conversation with Morgenstern, for the liner notes, he talks about wanting to record an album with stride pianist Dick Wellstood, and if that sounds totally fanciful and unlikely, it actually isn't. While they never recorded an album of their own music (whatever that would have been) together, they did play a number of club dates together, and they were part of a band that backed up Odetta on her Odetta Sings the Blues album.

This is a trio session, very much Abdul-Malik's music, and very much, and constantly interesting. The three of them take different roles on different works. Abdul-Malik, who made his mark in jazz as a bassist with enough flexibility to fit in with both Coltrane and Odetta (he's been on Prestige sessions with Walt Dickerson and Dave Pike), also became, as his fascination with Middle Eastern and world music increased, a virtuoso on the oud, an Arabic stringed instrument which is something like a lute, but can also be played as something like a stiar. Aburrahman was adept at a variety of wind instruments, both Western and Eastern; here, he also plays percussion as needed. William Henry Allen was best known for his work with Mongo Santamaria and Roy Ayers. Here he plays bass on the tracks where Abdul-Malik plays oud, and percussion on the other tracks.

The session included four Abdul-Malik compositions and one standard, George Gershwin's "Summertime." Abdul-Malik plays the bass on this one, with Abdurrahman on clarinet and reed flute, and Allen handling the percussion. Abdul-Malik switches to the oud for much of the Middle Eastern-flavored pieces, including "Sa-Ra-Ga' Ya-Hindi," which really qualifies as world music long before the term was coined. "Sa-Ra-Ga" is more or less the Hindi equivalent of "Do-Re-Mi," the names for notes in sur, the Hindustani classical scale of seven notes--the syllables all corresponding to the names of Hindu deities. Abdul-Malik uses the sur scale, and uses the oud in much the way a raga uses the sitar.

I've chosen "Sa-Ra-Ga' Ya-Hindi" for my "Listen to One," because it's so interesting cross-culturally as well as musically, but the whole album is worth some serious listening time. It's a shame that Abdul-Malik recorded so little, because he had so much to offer. And to me, for all its diverse influences, this is very definitely a jazz album, and every cut shows that.

The Eastern Moods of Ahmed Abdul-Malik was a Prestige release. There appears to have been a New Jazz catalog number assigned to it as well, but it was never released on New Jazz. It doesn't appear to have ever been re-released on CD, under the Original Jazz Classics imprint or anywhere else, which is a damn shame bordering on criminal. Ozzie Cadena produced.