The pianist, composer, and bandleader Randy Weston is one of the world's most influential jazz musicians and a remarkable storyteller whose career has spanned five continents and more than six decades. Packed with fascinating anecdotes, African Rhythms is Weston's life story, as told by him to the music journalist Willard Jenkins. It encompasses Weston's childhood in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood-where his parents and other members of their generation imbued him with pride in his African heritage-and his introduction to jazz and early years as a musician in the artistic ferment of mid-twentieth-century New York. His music has taken him around the world: he has performed in eighteen African countries, in Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, in the Canterbury Cathedral, and at the grand opening of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina: The New Library of Alexandria. Africa is at the core of Weston's music and spirituality. He has traversed the continent on a continuous quest to learn about its musical traditions, produced its first major jazz festival, and lived for years in Morocco, where he opened a popular jazz club, the African Rhythms Club, in Tangier.
Weston's narrative is replete with tales of the people he has met and befriended, and with whom he has worked. He describes his unique partnerships with Langston Hughes, the musician and arranger Melba Liston, and the jazz scholar Marshall Stearns, as well as his friendships and collaborations with Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk, Billy Strayhorn, Max Roach, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, the novelist Paul Bowles, the Cuban percussionist Candido Camero, the Ghanaian jazz artist Kofi Ghanaba, the Gnawa musicians of Morocco, and many others. With African Rhythms, an international jazz virtuoso continues to create cultural history.
Industry Reviews
"Randy Weston is magical, spiritual, ebullient and generous soul who just happens to be one of the most original composers and pianists of the last 60 years. African Rhythms is his fascinating story in his own voice--a story that starts in Brooklyn and moves through the Berkshires, Africa and Europe before returning to Brooklyn. A wonderful read."--Michael Cuscuna "When Randy Weston plays a combination of strength and gentleness, virility and velvet emerges from the keys in an ebb and flow of sound seemingly as natural as the waves of the sea."--Langston Hughes, in the liner notes for Weston's album Uhuru Afrika "African Rhythms is unlike anything I've ever read. Randy Weston--pianist, composer, bandleader, activist, ambassador, visionary, griot--takes the reader on a most spectacular spiritual journey from Brooklyn to Africa, around the world and back again. He tells a story of this great music that has never been told in print: tracing its African roots and branches, acknowledging the ancestors who helped bring him to the music and draw the music from his soul, singing praise songs for those artistic and intellectual giants whose paths he crossed, from Langston Hughes to Melba Liston, Dizzy to Monk, Marshall Stearns to Cheikh Anta Diop. And in the process, Mr. Weston bares his soul, revealing a man overflowing with ancient wisdom, humility, respect for history, and a capacity for creating some of the most astoundingly beautiful music the modern world has ever experienced."--Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original "In his new autobiography, African Rhythms, Randy Weston recounts a life-changing epiphany. Working as a dishwasher at a Berkshires resort in the '50s, the aspiring jazz pianist stumbled upon a lecture by the musicologist Marshall Stearns, who traced the roots of jazz to West Africa... Not only did Weston get to know Stearns, but he also went on to become one of the most knowledgeable and well-known proponents of African jazz. New York Time Out "Randy Weston is a monumental figure in contemporary jazz, a man whose creativity remains undimmed at the age of 83. He is a living link with the golden era of the 1950s and 60s, a time during which trailblazing musicians and revolutionary thinkers wholly energised African-American arts and politics. As this absolutely fascinating biography reveals, Weston... Has lived a very full life that has seen him not only excel as a musician but also make hugely important cultural and political statements that had the intent and effect of uplifting blacks in America during a time of second class citizenship. A Recurrent theme in the text is thus Weston focus on concrete initiatives to improve civil rights... Essential reading for anybody interested in learning something of a great man as well as a great musician." - Kevin La Gendre, Jazzwise "It's hard to think of another jazz musician who has promoted the African roots of jazz with quite the missionary zeal of pianist Randy Weston... Whether advocating black musicians' rights in the 1960s, recording with traditional African musicians in the 1990s or inaugurating the new Library of Alexandria in Egypt in the 2000s, the common thread which runs through African Rhythms is Weston's enduring love affair with African culture and its importance as the progenitor of jazz and pretty much everything else besides. This is an important addition to the jazz historiography and a long anticipated read for fans of this giant of African American music, aka jazz." - All About Jazz, October 2010
