Ahmed Abdul-Malik

Ahmed Abdul-Malik (born January 30, 1927 in Brooklyn , New York City , New York , † October 2, 1993 in Long Branch , New Jersey ) was an American jazz musician . In jazz he first established himself as a double bass player before he began to attract attention as an oud player in the mid-1950s . Abdul-Malik is one of the pioneers of what later became known as world music .

Life

Although this would be an obvious assumption for a mid-century jazz musician, Ahmed Abdul-Malik was not a name adopted when joining the Nation of Islam . Abdul-Malik was born in 1927 to a Sudanese Muslim immigrant in New York City. The indication of his maiden name as Sam Gill , which can be found in older reference works, is based, according to recent research, on a mix-up. He grew up in the Arab quarter of Brooklyn.

He learned the violin as his first instrument from the age of eight ; It was on this instrument that he gained his first professional experience as a musician in mainly commercial engagements at a very young age. While rehearsing with a youth symphony orchestra , Abdul-Malik had the chance to switch to the double bass by chance.

As a double bass player he had considerably more professional opportunities - but mainly in jazz and popular music; This was partly because the important classical orchestras in the USA at that time were still closed to black musicians in practice due to racial segregation .

Abdul-Malik initially worked (1945 to 1948) in an early band of the drummer Art Blakey , with the tenorist Don Byas and in various ensembles of his childhood friend, the pianist Randy Weston . Since the boundaries between jazz and rhythm and blues were still fluid around 1950 , it is not surprising that the collaboration with Weston resulted in an engagement with Sam “The Man” Taylor , a popular tenor saxophonist in the field of R&B and early rock 'n' roll revealed.

It was also not unusual at that time to be able to “switch” from the camp of the more commercially oriented Afro-American music to artistically more demanding bands. The rhythmically rock-solid bass work of Abdul-Malik, demonstrated at Taylor, was also attractive to the pianist and composer Thelonious Monk, who is known as very abstract . In his band, Abdul-Malik played with the cream of the jazz avant-garde of the time, including the saxophonists John Coltrane and Johnny Griffin and the drummer Roy Haynes . With Monks Trio, the bassist was also seen and heard in the episode The Sound of Jazz (still available on DVD) as part of the CBS television show "Seven Lively Arts".

The musically most momentous and creatively independent creation of Abdul-Malik was the founding of the Middle Eastern Music ensemble , which existed in various formations from 1957 to 1964. In this pioneering project, stylistic elements of jazz and Arabic music were deliberately merged for the first time . Abdul-Malik no longer only played bass in this band, but also various traditional Arabic instruments that he had studied. Above all, he can be described as the first major oud player in jazz. Middle Eastern Music attracted significant media attention in the early 1960s and featured several times on US television. Although Abdul-Malik's projects were initially somewhat forgotten during the rise of world music fashion in the mid-1960s, he was later remembered when he received the BMI Pioneer in Jazz Award in 1984 .

Despite the relative success of his project, Abdul-Malik remained primarily active as a double bass player in the coming decades, including with musicians as diverse as Leipzig- born pianist Jutta Hipp , flautist Herbie Mann , pianist Earl Hines and the avant-garde baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett .

Outside the USA, Abdul-Malik had comparatively few, but rather prestigious engagements. He made a guest appearance on a tour organized by the State Department in 1961 in many cities in Latin America and in 1972 at the International Jazz Festival in Tangier .

Since 1970 he has been teaching various stringed instruments at general schools in his hometown of New York as part of a state-sponsored music education program; In 1973 he received a teaching assignment for Middle Eastern and African music at Brooklyn College .

Discography

As a leader

With Ahmed Abdul-Malik's Middle Eastern Music

• 1957 - Jazz Sahara (with Johnny Griffin, among others)
• 1959 - East Meets West
• 1961/62 - Jazz Sounds of Africa
• 1963 - Eastern Moods

Others

• 1961 - The Music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik
• 1964 - Spellbound

As a sideman

With Randy Weston

• 1956 - With These Hands
• 1956 - Jazz à la Bohemia
• 1956 - The Modern Art of Jazz
• 1973 - Randy

With Thelonious Monk

• 1957 - Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall
• 1958 - Thelonious in Action
• 1958 - Misterioso
• 1958 - Thelonious Monk Quartet Live at the Five Spot: Discovery! (with John Coltrane and Roy Haynes)

Others

• 1961 - John Coltrane The Other Village Vanguard Tapes
• 1964 - Earl Hines The Legendary Little Theater Concert of 1964
• 1964 - Earl Hines Fatha
• 1977 - Hamiet Bluiett Orchestra, Duo and Septet

literature

• Carr, Fairweather, Priestley: Jazz Rough Guide. Metzler, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-476-01892-X .
• Barry Kernfield (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary Of Jazz. Macmillan, London 2002, ISBN 0312113579 .

Web links

• Works by and about Ahmed Abdul-Malik in the catalog of the German National Library