Muhal Richard Abrams The Bird Song Part 1
Muhal Richard Abrams (clarinet) Leroy Jenkins (violin) Charles Clark, Leonard Jones (bass) Thurman Barker (drums) David Moore (poet) [Anthony Braxton (alto saxophone), Maurice McIntyre (tenor saxophone) and Abrams (piano) are heard on the second part of the track (not included in this video)]
June 7th, 1967 // Sound Studios, Chicago, IL (USA)
Released in 1968 on the album 'Levels and Degrees of Light' (Delmark Records)
The recitation here is from poet David Moore, subsequently known as Amos Mor, about whom I can find little information. References to birds might suggest jazz history: allusions to Charlie Parker's nickname, 'Bird', and to Eric Dolphy's mimicking of birdsong in his flute playing; perhaps also, as Ronald Radano suggests (following Ralph Ellison), the bird as in-the-know trickster, even hipster (the word 'hip' perhaps deriving from a Wolof word meaning 'a person who has opened his eyes'), as musician tied to the natural world, away from the urbanised, mechanised world of modern America. This should not be taken as anti-technological primitivism, however: the recording was originally drenched in reverb, at Abram's request, and the combination of this electronic experimentation with Moore's words places 'The Bird Song' in a line of African-American modernism fusing magic, quasi-historical Afrocentricity, sci-fi, space travel and apocalypticism -- Sun Ra, Amiri Baraka, Octavia Butler, Henry Dumas, The Art Ensemble of Chicago.
The version posted here is from the CD re-issue, with the reverb removed: wile this enables us to better appreciate exactly what is going on, musically, and to hear every word of Moore's mostly a-capella recitation (one reviewer notes the musical quality of his delivery, with its almost chromatic down-ward swoops), George Lewis argues that much of the work's dramatic and emotional impact is lost in the transition -- dried up, rendered that much less fluid, that much less open. Nonetheless, without access to the original LP, this re-mastered version remains an essential item in any examination of the relation between poetry and free jazz, to be put alongside the likes of Joseph Jarman's 'Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City', Amiri Baraka's 'Black Art', and Sun Ra's songs, declamations and chants.
