How Milford Graves Reawakened the Spirit of the Drum
How Milford Graves Reawakened the Spirit of the Drum
Late percussionist s radical approach galvanized everyone from Lou Reed to Albert Ayler, and built a bridge between music and the healing arts
Hank Shteamer, provided by
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In September of 2008, an unusual performance took place at downtown New York club Le Poisson Rouge. At stage right, opposite fellow six-string adventurer Marc Ribot, sat Lou Reed, conjuring clouds of free-rock energy from his guitar. Behind them, avant-garde mainstay John Zorn sent forth piercing, impassioned blasts of alto sax. And at the center of it all, churning with the fury of a whirlpool and dancing across his hand-painted drum kit with the control and flair of a flamenco master, was Milford Graves the percussionist, healer, and interdisciplinary seeker who Zorn had once called “basically a 20th-century shaman,” and who died on Friday at 79 after a battle with amyloid cardi
Milford Graves, the pioneering jazz drummer, professor, inventor, herbalist, visual and martial artist, has died, as NPR Music’s Lars Gotrich reports. He was 79. In 2018, Graves was diagnosed with amyloid cardiomyopathy colloquially known as stiff heart syndrome and got told he had six months to live.
Born in Queens in 1941, Graves was a pioneer of free jazz, making dozens of recordings over the span of his life (including
The Giuseppi Logan Quartet, Albert Ayler’s
Love Cry, and Sonny Sharrock’s
Black Woman) along with various television and film projects. He was a Professor Emeritus of Music at Bennington College, where he taught from 1973-2012. Known for drawing music influences from around the world, he mastered African polyrhythms and studied the Indian tabla and Latin-jazz timbalas. He helped found the the New York Art Quartet in the 1960s with saxophonist John Tchicai, trombonist Roswell Rudd, and bassist Lewis Worrell, and is credited with helping to liberate jazz