‘Reaching for inspiration back into the music’s deepest origins’ . Milford Graves. Photograph: PR Image
Sun 14 Feb 2021 07.32 EST
Last modified on Tue 16 Feb 2021 07.53 EST
Of all the freedoms opened up by the free-jazz revolution of the 1960s, none was more radical or, to many, disturbing than the freeing of rhythm from fixed points of bar lines and regular time signatures. The American drummer Milford Graves, who has died aged 79, was in the forefront of that move to create momentum through surges of energy that seemed to reflect the social and political passions driving what became known simply as the new music.
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
If you're old enough, you might recall the comic Godfrey Cambridge from late-night television in the 1960s, when he was one of a new wave of black