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Jazz Articles about Antonin Gerbal
[Ahmed]: Super Majnoon (East Meets West)
by John Sharpe
It's well known that artistic constraints can in fact aid creativity, but few have put the theory into such good practice as [Ahmed]. The international co-operative of improvisers, comprising the British pair of pianist Pat Thomas and saxophonist Seymour Wright, Berlin-based Swedish bassist Joel Grip and French drummer Antonin Gerbal, takes as its unlikely premise the pioneering music of American bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik which fused Arabic, East African and jazz modes. Claiming Sudanese descent (although jazz historian ...
read moreAhmed: Super Majnoon (East Meets West)
by Mark Corroto
There are discoveries in jazz waiting (patiently) to be unearthed. Most of them are hidden in plain sight, like the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik. Born in Brooklyn in 1927, the bassist performed and recorded with, among others Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Randy Weston. Besides double bass, he pioneered the oud in jazz and improvised music as early as the late-1950s. Was it Randy Weston who inspired Abdul-Malik, or conversely did Abdul-Malik spark Weston to explore African and ...
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