1
Sultans
of Swing:
Prophetics and Aesthetics of Muslim Jazz Musicians
in 20th Century America
Parker McQueeney
Committee: Marty Ehrlich and Carl Clements
2
3
Table of Contents
Introduction….4
West African Sufism in the Antebellum South….12
Developing Islamic Infrastructure….20
Bebop’s “Mohammedan Leanings”....23
Hard Bop Jihad….26
A Different Kind of Cat….37
Islam for the Soul of Jazz….41
Bibliography….51
4
Introduction
The arrival of Christopher Columbus to the beaches of San Salvador did not only
symbolize the New World’s first contact with white Christian Europeans- but black
Muslims as well. Since 1492, Islam has been an essential, yet concealed presence in
African diasporic identities. In the the continental US, Muslim slaves often held
positions of power on plantations- and in several instances became leaders of revolts.
Islam became a tool of resistance and resilience, and a way for a kidnapped people to
preserve tradition, knowledge, and spirit. It should come as no surprise to learn that
when Islam re-emerged in the African-American consciousness in the postbellum period
, eventually in harmony with the Black Arts Movement, it not only retained these
1
characteristics, but took on new meanings of prophetics, aesthetics, and resistance in
cultural, spiritual, and political contexts.
Even in the pre-9/11 dominant American narrative, images of Black Islam
conjured up fearful and vague memories of the political and militant Nation of Islam of
the 1960s. The popularity of Malcolm X’s autobiography brought this to the forefront of
perceptions of Black Islam, and its place in the Black psyche was further cemented by
Spike Lee’s 1992 film Malcolm X. Public figures like the athletes Muhammad Ali and
Kareem Abdul-Jabar (who actually became an orthodox Sunni Muslim) are likely some
of the only Muslim African-American cultural figures that most people can name. More
recently, the image of Nation of Islam in the media has been centered on Louis
The three sects discussed in this paper; Moorish Science Temple, Ahmadiyya, and Nation of Islam, were not
continuations of the religion practiced by ancestors of the members. In fact, all three are considered heretical by
many mainstream Sunni Muslims.
1
5
Farrakhan’s anti-semitism and cultish adherence to certain Scientology practices. While
critiques of the NOI are necessary, this is hardly a holistic picture of the Nation of Islam,
and certainly not representative of the black Muslim movement as a whole. Despite the
American popular consciousness privileging Nation of Islam, many other strains of
Islam were popular in black spheres, and the cultural influence and legacy of
African-American Muslims goes well beyond Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabar.
The jazz scholar Robin Kelley says “The most significant non-Christian tradition
in jazz history is Islam.”2 Between the 1940s and 1960s, many African-American jazz
musicians took the shahada3 and adopted an Islamic identity. Many took Muslim
names, some learned Arabic and studied the Qur’an, or performed the hajj4 to Mecca.
Some musicians, like reed player Yusef Lateef5 and bassist/oudist Ahmed-Abdul Malik,
incorporated a direct Arab-Islamic stylistic component into their unique brands of jazz.
Others such as Art Blakey and Ahmad Jamal played bebop, but sought “to appropriate
Islam towards the musical project of American identity”.6 Even musicians who never
became Muslims themselves were surely influenced by their colleagues- including John
Coltrane, a religious pluralist, whose Islamic influence is most explicitly represented in
his seminal work “A Love Supreme.” By the 1960s, the Nation of Islam became the
dominant form of Islam for African-Americans. Musicians known for their involvement
Kelley, Robin D. G. Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2012. 38.
3
The shahada is the Muslim creed accepting Muhammad as prophet and declaring the oneness of Allah. It is the
first of the Five Pillars of Islam.
4
The final of the Five Pillars, hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca required at least once in every Muslim’s lifetime.
5
It is important to note that Yusef Lateef did not consider his music to be “jazz”, due to the sexual etymology of the
word. He first called it “soul music”, but later settled on the word “autophysiopsychic”, describing music that comes
from one’s mental, physical, and spiritual self.
6
Christopher Chace, “Prophetics in the Key of Allah: Towards an Understanding of Islam in Jazz,” Jazz
Perspectives 4, no. 2 (August 2010): 168
2
6
in soul-jazz, like Grant Green and Larry Young, were part of NOI. In the R&B world,
groups including Kool & the Gang and Harold Melvin & the Bluenotes embraced the
religion. This trend in popular music has continued, and eventually led to the comment
by hip-hop journalist Harry Allen, “If hip-hop has an official religion, it is Islam”.7
The appearance of Islam in African-American music cultures may seem
paradoxical. The often racialized stereotypes associated with these styles and the
religion are on opposite ends of the spectrum; hip-hop (much like jazz, in its time) is
seen as “postmodern, decadent, rampantly materialistic, hypersexual, and hedonistic,”
while Islam has a reputation for being “pre-modern, and anti-Western, with a strict,
puritanical code that is also anti-pleasure”.8
Another perceived contradiction comes from the Islamic interpretation of music
as heretical. This can be a somewhat skewed perception. For example, an article by
Daniel Pipe, the president of the American conservative think tank Middle East Forum,
attempts to point out the irony of bebop musicians practicing Islam due to “Islam’s
dubious and sometimes hostile attitudes towards music.”9 He quotes the fourth caliph of
the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, Mizra Tahir Ahmad:
...it all depends on the degree of the habit and the nature of the music. The
music in itself, as a whole, cannot be dubbed as bad. … In these things it is a
matter of taste. … as far as pop music is concerned I don't know how people can
tolerate that! Just sheer nonsense! I don't disrespect music altogether, because I
know the classical music had some nobility in it. … the taste left behind by this
modern "so-called music" is ugly and evil, and the society under its influence is
becoming uglier and more permissive, more careless of the traditional values, so
this music is obviously evil and sinful. … an occasional brush with music which
draws you into itself at the cost of higher values, at the cost of memory of Allah, at
Sohail Daulatzai, “Return of the Mecca,” Wax Poetics issue 61 (April 2015): 29
Ibid.
9
Daniel Pipes, “Islam and Bebop Jazz.” Middle East Forum. 27 December 2013. Web.
7
8
7
the cost of prayers, where you are taken over by music and that becomes all your
ambition and obsession; if that happens then you are a loser, obviously.10
This comment isn’t something that bebop musicians would necessarily disagree with
(for example, in an interview with saxophonist Sahib Shihab’s widow, it is discovered
that “Sahib had this funny saying that his first love was his God, his second love was his
music and his third love was his wife.”11 Daniel Pipes also seems to make the mistake of
considering bebop “pop” music, which was surely not what Mizra Tahir Ahmad was
describing in his 2010 comment. In Dr. Yusef Lateef’s 1975 dissertation for the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, he quotes the 11th century Sufi scholar
al-Ghazali:
Music does not create anything new in our hearts; it strengthens
and excites that which is already in the heart...if music intensifies
undesirable emotion, e.g., a grief in the heart against some disposition of
God, it is not permissible….The highest kind of music is that which
intensifies the love of God, and what augments the love of God deserves
the highest reward.12
This view seems to fall exactly in line with Ahmad’s comment, and Lateef
certainly internalized this advice. In 1980 he stopped playing venues where
alcohol was served, synthesizing his personal religious code with his jazz
performance practice. In a 1999 interview with the Boston Globe he explained,
“Too much blood, sweat, and tears have been spilt creating this music to play it
where people are smoking, drinking, and talking”.13 The ideology Dr. Lateef
ibid.
“Interview: Maiken Gulmann about Sahib Shihab.” Other Sounds. 18 September, 2011. Web.
12
Yusef Lateef, An Overview of Western and Islamic Education, p. 144
13
Peter Keepnews. “Yusef Lateef, Innovative Jazz Saxophonist and Flutist, Dies at 93.” The New York Times 25
Dec. 2013: A21.
10
11
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espouses here is not only rooted in a certain asceticism, but evokes the particular
history of the African-American and elucidates the unique identity synthesized by
Black Muslim jazz musicians.
Islam, like any major religion, has a diverse 1400 year history of practices and
readings from nearly every corner of the globe, and much of the writing by Islamic
scholars on music is contradictory. The ethnomusicologist and Islamic scholar Lois
Ibsen al-Faruqi addresses the various interpretations of legality of music in the
historical Muslim world. She states that
The materials found therein, [the Qur’an as well as the hadith literature]
however, do not provide an exhaustive and satisfying answer to our preliminary
question. Although the veracity and normative structure of the Qur’an is above
question for both Muslim and non-Muslims, there is little in the Muslim scripture
itself that can be regarded as bearing on the issues to be discussed here.14
That is to say that nowhere in the Qur’an or the established hadith canon is music
explicitly denounced as haram (forbidden). Thus, any Muslim ban on music is a product
of the socio-political situation of a certain place and time, and not the religion itself.
The body of academic literature on the associations between jazz artists and the
Muslim religion is historically opaque at best, and criminally negligent at worst. Brief
mentions of Ahmadiyya jazz musicians are often found in books on Islam in the African
diaspora. However, they usually boil down to a side note without observation of the
practices and identities of individual musicians in depth or considering them to be a
significant cultural force. In jazz history and musicological works, the subject was
missing entirely until very recently. Four scholars have attempted to tackle the topic in
14
al-Faruqi, Lois Ibsen. "Music, Musicians and Muslim Law." Asian Music 17.1 (1985): 3.
9
the 21st century. Of these four works, three were published between 2010 and 2015 (the
exception being Moustafa Bayoumi’s paper, published in Journal of Asian American
Studies right around the time of the September 11th attacks).
Similarly, there have been some scholars who have recently published works on
the influence of Islam in the hip-hop world. Sohail Daulatzai’s 2010 book Black Star,
Crescent Moon addresses the topic, and he has recently curated an art exhibit in Detroit
on Islamic imagery in hip-hop culture. A 2004 paper by Hisham Aidi also goes into
detail on the intersection of Islam and hip-hop. While these academic trends are a good
start to filling in gaping holes in the historical record, a sense of continuity between the
worlds of jazz and hip-hop is missing. Mostly, these papers focus on the towering figures
of the music. More research is needed to heed attention towards women, sidemen, and
the rank and file musicians whose contributions have not yet been accepted (by the “jazz
police”) as critical to the canon.
Bayoumi’s essay, “East of the Sun (West of the Moon): Islam, the Ahmadis, and
African America” sets up a brief history of the Ahmadiyya missions to America. He
explains that the religion promoted “unity of all religions as manifest through Islam,
whose chief object is ‘to establish the unity and majesty of God on earth, to extirpate
idolatry and to weld all nations into one by collecting all of them around one faith.’ It is
a particular universalism.”15 By explaining the development of the Ahmadiyya
movement in India, as well as unpacking its universalist theology, he is able to
contextualize the politics of African-American conversion to Ahmadiyya Islam. Bayoumi
Bayoumi, Moustafa. “East of the Sun (West of the Moon): Islam, the Ahmadis, and African America.” Journal of
Asian American Studies 4.3 (2001): 253.
15
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also identifies “the productive tension between separatism and universalism that will
follow all African-American Islam throughout the rest of the century.”16 Here the tension
he speaks of is between Ahmadis and Nation of Islam followers, which he believes
“underscores the conflict between two very different roles for religion in the political
sphere.”17 The third important point he makes is on identity, and specifically how
“African Americans could metaphorically travel beyond the confines of national
identities. They could become ‘Asiatics’ and remain black, could be proud of their
African heritage and feel a sense of belonging to and participation with Asia. Being
plural in this scheme meant not having to feel the psychic tear of double consciousness,
but a way of living wholly in the holy.”18 This is a theme that is described usually as
pan-Asiatic identity, or as the title of Bill Mullen’s book states, Afro-Orientalism.
Christopher Chace’s paper, “Prophetics in the Key of Allah: Towards an
Understanding of Islam in Jazz” takes a different approach by using musicians as a lens
to view jazz performance as a physical Islamic ritual. He first sets up the Ahmadiyya
movement as prophetic religion (that which “morally challenges the dominant
structures and patriarchalism of a society, as opposed to a ‘priestly’ religion, which
preserves a socioreligious traditionalism.”19). Like Bayoumi, Chace discusses themes of
religious unity, but connects it to the Muslim belief of ummah- those in the global
community who voluntarily struggle to submit their will to Allah. He uses individual
ibid.
i bid.
18
ibid.
19
Chace, Christopher W. “Prophetics in the Key of Allah: Towards an Understanding of Islam in Jazz.” Jazz
Perspectives 4.2 (2010): 157-181.
16
17
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musicians such as the South African pianist Ibrahim Abdullah, Art Blakey, and Yusef
Lateef to illustrate the different ways an Islamic attitude in jazz could manifest.
Like Chace’s article, the bulk of this paper attempts to uncover who some of the
Muslim jazz musicians were, and includes lesser studied musicians, such as Idris
Muhammad, Hasaan Ibn Ali, James Blood Ulmer, and many others. I will illuminate
how they variously expressed Islam in forms of spirituality, politics, and music. While I
attempt to analyze these three categories in relation to individuals, it is important to
remember that in the case of Muslim jazz musicians, to separate music, politics, and
religion would be a Herculean task. All three work together in a complex web of
harmony, and sometimes dissonance, to sculpt the identity of the individual. I hope to
illuminate how these musicians trailblazed a path to what Sohail Daulatzai calls an
“alternative Black consciousness”, and how their legacy allowed for the prevalence of
Muslim iconography and theology so prevalent in American hip-hop today.
12
West African Sufism in the Antebellum South
Ibrahim abd-al Rahman worked on a Mississippi plantation for forty-one years,
though he was not born, nor did he die, a slave. Before he was traded for two flasks of
gunpowder, some muskets, eight hands of tobacco, two bottles of rum and shipped off to
be traded like cattle in New Orleans, he was colonel of an army double the size of George
Washington’s. He was a prince in the Futa Jalon theocracy, in current-day Guinea, son
of the feared warrior-king (or almaami) Sori. In Natchez, Mississippi, Ibrahim said he
was heir to the white turban granted to the almaami, but the veracity of this claim can
not be ascertained. Futa Jalon had been established a generation earlier in a war known
as the Fulani Jihad, in which the Muslim Fulbe people, cattle ranchers and horse racers,
seized political power from the Jalunke, who were animists and farmers.
Although Sori had been an effective leader who consolidated the military and
expanded the borders through aggressive military tactics, he was eventually deposed by
a council of jealous elders. They installed a young descendant of Sori’s predecessor as
almaami, and Sori left the city of Timbo for nearby mountains. It was there that Ibrahim
was born. While Ibrahim and his family holed up in the mountains, usurpers continually
attempted to undercut the legitimacy of the alaami Saalihu. Not only did internal affairs
erode the integrity of the empire, but Saalihu’s military raids in which Sori often found
great success started to turn into losses. When attacking the Wasulu in 1762, not only
were the Fulbe beaten, but chased in their retreat. Blaming their allies the Solima for the
defeat, Saalihu executed several of their chiefs. This caused the Solima and Wasulu to
band together and raze the capitol Timbo in 1763, looting or burning slaves, livestock
13
and crops. In desperation, Sori was called to sit at the head of a war council. With Sori
back in command, the Fulbe undertook a massive project and built a 50 foot wall
around Timbo and defended against yearly raids by the Solima and Wasulu until the
1770s.
Although Ibrahim sometimes claimed to be the first-born, he was not Sori’s
eldest son. However, he was clearly among the favorites (not a small feat, as legend has
it Sori had at least 33 sons). Literate in Arabic and Pular, Ibrahim excelled in his studies
and in 1774 was sent to Macina and Timbuktu (located in present day Mali, 1000 miles
east of Timbo) to further his education. In Mali, Ibrahim studied law, Islam, geography,
astronomy, and math. At the age of 17, Ibrahim returned west to join his father’s army.
The battle for which Ibrahim returned was the turning point in the war with the
Solima and Wasulu, and Sori again turned to the offensive. It was in these military
excursions that Ibrahim gained his reputation as a brilliant strategist. His first
command came in 1781 in a battle with 6000 Bambara. His uncle Sulimina was killed at
the start, and the army had little faith that a green Ibrahim could turn the battle around.
The young Ibrahim convinced the army to stay, and set up a trap for the Bambara,
leaving few survivors and minimal casualties on the Fulbe side.
The year 1781 would be an important one in Ibrahim’s life for another reason. An
Irish doctor serving on an English ship was separated from the crew during a hunt. John
Cox wandered into Fouta Jallon with a wounded leg, one-eyed, half-dead, and covered
in mosquito bites. Dr. Cox was the first white man the Fulbe had ever seen, and Sori
took great interest in nursing him back to health. The two became close, and Dr. Cox
14
took an interest in Ibrahim as well, teaching him his first words of English. Twenty-six
years later, Ibrahim would meet Dr. Cox again with the circumstances entirely reversed.
As Ibrahim (or Prince, as he was then known) walked in to Washington, Mississipi to
sell potatoes, he recognized the one-eyed Irishman indebted to his family. Dr. Cox spent
the rest of his life attempting to earn Ibrahim’s emancipation. Eventually, Ibrahim was
able to return to Africa with his wife Isabella- though he died four months after reaching
Liberia and was never again to see the kingdom of Fouta Jallon.
Not all Muslim Africans abducted to the New World were royalty, and the
unbelievable circumstances surrounding the story of Ibrahim abd-al Rahman may be
the only reason it is told at all. We do, however, have records of other influential Muslim
slaves in the US, despite the fact that most Muslims were sent to Brazil or the
Caribbean. Although they may not have been educated at Macina or Timbuktu, West
African Muslims were highly literate compared to Europeans. The Islamic theocracies
propagated public schools and unlike Europe, women and peasants studied in them.
The rising tide of literacy brought with Islam was no accident- reading Arabic is integral
to the Muslim faith. The Qu’ran states “Those to whom We have given the Scripture, and
who recite it as it ought to be recited, they truly believe in it; and those who disbelieve in
it, they are the losers” (Surah 2, verse 121).
In Georgia’s Sea Islands, home to the Gullah/Geechee people, Islam flourished in
the antebellum period. Also a Fulbe from the city of Timbo, Bilali, or Ben-Ali, was the
patriarch of a Muslim family on Sapelo Island, as well as the manager of the plantation
of around 500 slaves. His leadership abilities were well known around the island, and
15
during the 1930s WPA writers collected interviews with descendents who kept Bilali
alive in their memories. When the British invaded in 1812, the owner Tom Spaulding
and his family fled the plantation and armed Bilali with 80 muskets. He distributed
them among the other Muslim slaves, and they successfully defended the island against
the British. Bilali saved the lives of many slaves in 1824 from a hurricane by leading a
construction effort. He also built a mosque on the plantation, most likely the first
mosque in North America. His nineteen children all had Muslim names, practiced
Muslim traditions, and were literate in Arabic. Not only did Bilali leave Islamic practices
to his descendants, but an Arabic legal manuscript called “First Fruits of Happiness”,
that “attempted to reconcile the law of Islam with a wholesome daily life”.20 This
manuscript still has not been completely translated, although it is known that a majority
of the document contains the 10th century Risala of Ibn Abu Zayd al Qairawani, which
Bilali wrote completely from memory. Now his living descendants, such as Cornelia
Walker Bailey, are practicing Christians and do not speak Arabic. However, all the
churches on Sapelo Island face east.
Bilali’s namesake was an icon for West African Muslims, and the story of Bilal Ibn
Rabah certainly must have been close to the heart of many Muslim slaves in America
with its themes of “slavery, conversion, torture, and rescue. It touches on aspects of
racism, is a lesson in pluralism, and teaches us that piety is the only measure of a
person’s worth.”21 Bilal was a black African slave in Mecca during the time of
Muhammad. Tortured for declaring the oneness of God, Muhammad’s advisor and
20
21
Turner, Richard Brent. Islam in the African-American Experience. (33)
Stacey, Aisha. “Bilal Ibn Rabah: From Slavery to Freedom.” Islam Religion. 03 October 2011. Web.
16
father-in-law Abu Bakr purchased Bilal, who became a trusted companion of
Muhammad. Known for his beautiful voice, Bilal became the first muezzin, he who
performs the call to prayer or adhan.
Scholars recently have pursued a trend to credit Islamic influence to the creation
of blues music, though not enough research has yet been conducted. Sylvianne Diouf
has noticed a striking connection between the call to prayer and Alan Lomax’s 1930s
recording “Levee Camp Holler”. In an article for the San Francisco Chronicle, Diouf
said, “I did a talk a few years ago at Harvard where I played those two things, and the
room absolutely exploded in clapping, because the connection was obvious. People were
saying, ‘Wow. That’s really audible. It’s really there.’”22 The resemblance truly is striking,
and deserves more attention from musicologists specialized in blues and West African
music.
There are reasons that music with Islamic influence survived the inhospitable
landscape of the American south. For one, drums, which were more common in
non-Islamic musical practices, were outlawed everywhere in the south except for Congo
Square in New Orleans. Dizzy Gillespie explains this in his autobiography:
...They took our drums away from us, for the simple reason of
self-protection when they found out those cats could communicate four or five
miles with the drums...When they took our drums away, our music developed
along a monorhythmic line. It wasn’t polyrhythmic like African music. 23
On the other hand, Arab-Islamic music had some opportunities to thrive. According to
Diouf,
Curiel, Jonathan. "Muslim Roots of the Blues / The Music of Famous American Blues Singers Reaches Back
through the South to the Culture of West Africa." SFGate.
23
Gillespie, Dizzy and Fraser, Al. To BE, or not… to BOP. Garden City: Doubleday and Company, Inc, 1979. 290.
22
17
...Even though Africans from Senegambia and the rest of the Islamic belt
were outnumbered by men and women from the forest area, their music had a
better chance than that of other Africans of being preserved… Slaveholders used
these musicians, who could easily adapt to fiddles and guitars, in their own balls,
so they could continue to exercise their talents openly. They were usually
exempted from work in the fields and had time and the necessary instruments to
continue developing their skills. Drummers and percussionists, in contrast, had
few opportunities to keep in practice. Sahelian Islamic-influenced music, through
its musicians and their knowledge of string instruments, thus had a good chance
to survive in the South.24
Blues scholar Gerhard Kubik also identifies an “Arab-Islamic” influence in blues music,
originating in two Muslim cities with significant trade centers: Timbuktu and Gao. He
identifies musical aspects of the blues that come from this music: “melisma, wavy
intonation, pitch instabilities within a pentatonic framework and a declamatory voice
production.” 25 Not only are these musical qualities central to blues music, but later were
adopted by jazz, R&B, and other styles.
The blues is undoubtedly saturated in this “thoroughly processed and
transformed Arabic-Islamic stylistic component”26, as well as the adhan. Sylvianne
Diouf suggests a third Islamic influence: musical recitations of the Qur’an. She quotes
an 18th century European observer in Sierra Leone. A Muslim man of about 35 was
shackled, waiting to be shipped to the New World. As he waited, he was singing
melancholically and uttering prayers, most likely reciting the Qur’an. Of this, Diouf says,
“Muslims like him would sing in the same manner as a consolation, time and again, on
plantations of the South, and their lonesome ‘song’ probably became what was known as
the blues.”27
Diouf, Sylviane A. Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas. (197).
Kubik, Gerhard. Africa and the Blues. (94).
26
ibid.
27
Diouf, Sylviane A. Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas. (196).
24
25
18
Although its DNA has been encoded and preserved in the blues and other
African-American practices, orthodox African Islam did not survive slavery. The chattel
system instituted by the British and Americans was ideal for destroying African cultural
identities, and succeeded in doing so despite the best efforts of the Muslim minority to
retain the integrity of Islamic communities, for several reasons. In the US, the West
African standard of daily Quranic study was not achievable. Muslims followed the five
pillars when able, but the harsh conditions imposed on them often made the strict
personal code impractical. Proselytizing was not a priority for Muslims. On most
plantations, Africans had no way of communicating, so attempting to spread the religion
horizontally would have been extremely difficult. Since the number of Muslim men
heavily outweighed Muslim women, many chose not to take wives or father children.
Many children with Muslim fathers often took their mother’s religion. Some Muslim
slaves succeeded in raising their children Muslim, but this usually faded by the third
generation. For a second or third generation Muslim, a minority religion with not many
followers would not have provided an attractive support system under the brutal
conditions they were subjected to, and the dearth of Quranic schools or time for
studying also surely contributed to the end of West African Sufism in the United States.
Despite these challenges, as well as the invisibility of Muslims in the historical
record, the cosmopolitan, sophisticated, and resistant legacy of African Muslims was
carried on by the Black American consciousness into the 20th century. The conceptual
revolution of jihad by Muslim slaves from an external, armed conflict to an inner
19
spiritual, existential, and personal struggle with institutional violence is fundamental in
understanding how 20th century African-American jazz musicians utilized Islam.
20
Developing Islamic Infrastructure
When the last Sufi African Muslims in America passed on sometime in the 1920s
or 1930s, at the time jazz first started to sprout its firm roots into the fertile American
soil, native forms of Islam were starting to bud in cities as African-Americans migrated
northwards. In 1913, Noble Drew Ali founded the Moorish Science Temple in Newark,
New Jersey. Influenced not only by Islam, Ali appropriated ideas from Freemasonry,
Theosophy, pan-Africanism, and Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement
Association (which boasted almost 100,000 members by 1920). Ali espoused forms of
nationalist separatism that helped reorient the Black psyche and identity, in
socio-religious terms at least, to the East.
Self-styling himself as the “second prophet of Islam”, Ali’s sect eventually had
around 30,000 members practicing in northern cities that followed his own version of
the Quran, otherwise known as Circle Seven Koran. Ali claimed it was a lost chapter.
This book sought to redefine all non-white people as “Asiatics,” and Islam as the religion
of those Asiatics. Noble Drew Ali urged African-Americans to reject the terms “Negro,
Colored, Ethiopian”, etc. for “Moorish-American,” which members filed as on official
records. This signifies a shift from a racial identity to an ethnic identity. Converts took
the surnames “El or Bey,” and donned turbans and fezzes. These aesthetic adaptations,
later used by jazz musicians, were a form of resistance to aggressive white
Protestantism. While this movement declined by the mid 20th century, its ideas and
tendencies heavily influenced successive Black Muslim movements, especially the
Nation of Islam.
21
The movement that jazz musicians first flocked to was the Ahmadiyya sect. This
group was notably different than other concurrent Black Islamic movements in the
United States because rather than developing domestically, it was transplanted to
America by Old World missionaries. Stemming from a branch of Sufism and originating
in the Punjab region of India in the 1880s, the Ahmadiyya movement is considered by
many in the Muslim world as heterodox, and Ahmadis have faced steep persecution in
the Indian subcontinent by religious majorities. This is because its founder, Mizra
Ghoulam Ahmad, “claimed that he was the Mahdi of Islam, a prophet of Islam, the
Promised Messiah of Christianity and Islam, and an avatar of Krishna for the Hindus.”28
However, the Ahmadiyya movement did retain closer adherence to orthodox Islam than
both the Moorish Science Temple and the Nation of Islam.
Described as “pioneers in spiritual colonization of the western world”29 arising in
response to British colonial missionizing, the Ahmadi missionaries to the US were
greatly successful. The first arrived in 1920. His name was Muhammad Mufti Sadiq. He
must have been a convincing man, as he converted seven men to Islam on the boat.
Thrown in a detention center for two months upon arrival, Sadiq was successful in
converting another 19 in jail. He was released when authorities were convinced he was
not in America to preach polygamy. Muhammad Sadiq became a profound writer and
lecturer, traveling to the bigger industrial cities to speak. By the next year however, it
became apparent that white Protestants were not interested in hearing Sadiq’s message,
Turner, Richard Brent. Islam in the African-American Experience. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 1997. (112).
29
ibid (121).
28
22
especially because of the intense focus of the Ahmadiyyas to create a multi-racial
society. In the second issue of Sadiq’s publication The Moslem Sunrise he wrote,
What sad news we came across… about the conflict between the Blacks
and the Whites in this country. It is a pity that no preaching of equality or
Christian charity has so far been able to do away with this evil. In the East we
never hear of such things occurring between the peoples. There are people fairer
than North Europeans living friendly and amiably with those of the darkest skin
in India, Arabia and other Asiatic and African countries… In Islam no church has
ever had seats reserved for anybody and if a Negro enters first and takes the front
seat even the Sultan if he happens to come after him never thinks of removing
him from the seat.30
This attitude surely would have attracted African-Americans facing hostility in newly
settled cities, and between 1921 and 1925 over one thousand (mostly black) converts
were made, primarily in Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, and Gary, Indiana. These areas were
also where jazz was first exported to up the Mississippi river from New Orleans around
the same time, but it would not be until the 1940s that jazz musicians (at least publicly)
converted to Islam in droves.
30
“The Only Solution of Color Prejudice,” The Moslem Sunrise 2 (October 1921), p. 40.
23
Bebop’s “Mohammedan Leanings”
Imploring Mecca
to achieve
six discs
with Decca
“Be-bop Boys” Langston Hughes, 1951.
In their October 1948 issue, Life Magazine did a five-page piece on trumpeter
Dizzy Gillespie as a means to describe the phenomenon known as bebop to their largely
white audience. Presenting the music as “discordant, offbeat jazz,”31 the article
fabricated most of its facts. For example, they photographed a series of codes and
handshakes between bebop musicians that never actually existed, including a sign of the
flatted-fifth. At the bottom of the article an
image of Gillespie is shown shirtless and
bowing, with the caption
“MOHAMMEDAN32 LEANINGS are
shown by many bebop musicians, some of
whom have actually turned Mohammedan,
interrupt rehearsals at sunset to bow to the
east. Here Dizzy bows to Mecca from his
Hollywood apartment.”33 This photograph
was completely staged. Dizzy Gillespie never prayed towards Mecca, and was not a
“Bebop: New Jazz School Is Led By Trumpeter Who Is Hot, Cool, And Gone.” Life 11 October 1948: 138-142.
The term “Mohammedan” was used by Christians at this time to insinuate that Muslims worship Muhammad
rather than God. Ironically, a common Muslim criticism of Christianity is the perceived divinity of Christ, whereas
in Islam both Christ and Muhammed are viewed as merely prophets.
33
ibid.
31
32
24
Muslim. In his autobiography, Gillespie said, “It’s one of the few things in my whole
career I’m ashamed of, because I wasn’t a Muslim. They tricked me into committing a
sacrilege.”34 Gillespie later converted to the Baha'i faith, but speaks of Islam in his
autobiography with great respect and says that he considered conversion, but only for
social purposes.
Despite this, Dizzy’s band served as an incubator for many of the first jazz
musicians to turn to Islam. The clarinetist from Edgar Hayes band, Rudy Powell, is the
first jazz musician Gillespie knew to become an Ahmadi Muslim, and in his
autobiography mentions several others including trumpeter Idrees Sulieman, Kenny
Clarke (who became Liaqat Ali Salaam), Oliver Mesheux (Mustafa Dalil) and Yusef
Lateef. Gillespie insinuates the reasoning for Black jazz musicians to convert to Islam in
the 1940s was essentially for socio-political purposes. As he puts it, “...Everybody started
joining because they considered it a big advantage not to be black during the time of
segregation… They had no idea of black consciousness; all they were trying to do was
escape the stigma of being ‘colored.’”35 Gillespie mentions that musicians with Arabic
names were able to get “W” (for white) printed on their police cards. He also shares
anecdotes of Muslims who were able to bypass Jim Crow laws in hotels and restaurants
by appealing to the Orientalism and exoticism of white employees.
Despite Gillespie’s opinion that new Muslim converts had no idea of Black
consciousness, their actions often served as a subversive, alternative Black
consciousness. These musicians were not rejecting their blackness, as Gillespie suggests,
34
35
Gillespie, Dizzy and Fraser, Al. To BE, or not… to BOP. Garden City: Doubleday and Company, Inc, 1979. 293.
Ibid. 291.
25
but rather embraced a pan-Asiatic identity, and utilized it to their advantage. This is a
unifying theme between all Black Muslim traditions in America: most explicitly seen in
Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam’s idea of the “Asiatic Black Man” stemming
from Noble Drew Ali’s earlier sect. However, the Moorish Science Temple practitioners
were not the only Afro-Orientalists around in the early 20th century.
In a 1935 essay entitled “Indians and Negros,” W.E.B. Du Bois posed the
fundamental question of whether Orientalism could serve to both colonize and
decolonize the mind. The ideology that Du Bois is largely responsible for outlining,
Afro-Orientalism, is defined in Bill Mullen’s book of the same name as “a
counterdiscourse that at times shares with its dominant namesake certain features but
primarily constitutes an independent critical trajectory of thought,” and “a signifying
discourse on race, nation, and global politics constituting a subtradition in indigenous
U.S. writing on imperialism, colonialism, and the making of capitalist empire.”36
Therefore, musicians that converted to Islam were not merely buying into Orientalist
thought for material benefits, as Dizzy Gillespie implies, but playing into a larger,
decolonial trend of Afro-Asiatic identification.
Towards the end of his section on Islam, Dizzy concedes that “Most of the Muslim
guys who were sincere in the beginning went on believing and practicing the faith.”37 It’s
true that as bebop matured as a musical and sociopolitical force, so too did beboppers’
dedication to Islam. Two musicians in the early bebop era that took their Islamic studies
quite seriously were Art Blakey and Talib Dawud.
36
37
Mullen, Bill V. Afro-Orientalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. XV.
Gillespie, Dizzy and Fraser, Al. To BE, or not… to BOP. Garden City: Doubleday and Company, Inc, 1979. 293.
26
Hard Bop Jihad
Born in Antigua in 1923 as Alphonso Rainey Johnson, Talib Dawud joined
Gillespie’s band as a trumpeter in 1947. In that year, Gillespie started experimenting
with Afro-Cuban music and hiring other Caribbean musicians, including conguero
Chano Pozo. It was no accident that the timing of this coincided with a blossoming
anti-colonial trajectory and Black internationalism in African-American consciousness.
Like many other jazz musicians in New York then, including Yusef Lateef, Talib Dawud
was converted by the Ahmadiyya missionary Khalil Amhad Nasir. Dawud himself soon
became a vocal proselytizer of the Ahmadiyya movement, and introduced Art Blakey to
the religion.
Art Blakey was a drummer who had played alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie
Parker in Billy Eckstine’s band. On tour in Albany, Georgia with Fletcher Henderson’s
band in 1943, Art Blakey was beaten nearly to death for refusing to address a white
police officer as “sir.” Subsequently spending several weeks in the hospital, Blakey had
ample time for personal reflection. It was then that Talib Dawud introduced Blakey to
Islam. He took the name Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, though he still used Art Blakey
professionally. Blakey’s Manhattan apartment became a center for Qur'anic study led by
Dawud and Blakey. After booking a gig at Small’s Paradise in Harlem in 194738, Blakey
started a short-lived “rehearsal band” (known as such because they didn’t play many live
dates, and never recorded in full) and named it the 17 Messengers. Blakey himself stated
that he became the leader of the band not due to his musical ability, but his leadership
38
Sources differ on what year the 17 Messengers started. Some claim 1949, while others say it was 1947.
27
skills. He was chosen in a vote by the band over trumpeter Idrees Sulieman. This group
was mostly made up of Muslim musicians, but at times consisted of non-Muslims like
Cecil Payne, Sonny Rollins, Bud Powell, and was said to have some arrangements
written by Thelonious Monk. In Islamic theology, a “messenger” (or rasul, in Arabic) is
a subclass of prophet. Thus, naming this group “17 Messengers” denotes the idea that
Allah’s message, via Muhammad, was being musically communicated through the band.
As Christopher Chace points out,
“Blakey’s habitus, coupled with his frequently energetic and frenetic
performances, often blended to give just such an ecstatic meaning to his jazz in
particular, and African American culture in general. Performances of numbers
such as ‘Dance of the Infidels,’ ‘A Night in Tunisia’ ‘Buhaina Chant’ and
‘Abdallah’s Delight’ in particular, point to this important quality in Blakey’s jazz.
Even Blakey’s spoken language in concert reflected this prophetic attitude and
authority. Upon introducing the Messengers in concert on November 23, 1955,
Blakey describes Kenny Dorham as ‘a perennial favorite, who was with the
prophet of modern jazz, Charlie Parker...The uncrowned king, Kenny Dorham!’ ”
39
This not only points to the sonic and musical channeling of Islamic prophetics by the 17
Messengers, but towards a reinterpretation of the Ahmadiyya doctrine of jihad. The
classic Ahmadiyya interpretation, known as “jihad of words” is, according to Adil
Hussain Khan, “literally [translated to] ‘a struggle,’ which has an inner spiritual aspect
and an outer physical aspect associated with fighting oppression and social injustice.”40
The Ahmadiyya idea of jihad emphasizes fighting with “the pen”, rather than “the
sword”, and condemns forceful actions in the name of Allah. Black jazz musicians in the
1940s like the 17 Messengers were able to incorporate both the inner and outer aspects
Chace, Christopher W. “Prophetics in the Key of Allah: Towards an Understanding of Islam in Jazz.” Jazz
Perspectives 4.2 (2010): 166.
40
Khan, Adil Hussain. From Sufism to Ahmadiyya: A Muslim Minority Movement in South Asia. Bloomington &
Indianapolis: 2015. 186.
39
28
of jihad by reimagining the Ahmadiyya doctrine of “jihad of words” into a physical and
musical manifestation: a jihad of jazz.
Although the 1949 incarnation of the 17 Messengers never recorded, a recording
does exist under the name Art Blakey’s Messengers. On December 27, 1947, eight of the
soon-to-be 17 Messengers recorded five tunes in New York’s WOR studios. As Fred
Patterson states, “The Muslim musicians were Sahib Shihab (alto saxophone), Orlando
Wright (Musa Kaleem, tenor saxophone), Kenny Dorham (Abdul Hamid, trumpet),
Howard Bowe (Haleen Rasheed, trombone), Walter Bishop (Ibrahim Ibn Ismail, piano)
and Blakey. There is no evidence that the other two, Ernie Thompson (baritone
saxophone) and Laverne Barker (bass) followed Islam.”41 One of the songs recorded was
Talib Dawud’s composition “The Bop Alley.” Another was titled “Musa’s Vision” for
either tenor player Orlando Wright’s Arabic name or the Islamic name of Moses. Most of
the tunes were penned by Kenny Dorham, who in 1956 left the reformed Jazz
Messengers to lead a group called The Jazz Prophets. Their self-titled album included a
Dorham composition entitled “The Prophet,” with a similar harmonic structure to the
tune “All God’s Children Got Rhythm.”42 Despite the high calibre of musicianship in the
band, the 17 Messengers never found financial stability and dissolved by 1950. Other
musicians known to have been a part of the 17 Messengers include Ray Copeland (who
taught jazz composition at Hampshire College), Gary Mapp (who often played with
Thelonious Monk), Ivan Rolle, Bennie Harris, Kenny Drew, Yusef Lateef, and Idrees
Sulieman. Many of the 17 Messengers were often used as sidemen by Thelonious Monk.
Patterson, Fred. "The Jazz Messengers." Muslim World Music Day. The ARChive of Contemporary Music. 12
April 2011. Web.
42
Stewart, Tom. Liner Notes. Dorham, Kenny. The Jazz Prophets Vol. 1 Chess Records.
41
29
Between the 1947 and 1949 iterations of the Messengers, due to his inability to
find work as a drummer, Blakey worked on a ship crossing the Atlantic. Spending time
in Nigeria and Ghana, Blakey was one of the first American jazz musicians to travel to
Africa. Music journalists subsequently wrote that Blakey went to study drumming,
which he vehemently denied. In an interview in 1963 he said “I didn’t go to Africa to
study drums --somebody wrote that-- I went to Africa because there wasn’t anything
else for me to do. I couldn’t get any gigs, and I had to work my way over on a boat. I
went over there to study religion and philosophy. I didn’t bother with the drums, I
wasn’t after that. I went over there to see what I could do about religion.”43 As Ingrid
Monson points out, it’s interesting that Blakey so drastically separates his religious
journey from his musical one, especially since Islamic practices in West Africa had long
been reconciled with animist musical traditions. Art Blakey’s trip to West Africa, as well
as jazz musicians converting to Islam in general, is largely symbolic of a shift in thought
by African-American cultural figures towards internationalism, and representative of a
simmering anti-colonialism about to boil over. Not ten years after Blakey was there,
Ghana became the first African nation to gain independence from its European colonial
power.
Despite Blakey’s denial of studying drums in Africa,
some of his recorded material has a distinctly African
flare. Orgy in Rhythm particularly heightens the
importance of the drums, and has a total of eight
43
Monson, Ingrid. The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective. New York: Garland, 2000. 336.
30
percussionists on the record, as well as work by flautist Herbie Mann. The music clearly
conveys Blakey’s imagination of the West African landscape. Tracks on the album
reference his Arabic name, Abdallah ibn Buhaina, in their titles including “Buhaina
Chant” and “Abdallah’s Delight.” It was recorded in New York City on March 7, 1957: the
day after Kwame Nkrumah was declared Prime Minister and Ghana officially seized its
independence.
While Blakey continued recording and playing successfully with the Jazz
Messengers into the 1990s, Talib Dawud quit playing trumpet, at least professionally, to
study and teach Islam full time. He had gone on the hajj to Mecca at least once by 1962.
Talib Dawud kept one foot in the musical door however, as he continued to manage the
successful career of his third wife, Dakota Staton. They wed in Connecticut in 1958, and
she took the Muslim name Aliyah Rabia.
In New York, Dawud ran an African import shop, was an Imam at the Harlem
Muslim Brotherhood Mosque, and secretary of the Harlem African-American Citizens
31
Committee44. However, he moved to Philadelphia with Khalil Nasir Amhad in 1949 to
start a mosque called the International Muslim Brotherhood. In a 1961 article in the
New York Times entitled “Negro Extremist Groups Step Up Nationalist Drive,” the
Muslim Brotherhood is quickly profiled.
This group contends it is authentic Muslim. It is hostile to the Elijah
Muhammad movement [Nation of Islam], which its leader, Talib Ahmed Dawud,
has charged teaches race hatred. Mr. Dawud, 36, is the West-Indian-born
husband of Dakota Staton, singer. He has his headquarters in Philadelphia, but
shows up here at Tadak Enterprises, 30 East 125th Street. The group has been
known here for four years, and has been associated at times with the United
African Nationalist Movement. The local membership may be under seventy-five.
45
This mosque would become the first of many to set up the infrastructure of the
rich and diverse Islamic culture still present in Philadelphia today, despite the
notoriously anti-black Philadelphia police department’s direction of constant violence
toward its members. The International Muslim Brotherhood, which still stands today,
also signaled a shift towards the adaptation of orthodox Sunni practices by
African-Americans. Many mosques with influences from various non-orthodox Sunni
sects at this time even began to refer to themselves as Sunni, though Patrick Bowen
points out that to these African-Americans, Sunni “meant the Muslim world in general,
rather than as in distinction from Shi’ite understandings of the Caliphate”.46
By 1957, Dawud had joined forces with the Jamaican-American anthropologist J.
A. Rogers and Egyptian immigrant Mahmoud Alwan to start a foundation called The
Islamic and African Institute, where Dawud taught classes on Islam, Alwan on Arabic,
Clark Michael. “Rise in Racial Extremism Worries Harlem Leaders.” New York Times 25 January 1960: 1, 18.
Kihss, Peter. “Negro Extremist Groups Step Up Nationalist Drive.” New York Times 1 March 1961: 25.
46
Bowen, Patrick D. “The Search for ‘Islam’: African American Islamic Groups in NYC, 1904-1954.” The Muslim
World. 102.2 (2012) 268.
44
45
32
and Rogers on African history. According to Robert Dannin, the Institute “organized
parades in Philadelphia and New York for visiting African dignitaries like Kwame
Nkrumah and Sekou Touré on their frequent trips to the United Nations. It also
collected money, clothing, and medicine to send to the Algerian guerrillas in their
struggle against the French.”47 This illustrates yet another example of how
African-American jazz musicians used Islam as a tool to connect to international
decolonial struggles.
Clearly, Talib Dawud saw the necessity for connectivity of the ummah, Islam’s
global community of followers. He demonstrated this by uniting with Ahmadiyyas,
Moors, and immigrant Sunni Muslims in the International Muslim Brotherhood. He
forged connections between his community in Philadelphia and Harlem’s International
Muslim Brotherhood, and mosques in Boston, Providence, and Washington, D.C. It was
when the International Muslim Brotherhood attempted to move into Detroit that the
“productive tension” (see page 7) Moustafa Bayoumi speaks of between Ahmadis and
the Nation of Islam begins.
Detroit was the birthplace of Nation of Islam, and in the early post-war years, the
Midwest was a stronghold of the Nation. There must have been at least a minor presence
of the Ahmadiyyas though. In a 1959 New York Times article on the jazz pianist Ahmad
Jamal, it is uncovered that Jamal converted to Ahmadiyya Islam while in Detroit in 1950
(he later opened a jazz club in Chicago named after the famous Spanish Mosque, the
Alhambra). In 1959, Dawud started publishing articles in Chicago’s African-American
47
Dannin, Robert. Black Pilgrimage to Islam. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. 61.
33
newspaper New Crusader. In one, he included a picture of Nation of Islam’s founder
WD Fard with the header “White Man is God for Cult of Islam”.48 The Nation’s response
was to purchase as many copies of the paper as they could and destroy them.
Until 1962, a public slander campaign ensued between the two parties. Dakota
Stanton and Ahmad Jamal joined in, proclaiming that Elijah Muhammad couldn’t
perform the pivotal pillar of faith in Islam, the hajj, because he had been banned from
Saudi Arabia as an inauthentic Muslim. Even Malcolm X got involved, saying “ Even the
non-Muslim public knows that no Muslim sister who follows Mr. Muhammad would
think of singing sexy songs, half-naked in a night-club where people are getting drunk
and expect people to respect her as an ‘example’ of religious piety.”49 In 1962, Dawud
and Staton sued Elijah Muhammad. They blamed Staton’s faltering career on people
falsely associating them with Nation of Islam. They did not sue for monetary damages,
but desired Elijah Muhammad to stop using the terms “Muslim” and “Islam”. Robert
Dannin explains one of the key differences between the Ahmadiyyas and the Nation of
Islam: “From a generational standpoint, there was a further antagonism between
worldly hipsters, attracted to Sunni Islam as a fathomless watershed for countercultural
values, and the working poor or unemployed who turned over their salvation (and
wages) to the Nation of Islam in exchange for a minimum, ascetic personality cult.”50
Marable, Manning. Malcolm X: A Life Of Reinvention. New York: Viking, 2011. WD Muhammad Fard, born
Wallace Dodd Ford, is a figure shrouded in mystery. Lauded as the physical form of Allah in Nation of Islam
teachings, he is of unknown, non-black racial origins. In his World War I draft card, his birthplace is listed as
Afghanistan, although in the 1920 census it is listed as New Zealand, with his race identified as white.
49
ibid.
50
Dannin, Robert. Black Pilgrimage to Islam. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. 61.
48
34
Dakota Staton is one of the few women given mention in historical documents on
jazz and Islam. While women are forced into minimal visibility in this already obscure
topic, it is not unlikely that many women had influence on the spirituality of their male
counterparts. Women were already not represented proportionally in the
hyper-masculine world of bebop. However, another woman in Philadelphia would have
a profound impact on John Coltrane, one of the style’s most celebrated musicians.
Coltrane, by all accounts, never was a Muslim. The woman he married in 1955
however, was. Juanita Grubbs became Naima Coltrane, the namesake for one of John’s
most well known ballads from the 1960 album Giant Steps. Throughout the 1950s, as
well as the rest of his life, John Coltrane became increasingly spiritual, interested in
many diverse philosophies from Buddhism, Chinese philosophy, and others. It is in
Philadelphia however, that he engaged in serious reflection on Islamic thought. His
longtime pianist, McCoy Tyner, was a Muslim who took the name Sulieman Saud. They
both were influenced, musically and philosophically, by the Philadelphia local legend
pianist Hasaan Ibn Ali.
Coltrane’s piece de resistance A Love Supreme is littered with allusions to Islam
and is at its core, an expression of divine love. From the liner notes written by Coltrane,
he explains “During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual
awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, I
humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music.
I feel this has been granted through His grace. ALL PRAISE TO GOD.”51 The Arabic
51
Coltrane, John. Liner Notes. Coltrane, John. A Love Supreme. Impulse! Records, 1964. LP.
35
translation of which is al-hamd’ulillah, a commonly used phrase by Muslims from the
first sura of the Qur’an, the al-Fatiha. In the liner notes, he again invokes two Arabic
phrases. “I would like to tell you that NO MATTER WHAT… IT IS WITH GOD. HE IS
GRACIOUS [al-rahman] AND MERCIFUL [al-raheem]. HIS WAY IS IN LOVE,
THROUGH WHICH WE ALL ARE. IT IS TRULY- A LOVE SUPREME-.”52 Some
scholars like Hisham Aidi and Moustafa Bayoumi even suggest that the chanting in the
song “Acknowledgement” of “a love supreme” later morphs into the phrase “Allah
supreme” (Allahu Akbar). Bayoumi compares this to “a roving band of Sufi mendicants
singing their dhikr”, and says Coltrane “forever [delivered] a sound of Islam to the world
of American music.”53
This spiritual awakening Coltrane mentions was catalyzed when he locked
himself in his room in attempt to quit heroin and alcohol cold turkey. In this time, he
only allowed his wife Naima in to bring him water. By no means did Coltrane ever adopt
Islam outright, but the religion certainly affected the musical choices and tone on A
Love Supreme. In addition to contributing to an anti-colonial internationalist
socio-poltical outlook and a personal aesthetic curation, Islam, for jazz musicians, was a
way to keep a spiritual code to stay clean from drugs. Art Blakey agrees, in a 1963
interview he said “Islam brought the black man what he was looking for, an escape like
some found in drugs or drinking: a way of living and thinking he could choose freely.
ibid.
Bayoumi, Moustafa. “East of the Sun (West of the Moon): Islam, the Ahmadis, and African America.” Journal of
Asian American Studies 4.3 (2001): 47.
52
53
36
This is the reason we adopted this religion in such numbers. It was for us, above all, a
way of rebelling.”54
54
Monson, Ingrid. The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective. New York: Garland, 2000. 337.
37
A Different Kind Of Cat: The Legend of Hasaan Ibn Ali
McCoy Tyner’s modal piano playing is an essential component of the musicality
on A Love Supreme. An Ahmadiyya Muslim, Tyner’s introspective spirituality is a
constant in his discography. Some of his piano style comes from the influence
mentioned earlier, Hasaan Ibn Ali, a militantly original acolyte of Elmo Hope’s style.
According to drummer Donald Bailey, Hasaan was
a friend of Bud Powell and in with Thelonious Monk. And who was Monk’s idol?
Hasaan Ibn Ali. Nobody knows that! And Monk like him; he liked Art Tatum and
Hasaan Ibn Ali. And so did Coltrane and Jimmy Heath and all the rest of those
guys. He was a different kind of cat man. He would play; he sounded like an
advanced bebopper playing like Art Tatum and Bud Powell and Monk, but
advanced. Like nobody knew what he was doing.55
Although Bailey claims Hasaan was Monk’s “idol,” it is more plausible that they were
influencing each other concurrently.
Born in 1931 as William Langford, Hasaan was an eccentric Philadelphia pianist
who, according to anecdotal evidence, wore his ties cut in half. The free jazz bassist and
poet Henry Grimes remembers a young Hasaan roaming into his house unannounced
and playing the piano, which was something reportedly experienced by many South
Philadelphia families at the time. Hasaan held a rigorous practice routine, according to
Philadelphia stalwart and tenor saxman Odean Pope. Living with his parents well into
adulthood, Hasaan “would practice all day in his bathrobe, from the morning on,”
according to Pope. “His father would bring him breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the
piano. After he got dressed, there were three or four houses he would visit, where they
had pianos. The people would serve him coffee or cake, give him a few cigarettes or
55
Alberts, Don. A Diary of the Underdogs: Jazz in the 1960's in San Francisco. San Bruno, CA: Chill House, 2009.
38
maybe a couple of dollars from time to time.”56 Hasaan Ibn Ali seemingly never lost this
quirk from his childhood. By Max Roach’s account, when Hasaan was in New York he
would visit Roach’s apartment late at night after doing his rounds at all the jazz clubs.
When he got there he would sit at Roach’s piano and play alone and in the dark.
Coltrane and Pope would meet regularly with Hasaan Ibn Ali at both Coltrane and
Hasaan’s house to practice and play through Hasaan’s compositions. It is more than
likely that in these practice sessions the three also discussed Islam. Pope credits Hasaan
with introducing Coltrane to the idea of moving major seventh chords in thirds, fourths,
and seconds rather than in fifths like in traditional harmony. Coltrane’s album Giant
Steps uses this method on several tunes, and he subsequently was credited with this
lofty development of the music.
A 1986 interview in The New York Times with tenor saxophonist Bill Baron
describes Hasaan as a “very important local influence who
helped shape everybody's playing [in Philadelphia],” and “a
really original musician.”57 Taking Baron for his word
would suggest Hasaan’s influence was far-reaching, as
some of the most prolific figures were fostered by postwar
Philadelphia’s explosive and nurturing jazz institutions
which included student workshops, after-school programs,
the independent black musicians’ union Local 274, and 30
Davis, Francis. “Odean Pope: This Tenor Saxophonist Shows That Philadelphia-area Musicians Clearly Share
Some Traits.” The Philadelphia Inquirer 04 April, 1987: D1, D8.
57
Palmer, Robert. “Bill Baron Still Thrives On Change.” The New York Times. 14 February, 1986: C26.
56
39
different jazz clubs active between 1940 and 1960. Players like Reggie Workman, Lee
Morgan, Shirley Scott, Pat Martino, Walt Dickerson, Bobby Timmons (from The
Messengers), and countless others came up in Philadelphia at the same time as Ali, and
musicians older than him included Philly Jo Jones, Jimmy Smith, Benny Golson, Percy,
Jimmy, and Albert Heath, and more.
Despite his influence on some of the most revered figures in jazz, Hasaan has
largely been condemned to obscurity. His only released recording is 1965’s The Max
Roach Trio Featuring The Legendary Hasaan, with Art Davis on bass. All seven
compositions on the record were penned by Ali. In a review for AllMusic, jazz critic Scott
Yanow calls the record “Intense, somewhat virtuosic and rhythmic, yet often melodic in
a quirky way,” and, “a classic of its kind.”58 He did record a second album that was never
released. Under the name “Hasaan Ibn Ali Quartet,” the group recorded nine original
compositions (one entitled “Metaphysics”) between August and September 1965. The
group included Art Davis, Odean Pope, and drummer and fellow Muslim Khalil Madi.
Kept in a warehouse on the fourth floor of a New Jersey department store with every
other pre-1969 Atlantic master reel, the tape of this record was destroyed in a 1976 fire
that obliterated many jazz, soul, and R&B recordings. Odean Pope has been on record
claiming that Rahsaan Roland Kirk was trying to get it released at one point, so it is
possible copies do exist somewhere. The only other known recording of Hasaan is a
home recording of solo piano from Max Roach’s house, now housed in the Library of
58
Yanow, Scott. “Review: The Max Roach Trio Featuring the Legendary Hasaan.” AllMusic. Web.
40
Congress Max Roach collection. A barely-legible handwritten letter from Hasaan to Max
Roach is also a part of the collection.
Despite the lack of recorded evidence, Hasaan Ibn Ali’s stature as a highly
innovative, original, virtuosic, and influential jazz musician can be demonstrated
through what little we do have. Hopefully more material will be unearthed, and Ali’s
music and legacy will start to get some of the attention it deserves. It is no coincidence
that the large presence of Islam in Philadelphia in some ways introduced by Talib
Dawud had a direct influence on local musicians like Hasaan Ibn Ali, John Coltrane,
McCoy Tyner, Lynn Hope, and surely many others. Jazz from Philadelphia, in many
cases, has a universalist spiritual quality that reflects the goals of the Ahmadiyya
movement. As in any type of music, it is regional and localized jazz scenes with a
multiplicity of cultural elements constantly in contact, like in postwar Philadelphia, that
fosters innovative and exciting art.
41
Islam for the Soul of Jazz
The Ahmadiyya movement clearly had a significant impact on bebop music in the
1940s, 50s, and 60s. It offered a spiritual alternative to drugs, provided a defense from
racist Jim Crow policies while musicians were on tour, and opened doors for an
internationalist, anti-colonial, and pan-Afro-Asiatic political discourse. Specifically, the
Ahmadiyya theology demonstrated a universalist approach to spirituality, politics, and
culture that informed some of the most revered musicians of the era. This multicultural,
prophetic philosophy was a seemingly perfect pair to the highly syncretic art form of
jazz. It influenced the aesthetics of bebop, bringing African rhythms to the music of Art
Blakey, Sufi-like chants to Coltrane, and an introspective and meditative tone to McCoy
Tyner and Pharaoh Sanders (see his albums Karma and Jewels of Thought). Some
musicians directly borrowed from Arabic music: Yusef Lateef dabbled with instruments
such as the Palestinian arghul, developed modes and patterns that came from Arabic
scales, and presented his spirituality poignantly in his music. Ahmed-Abdul Malik, who
at one point played bass with Thelonious Monk, learned the oud and incorporated
maqam (an Arabic melodic system similar to Hindustani ragas) into jazz combos, as
well as paired jazz and Arab musicians together on his records.59
After the 1950s, new Ahmadiyya converts would not often be found in jazz circles.
The Ahmadiyyas saw a decline in black membership by the late 1950s. To some, the
movement had clearly failed to achieve its vision of a multiracial society, and some black
members observed that African-Americans were being prevented from positions of
For more information on Ahmed-Abdul Malik, see Robin Kelley’s chapter “Ahmed-Abdul Malik’s
Islamic Experimentalism” in his book Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary
Times.
59
42
leadership within the community. Moreover, the 1960s saw an influx of immigration
from areas such as Pakistan that reoriented the political stances of the Ahmadis to focus
on Pakistani politics and moved mosques to the suburbs rather than the inner cities.
The political upheaval of the 1960s and the rise of Nation of Islam alongside a more
militant and separatist black nationalism coincided with this, and surely influenced a
younger generation of musicians.
Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to ascertain which of the later Muslim
converts in jazz belonged to the Nation of Islam, and which became mainstream Sunni
Muslims. More first-hand research, especially interviews (which this paper so far lacks),
are required to sufficiently address the many questions left in the historiographical
record. While there is ample documentation concerning the impact of Nation of Islam
and its derivative, the Five Percenter movement, on hip-hop artists, the story of Nation
of Islam and its jazz practitioners is silent.
Two musicians that can be confirmed as having been a part of the Nation of Islam
were Grant Green and Larry Young. Both were heavily connected with and helped to
create soul-jazz and jazz-funk, which would later be sampled by DJs and rappers who
drew from and were informed by the political consciousness of Islam and its jazz
practitioners.
The guitar player Grant Green was one of several musicians who founded the first
chapter of Nation of Islam in St. Louis around 1954. According to the biography on
Green written by his daughter, Sharony Green, Grant was introduced to the Nation
through Herschel Harris, a local bass player. The pianist John “Albino Red” Chapman,
43
drummer Albert St. James and trombonist Charles Williams were other local converts.
On Grant Green, Chapman’s wife, Barbara Morris, remembers the religion “might have
been a little bit on the rigid side for him. But he was always a sympathizer!” and, “it
touched his heart like it touched everyone else’s.”60 From Green’s book, it is apparent
that her father took some aspects of Nation of Islam more seriously than others. For
example, he strictly followed the Muslim dietary code, even refusing to go to sleep
hungry on gigs if the rest of the band was eating pork and nothing else was available.
However, he never kicked his debilitating heroin habit which killed him in the end.
Despite the separatist ideology of NOI, Green was part of one of the first interracial
bands in St. Louis, playing a regular date at the Holy Barbarian. Having an interracial
band irked city officials who eventually chased the white beatnik club owner Ollie
Matheus out of the city.
The Hammond organist Larry Young, also known as Khalid Yasin, was a NOI
member who played in integrated bands as well, albeit much later on. In Tony Williams’
Lifetime, arguably the first jazz fusion band, Young developed a close friendship with
the young British guitarist John
McLaughlin, and the two often
discussed Islam. After McLaughlin
left the Lifetime band, Young
recorded on his Coltrane tribute
album with Carlos Santana, Love
Green, Sharony Andrews. Grant Green: Rediscovering the Forgotten Genius of Jazz Guitar. San Fransisco:
Backbeat Books, 1999. 66.
60
44
Devotion Surrender. While performing, Young would often wear a turban. On top of his
organ would be an open Qur’an and burning incense.
Young was a maverick of jazz organ. Before him, jazz Hammond players were
strictly following in the style of Jimmy Smith. Although Young’s first few albums are
within the confines of Smith’s hard-bop, soul-jazz style, Larry Young became more and
more influenced by John Coltrane and McCoy Tyner, and became known as the
“Coltrane of the organ.” His 1966 album Unity, with Elvin Jones, Woody Shaw, and Joe
Henderson, is his most highly acclaimed, and one of the essential mid-60s post-bop
records following A Love Supreme. Another 1966 record of his, Of Love and Peace,
includes the ten-minute free jazz track “Falaq”, titled after the second sura of the
Qur’an. His later albums did not sell as well as Unity, and were often free jazz and funk
influenced. These records included other Muslim musicians. His 1973 album Lawrence
of Newark credits percussionists Abdul Hakim, Umar Abdul Muizz, and Abdul Sahid,
and Pharoah Sanders appears on a track as well.
The drummer Idris Muhammad was perhaps the most sought-after drummer on
soul-jazz records, but he wasn’t a member of the Nation, he was a Sunni Muslim.
Muhammad grew up as a Catholic boy at the mouth of the Mississippi in New Orleans.
His birth name was Leo Morris. He describes the beginnings of his conversion to Islam
at some point in 1967 in his autobiography:
I go into the church and I light some candles. One day I meet this man who
apparently thinks I am Muslim because I am wearing a beard. And he sees this
sadness in me and so he explains to me about Islam. How it would help me
regenerate my life because I am sad about my wife and what was happening and I
am really down. So this man explains Islam to me and one thing leads to another
and him saying that maybe my life will be changed.
45
Then a Sunni Muslim friend of mine showed me the Quran. As I went to pick it
up he told me that I couldn’t touch it until I had performed a Wudu. Wudu is the
cleansing of one’s face, neck, hands and arms up to your elbows, rinsing out one’s
mouth and wiping one’s feet clean so that the contents of what you read can
penetrate to one’s soul. So I did that. And it did change my life. I read up on the
Muslim faith and it changed my life. And this all has stayed with me.61
This passage illustrates Muhammad’s serious commitment to Islamic practice, and the
book is littered with corroborative examples. Not all musicians had an equal spiritual
dedication to Islam, for example it was unlikely that Larry Young performed a Wudu
every time he placed the Qu’ran on his organ before a performance.
Idris Muhammad’s autobiography also demonstrates his devotion to following
the Five Pillars of Islam. He describes making the pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj, five
times. To Muhammad, Islam was the direct key to a successful musical career.
There was a great period in my life when I progressed spiritually. And my
spiritual progression made my music progress. So many things came through
that period….Every time I go to Mecca, it seems like the first recording I do upon
my return is a hit record for them. Whoever I come into contact with, they have a
hit record.62
Idris Muhammad credits the timing of his conversion to a paradigm shift in his life, one
similar to other musicians that studied Islam:
I changed my life when I became Muslim and from that day until now I have
always been successful. I have been in a lot of pain. I had been in a lot of trouble.
My first wife had left me and I was searching for something to pull me out of this
rut. I had become a junkie. I was neat, which means that really nobody knew. I
was a clean junkie. I wasn’t around a lot of people who were junkies.
But the trumpet player Lee Morgan discovered me at a dealer’s house one time
and confronted me. When I told him about the heroin, he cursed me, grabbed
me, shook me, and then threw me in the shower and blasted me with cold water.
Then I went home and stayed inside my house for a week.
Muhammad, Idris and Alexander, Britt. Inside The Music: The Life Of Idris Muhammad. Lexington, Ky: 2012.
175.
62
Ibid. 178, 179
61
46
Cold turkey. I got hold of myself. I could think more clearly and I felt better about
myself. I learned about how to treat human beings. And that’s one thing out of
being a Muslim, I learned how important we are as human beings. 63
For Muhammad, the Muslim religion offered an
alternative to his addiction. It became an essential
ingredient in his psyche, and therefore his music.
Although his spirituality was a serious internal
spiritual matter, Muhammad still utilized his
Muslim image outwardly in concerts and on
album covers, especially his first four records
from 1970 to 1976.
For others, Islam was not as present in their public personas. The soul-jazz guitar
player Melvin Sparks adopted the name Sparks-Hassan later in his career, though rarely
seemed to present it outwardly. The jazz singer Dennis Day attended Sparks’ funeral in
2011 and had this to say:
“Melvin never seemed to wear his faith on his sleeve, he lived it with a generous
and buoyant spirit. Having known and gigged with Melvin over the years, I’m
hopeful and believe that racial and religious tolerance are achievable. He left a
fine example for his fellow Muslims, and Non- Muslims alike to emulate in terms
of learning to respect and value others solely on the basis of the content of their
character.”64
Certainly dozens if not hundreds of other well known jazz musicians were and are
practicing Muslims without advertising themselves as such. While hip-hop musicians
such as Rakim, Brand Nubian, Wu-Tang Clan, and dozens of others turned to the Five
Muhammad, Idris and Alexander, Britt. Inside The Music: The Life Of Idris Muhammad. Lexington, Ky: 2012.
176.
64
Day, Dennis. “Melvin Sparks Allowed his Music to Transcend Race and Religion”. Greatest Black Guitarist.
Blogspot. 17 March, 2011. Web.
63
47
Percent Nation, an offshoot of the Nation of Islam, former NOI members were taking a
turn towards a more private, Sunni-affiliated interpretation of the Qur’an. Because of
removal of Islamic imagery from the public sphere of jazz, it is impossible to know how
many jazz musicians currently practice Islam. There are a few younger performers that
are known Muslims however.
In post-9/11 America, an Islamic public persona has taken on new meanings. In
the 20th century, racist imaginings of Muslims were connected to an Orientalist
excoticism, fear of polygamy, and non-Christian interpretations of God. Today, Muslims
are a vilified “other”; religious zealots intent on destroying the American way of life and
the liberties that go along with it. Black American-born jazz musicians are not exempt
from this stereotype. In 2005, 44-year-old bassist and self-proclaimed martial arts
expert Tarik Shah, who has worked with Abbey Lincoln and Ahmad Jamal among others
and is described by JazzTimes as “a mainstay of the Harlem jazz community”65 was
arrested on charges of conspiring to support al-Qaeda. In reality, Shah was entrapped by
FBI agents posing as an aged ex-Black Panther wanting to take bass lessons and an
al-Qaeda operative. These informants went to absurd lengths to get Shah minimally
involved in a fictitious plot. For nearly a year they secretly recorded and eventually
goaded him to show off a couple martial arts moves to the phony terrorist. Shah, who
the New York Times described as “a boastful, albeit somewhat bumbling man, an almost
inconceivable mix of bassist, ninja and would-be terrorist,”66 was kept in solitary
confinement for thirty-three months while awaiting trial, despite no actual martial arts
Adler, David R. “The Trial of Tarik Shah.” JazzTimes. May 2006. Web.
Feuer, Alan. “Tapes Capture Bold Claim of Bronx Man in Terror Plot.” New York Times: 8 May, 2007.
65
66
48
training or direct aid to any terrorist organization. Outside of the courthouse, Tarik
Shah’s lawyer, Anthony Ricco, told the press “These cases are political. Convictions in
these cases are very important to the government, because it allows them to justify
billions of dollars spent in the war on terror.”67 Tarik Shah is still in prison.
Despite the doubly-edged hostile and violent environment of being both black
and Muslim in post 9/11 America, black Muslims still exist at the cultural forefront of
(perhaps) America’s greatest art form. On the snowy Sunday afternoon of January 19th,
2002, the American Society for Muslim Advancement held an event in the St. John the
Divine Cathedral in Manhattan. It was a series of exhibitions and performances by
Muslim artists as a response to 9/11 entitled Reflections At a Time of Transformation:
American Muslim Artists Reach Out to New Yorkers. A performance of compositions,
written in response to 9/11, were performed by jazz musicians alongside Pakistani violin
players. The musicians included violinists Dilshad and Summer Hussain, as well as Idris
Muhammad, James Blood Ulmer (a visionary guitar player who played with the likes of
Art Blakey, Larry Young, Pharoah Sanders, and Ornette Coleman), and trumpeter Barry
Danielain. At the event, ASMA founder Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf proclaimed to the
audience, “The greatest moments in Islamic history, those epochs when Islamic
civilization peaked, were periods when the arts were highly prized. For the modern
Muslim, a crisis in the area of art has contributed to perhaps the profoundest crisis
Muslims face today, a crisis of the soul."68 Since the 1940s, black Muslim jazz musicians
have consistently offered a prescription to this crisis of the soul- their music.
67
68
Adler, David R. “The Trial of Tarik Shah.” JazzTimes. May 2006. Web.
Aidi, Hisham. “The Milder, Gentler, Side of Islam.” ASMA. Web.
49
Barry Danielain is a white convert to the Tijaniyyah Sufi tariqah (or order). A jazz
trumpeter who plays in Bruce Springsteen’s backing band, Danielain’s ethnicity perhaps
enables him to be one of the more outspoken and publicly Muslim jazz musicians in the
21st century. Despite his whiteness however, he has some wise words on the confluence
of religion and music that echoes many jazz musicians before him:
I tend to be very spiritual in my worldview. I suppose my long journey to Islam is the
most obvious example that most musicians are spiritual. We live in a culture that, to some
extent, divorces spirituality from the "mix". This culture has some "religious"
components to it, but for me, there's a difference between "religiosity" and "spirituality."
I think most artists realize that they are a conduit, that music is a gift from God. So the
more connected we are to the source of that gift, the more we purify ourselves to receive
that gift. Music has this power and I've seen it in action. It can break down all the
illusionary walls that separate us as human beings. It is a universal language, which is
why you can go anywhere and play music and people will respond. I've played the Blues
in Korea and Latin Jazz in Finland and despite the cultural differences, the people smile
and feel joy.69
Despite jazz’s seemingly secular tone the music is, for many musicians, not only compatible with
Islam, but inseparable from it. Tensions have existed between the Nation of Islam and the
Ahmadiyya movement, between a separatist black nationalism and an internationalist black
consciousness. Contradictions have unfolded. For example, the Nation of Islam had a strict
ascetic anti-drug policy, and despite deep discipline to the Muslim dietary code Grant Green
never kicked his heroin addiction. Jazz musicians have not, and will not ever, practice Islam in
the exact same way for the same reasons. They do however, share some universal qualities. To
its Muslim practitioners, jazz is a method of forming a direct connection with the Creator, a
weapon of jihad, the internal struggle with 600 years of systemic oppression as well as the
69
Interview with Barry Danielain. ASMA. Web.
50
conflict within oneself to become the best Muslim and human one can be. Above all, jazz is a
method of sharing this divine love with all who open their ears and hearts to it.
51
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