FATHER OF ORIGIN, eremite’s acclaimed retrospective of early recordings by multi-instrumentalist, organizer, & archivist Juma Sultan & his Aboriginal Music Society, is finally available digitally. Drawn from Sultan’s mammoth private archive, the long out-of-print x2LP/x1CD boxed set, released in 2011, exposed some of the most extraordinary & explosive free jazz of its era to the light of day for the first time, including the earliest known recordings of Julius Hemphill, Frank Lowe, & Abdul Wadud.
Working with Juma Sultan to debut these historical recordings remains one of the proudest achievements in the nearly 30 year history of eremite records, & it is with special thanks again, & mad love & appreciation, to Juma Sultan, that we make FATHER OF ORIGIN available digitally, for the time being, to the human clan.
Explore 2024 recordings by Juma Sultan's Aboriginal Music Society here jumasultansaboriginalmusicsociety.bandcamp.com/album/sundance
"A cool, collected document of a wobbly, scratchy time." --Ben Ratliff, The New York Times
"Here you get long jams – the major works here range from 18 to 48 minutes – developed on the rhythmic dialogue of Sultan and Abuwi. It’s not directly derived from any African source, but it’s strongly rooted in a belief in the transformational act of drumming. You can trace Juma’s sources to that black band playing in New Orleans’ Congo Square in the early years of the 19th century, and this music seems like an attempt to recover that lost power, just as this box set is a special invocation of the musical legacy of its era. Juma remarks, “I was playing the kind of drums that I felt the guys were playing when they’d cut off your hands and didn’t allow you to play [here in America]. . . ” This is forceful music that aims to strip away the limitations of jazz, including the limitations of received language and virtuosity. It’s a stirring aesthetic for improvised music." --Stuart Broomer, Point of Departure
"The music documented on Father Of Origin is unadulterated free jazz, but there is a palpable sense of newly found energy in the music, one as steeped in the hippy vibe of Woodstock as it was in the Black Arts Movement." --Bill Shoemaker, The Wire
Deep archeology into a long buried & previously undocumented chapter in the history of the early ’70s loft era brings forth the revelatory Father of Origin (MTE-54/55/56), Eremite’s box set retrospective of percussionist/bassist Juma Sultan’s Aboriginal Music Society. Drawn from Sultan’s mammoth private archive of recordings, this ground-breaking set includes two audiophile LPs & a CD, a 28 page 12x12" book featuring previously unpublished photographs & ephemera & a detailed historical essay by jazz scholar Michael Heller, all manufactured to highest quality-freak standards. This old-school multi-media extravaganza exposes some of the most extraordinary & explosive free jazz of the period to the light of day for the first time.
Established by Sultan & percussionist Ali Abuwi in Woodstock in 1968, Aboriginal Music Society was both a radical arts presenting organization & a killer band. Dedicated to musician self-sufficiency and stubbornly non-commercial, AMS waged guerrilla cultural warfare against mainstream America from strongholds in rural Woodstock & from lofts on New York’s Lower East Side. For ten years, Sultan & the loose alliance of like-minded musicians in AMS produced independent concerts, owned & operated its own recording studio, & collaborated with legendary artist-run New York loft space Studio We on performances & educational programs. But during that whole time, they never released a record.
Inspired by an emerging understanding of African cultures & the political ideas of the black power movement, AMS synthesized an African approach to percussion and collective performance with the revolutionary jazz of its day. In open-ended free improvisations they played an incendiary mix of massive trap kit & hand drum grooves & heaven-storming free jazz. The music was a cry of freedom, a declaration of black cultural artistic & political independence; & until now it has not been heard since the day it was made.
Father of Origin for the first time reveals the cross fertilization between the New York loft scene & an extremely rich Woodstock music scene, a powerful confluence of artists & sensibilities that has long gone unacknowledged. In Woodstock Sultan & Abuwi were tight with members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, including saxophonist Gene Dinwiddie, guitarist Ralph Walsh, bassist Rod Hicks, & the late, great AACM drummer Philip Wilson, all of whom crop up on different sessions in Father of Origin. Sultan himself easily bridged musical genres. He was a member of Jimi Hendrix’s Gypsy Sun & Rainbows & performed in the band's legendary Woodstock Festival concert. In New York, AMS worked with a huge cross section of the wildly fertile & creative loft scene, including saxophonists Frank Lowe & Julius Hemphill, trumpeter Earl Cross, cellist Abdul Wadud, & drummer Charles “Bobo” Shaw, who are all heard from on Father of Origin.
The first of the set’s two LPs, a 1970 Boston studio date, features a New York-Woodstock sextet—including Sultan, Abuwi, Dinwiddie, Wilson, Walsh, & Cross—engaged in a characteristically percussion-heavy improvisation. The African-to-free percussion maintains a relentless rhythmic pressure on the band, and Dinwiddie responds with a powerful performance whose genuine free-jazz fire will completely re-write the book on the late saxophonist. The fourteen minute "Ode to a Gypsy Son," Sultan's meditation on Hendrix, finds Sultan, Abuwi & Cross over-dubbing flutes, home-made wind instruments, chanting & percussion into a startlingly original & deeply psychedelic veneration.
The other vinyl disc features a private jam session by Sultan, Abuwi, & saxophonist Frank Lowe at the Broadway headquarters of AMS. Recorded in April 1971, it predates by several months Lowe's recording debut on Alice Coltrane's World Galaxy & by over two years his debut recording as a leader, the classic ESP side Black Beings, making it the earliest example of the free jazz titan’s music currently available. The circ*mstances were casual, but definitely not the music. Lowe was reaching a coruscating early career peak & the percussionists goad him to some very intense playing. The session is the best illustration we have of Lowe's stated early ambition to fuse Pharaoh Sanders & John Coltrane into a single cosmic cry.
The CD features yet another historic meeting—an undated concert with the Woodstock crew & a trio of Midwesterners recently relocated to New York—saxophonist Julius Hemphill, cellist Abdul Wadud, & drummer Charles “Bobo” Shaw, all members of the St. Louis music & arts collective, Black Artists Group. Wadud & Hemphill are outstanding in this sprawling Aboriginal Music Society collective improvisation with soloists weaving in & out of the teeming drums & percussion.
Whenever they performed—whether in the studio, the bandstand, in private jam sessions or on the Woodstock village green—Juma Sultan & the Aboriginal Music Society played with a full sense of the occasion. Every opportunity to make music was an event and they knew it, throwing everything they had into the music every time. Father of Origin presents three of the most memorable of those events, played by a band previously lost to history. --Ed Hazell
released August 14, 2024
MTE-54
Ali Abuwi: hand drums & percussion, flutes
Earl Cross: trumpet, mellophone, piano
Gene Dinwiddie: tenor & soprano saxophone, flute
Juma Sultan: bass, hand drums & percussion, ahoudt, wooden flutes
Ralph Walsh: electric guitar
Philip Wilson: drum kit
possible unidentified additional hand drummer/percussionist (1,2,3)
unidentified background vocalists (4)
MTE-55
Abuwi: hand drums & percussion
Frank Lowe: tenor saxophone & percussion
Sultan: bass, hand drums & percussion, alto saxophone
MTE-56
Abuwi: hand drums & percussion, oboe
Dinwiddie: flute
Julius Hemphill: alto saxophone
Rod Hicks: bass
Charles "Bobo" Shaw: hand drums & percussion
Sultan: bass, hand drums & percussion
Abdul Wadud: cello
Wilson: drum kit
MTE-54 recorded 70-09-11, Intermedia Sound Studios, Boston MA
MTE-55 recorded 70-04-02, AMS studio, NYC
MTE-56 recorded post 1969, probable location Tinker Street Cinema, Woodstock NY
producers: Juma Sultan & Michael Ehlers
all music & images licensed from Juma Sultan
