Things we like: William Parker, Ava Mendoza, Zoh Amba, Ra Kalam Bob Moses

Author with Ra Kalam Bob Moses, Oak Cliff, 4.10.2022.
Photo by Angie Early.

My friend Mike gifted me a copy of William Parker's Mayan Space Station, a fiery trio date with Ava Mendoza on guitar inhabiting the territory staked out by John McLaughlin on Devotion and Sonny Sharrock on Ask the Ages. I've been very remiss in paying attention to Parker's important career -- he's been the standard bearer for NYC free jazz for awhile now -- but I was preoccupied with Detroit ramalama during the time of his ascendancy as a leader with In Order To Survive and the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, and I was fixated on local stuff during the decade of his breakthrough with the free bop outlier O'Neal's Porch. Somewhere around here I have a VHS of Parker playing with Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley, and I've heard a few things of his with David S. Ware and Peter Brotzmann. Going forward, I intend to do better. 

Parker's also on O Life, O Light, the second release from the youthful (turned 22 on April 28) saxophone prodigy Zoh Amba, whom I first got wind of via Ra Kalam Bob Moses after his appearance at the "For Dennis" event in Dallas earlier this month. Zoh Amba's from rural Tennessee via San Francisco and New England conservatories, and Ra Kalam, who'd played in a duo with her at a festival in Tennessee (he relocated from Boston to Memphis late last year), said she "sounds like Ayler." This was borne out by live YouTube videos, but moderated somewhat by a listen to O, Sun, her debut on John Zorn's Tzadik label, on which her voice is remarkably mature for one so young and her tunes have a spiritual yearning that goes beyond Coltrane worship. On her social medias, she's been exploring standup bass. A performer full of promise, who can go a lot of different ways. Which is kind of what being 22 is all about, I guess.

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Mendoza's been around a couple of decades. From SoCal, classically trained but steeped in Hendrix, punk, no wave and metal, she studied improv with Fred Frith at Mills (she's the other guitarist in the videos of his 2014 reimagining of his "dance music" album Gravity). On her solo debut, 2010's Shadow Stories, she uses the likes of Pee Wee King's "The Tennessee Waltz" and Leadbelly's "Goodnight, Irene" to perform the skilled fingerpicker's alchemy, sounding like two or more guitars, but with a raw, distorted tone. She also fronts a noisy, mostly instrumental rock trio, Unnatural Ways, whose most recent album The Paranoia Party features her vocals on every track, singing lyrics that relate border migrants to space aliens in a way fellow strangers in a strange land Sun Ra and George Clinton would understand. Her latest solo album, New Spells, is more compositionally focused, featuring new works by Mendoza, Devin Hoff, Trevor Dunn, and John Dikeman, made edgy by her spiky, skronky sound.

I've spent the last couple of days listening through a stack of CDs Ra Kalam kindly sent me. The son of a jazz publicist, he grew up on Central Park West in the same apartment building as Art Blakey, Max Roach, and Elvin Jones. Rahsaan Roland Kirk was a friend; Charles Mingus used to come over to play piano. "Fifty Bob Moseses ago," he was present at the creation of jazz-rock before it became an athletic event: The Free Spirits with Larry Coryell in 1966, the Gary Burton Quartet the following year (he's credited as "Lonesome Dragon" on A Genuine Tong Funeral because Carla Bley was mad at him), Compost with Jack DeJohnette and Harold Vick in the early '70s. During the heyday of Slug's in Greenwich Village, he was living on the Bowery for $26 a month, subsisting on brown rice, tuna, and LSD. 

The records released under Moses' name in the '70s and '80s -- the self released Bittersuite in the Ozone (1975) and the Gramavision releases When Elephants Dream of Music (1983), Visit with the Great Spirit (1984), and The Story of Moses (1987; a Biblical-themed concept album) -- showcase his rhythmic imagination, compositional skill, and mastery of jazz and Latin musics. Onstage at The Wild Detectives last month, Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez importuned Ra Kalam to recite the spoken word bit from the end of Great Spirit's "Monktional" -- a regular spin on their late father Dennis's radio show. When Ra Kalam couldn't remember the last couple of lines, Aaron filled them in.

During those years there were other recording sessions, many unreleased at the time, which Ra Kalam is now bringing out, along with newer works, under his Ra Kalam Records imprint. Vintage Visionary Vignettes collects duos and trios "recorded in NYC sometime in the '70s," including a trio with vocalists Jeanne Lee and Sheila Jordan (their only recordings together), and one where Moses plays bass clarinet alongside John Clark's French horn and Bob Stewart's tuba. A pair of '79 sessions capture the same vibe as the Gramavisions: Wheels of Colored Light (originally released in '92 on a German label) documents a quartet teaming Lee and Moses with Ra Kalam's high school buddy Dave Liebman on saxes, flutes, and musette, and Terumasa Hino on cornet, wood flute, and percussion, while Home In Motion sets them amid a larger ensemble.

A '94 Gramavision release reissued on Ra Kalam's label (as are Elephants and Great Spirit), Time Stood Still features another large ensemble including an eight-piece horn section ("The Boston Illharmonic") and the influence of hip-hop (the use of loops, which Moses refers to in liner notes as "Simul-Circular Loopology;" a cameo rapping appearance by his son Rafael Moses). The incandescent guitar solo on "Deusa Do Amor" is by Tisziji Munoz, Ra Kalam's spiritual teacher, who recorded with Pharaoh Sanders for India Navigation in '77 and has his own extensive body of work. (The name Ra Kalam, bestowed by Tisziji, means "the inaudible sound of the invisible sun.") Tisziji's gorgeous tone -- he calls it his Heart Fire Sound -- and high velocity flights of inspired expression are worth further investigation.

While his early recordings withstand comparison to the work of Gil Evans and his own formative influence Mingus, in later years, Ra Kalam has gravitated toward spiritually focused spontaneous composition: "I play to heal myself. I want to play what I don't know." An example of this approach is Mother Sky, a 2006 album of spontaneous percussion duets with Tupac Mantilla Gomez. "Just a deep breath together," Ra Kalam wrote in the liner notes, "and HIT on the exhale." The result sounds at times like a teeming rainforest, at others like a bustling city street, at all times like a deep conversation between two masters of rhythm.

Another good example of this approach is Purecircle, the document of his duo with bassist Damon Smith, with whom he performed in the quintet at the "For Dennis" event, released on Smith's Balance Point Acoustics label.

Music from a Parallel Dimension, a May 2011 duet with Liebman, has the muscular energy and drive of music made by players who first jammed together as young men, while Off World Meditations, recorded in November that year, documents an encounter between Ra Kalam and multi-wind player Daniel Carter, who'd played on Bittersuite in the Ozone and in Gunter Hampel's Galaxy Dream Band. The music sounds scored, although it's completely improvised. Carter's multiple overdubbed horn parts fit together like the ones Julius Hemphill overdubbed on Blue Boye. Ra Kalam is particularly proud of his own "delicate, ethereal, non macho" playing here. (Hearing him live, it struck me that while he plays a lot and digs deep, he doesn't hit hard.)

A similarly effect is achieved on Electric Organic Symphony, where acoustic horn, bass, and drum parts were overdubbed between 2017 and 2019 over lysergically inspired synth duets Moses and Mike Nock laid down in early '70s NYC. Thanks to Ra Kalam and David J. Sullivan's mixing, and the mastering by Jeff Lipton and Maria Rice, the music all sounds of a piece. I was skeptical when Damon Smith told me that he and Ra Kalam were planning on overdubbing improv on tracks recorded by Henry Kaiser and Vinny Golia for their Astral Plane Crash project. "You can't do improv that way," I thought. Then again, it's all about listening. After listening to Ra Kalam's Carter and Nock collabs, I'm less skeptical.

The Skies of Copenhagen (2020 Levitation Remix) is a double CD's worth of fervent testimony, with a nonet of Danes -- three horns, guitar, piano, two basses, two drummers -- to the abiding influence of Coltrane's spiritual search. There are tunes by Danish free jazz paterfamilias/Ascension participant John Tchicai, guitarist Martin Nilsson, and Ra Kalam, and lots of collective improv. Nishoma (2020 Drumcentric Remix) is a reimagining of a Y2K album, dedicated to Ra Kalam's mother Greta Moses, featuring lots of Afro-Cuban grooves, a tap dancer, and the Moses family's 415 Central Park West neighbor Abbey Lincoln singing "How Deep Is the Ocean." Finally, recorded on Coltrane's birthday, 1987, Love Everlasting (2021 Remix) is a reboot of a '99 release by Tisziji and Ra Kalam with a group including John Medeski on piano. From the opening title track, which recalls the Ornette of Crisis!, the album is a bath of healing sounds and lyrical beauty. Music's a deep well; how fortunate are we.