Both/And

ROUND TRIP, PART TWO
Beaver Harris and 360 Degree Music Experience
From Rag Time to No Time
360 Records : 1974

BH, drums and percussion; Keith Marks, flute; Howard Johnson, baritone sax, bass clarinet; Dave Burrell, piano, Indonesian balaphone; Cecil McBee, bass; Ron Carter, bass; Sunil Garg, sitar; Titos Sompa, conga, quica, finger cymbals, Lingala; Coster Massamba, conga, Lingala; Auguste Malonga Quasquelourd, conga, Lingala; Leopoldo, percussion. Francis Haynes, steel drum. Arranged and conducted by Burrell.

Fans and critics of avant garde jazz too often become involved in drawing arbitrary boundaries around the music and defending their self-proclaimed turf. They become arbiters of what music is avant (or free, or experimental, or whatever) enough to meet their criteria and decide which people express their views in the correct fashion so as to be proper gatekeepers. For newcomers trying to find their way into this music, the community can sometimes seem pretty daunting.

We here at D:O could give a fuck about any sort of cred. We’re big tent people and welcome folks coming to enjoy this music for whatever reason. Jazz should be made more friendly, not less. The music we showcase here is what we loosely term adventurous jazz (or “adj,” for short). The history of this music is wide and multi-faceted, the tradition feeding the avant garde, and vice versa. It’s not a series of fiefdoms, but part of a larger continuum that spills out into electronics, rock, funk, blues, various ethnic traditions, and much more. Jazz as a unified field, y’all.

We’re not pulling this out of thin air: Musicians and ensembles like Beaver Harris’s 360 Degree Music Experience have pointed the way for decades. Harris’s band is perfect embodiment of how adventurous music doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition but can embrace multiple possibilities and streams simultaneously. The first side of Rag Time to No Time (a five-star album per the under-appreciated Rolling Stone Jazz Guide, which dubbed it “a brilliant demonstration of the universality of rhythm”) showcases Harris and his group in more traditional modes. On the flip, “Round Trip, Part Two” melds styles, segueing between drum solos, small band explorations in the manner of the Black Artists Group or thereabouts, and more percussion; between fast, rhythmic drives and slow, open lopes; between thick sonic slabs and single lines.

The message of the music is simple: “You are welcome here.”

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Also: Bill Shoemaker, head cheese over at Point of Departure, gave this album a very thorough and thoughtful reappraisal in PoD’s second issue, back in November 2005. Check it.

CALLING OUT: If anyone has any Beaver Harris they’d care to share with us for the common cause (including  a decent sounding version of the full Rag Time LP), drop us line via the email address up top. We would hugely appreciate it.

LATER: Hat tip and much thanks to reader Gary Jardim for providing full personnel listing.