# Horace Tapscott was a force in L.A. Jazz. A new Set may expand his reach: Video, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2023/06/30/horace-tapscott-was-a-force-in-l-a-jazz-a-new-set-may-expand-his-reach-video-photos/
- Published: 2023-06-30T00:02:34+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**“60 Years,” a compilation marking the 60th anniversary of his Pan Afrikan Peoples
Arkestra, spotlights the pianist and community organizer, who died in 1999.**

There’s a name engraved in the sidewalk along Degnan Boulevard in Los Angeles’ Leimert
Park neighborhood: Horace Tapscott, the local pianist and organizer whose ensemble,
the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, gave many musicians their first gigs and helped
heal a community impacted by racism.

“He saved Los Angeles when it comes to progressive music,” said the vocalist Dwight
Trible, a performer with the Arkestra since 1987, in a telephone interview. “Because
if you were going to get involved in that, you had to come through Horace Tapscott.”

Tapscott started the group in 1961 and maintained it until his death in 1999, at
64. Yet his name has never rung as loudly outside of L.A. He didn’t tour much and
his albums of vigorous Afrocentric jazz weren’t released on mainstream record labels.
A new compilation titled “60 Years,” out Friday, may change that.

The double LP set collects unreleased songs from every decade of the Arkestra’s 
existence, up to its present-day iteration with the drummer Mekala Session at the
helm. Through a mix of home and live recordings, along with written track-by-track
breakdowns from past and present members in the album’s liner notes, “60 Years” 
offers perspective on a group that’s largely flown under the radar.

Featuring Bill Madison on drums; David Bryant on bass; Lester Robertson on trombone;
and Arthur Blythe, Jimmy Woods and Guido Sinclair on saxophone; the Arkestra started
in Tapscott’s garage and grew dramatically over the following 17 years.

Tapscott founded the band and the Union of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension,
an artists’ collective, to provide more gigs for progressive jazz musicians living
in L.A., and to get local children involved in the arts. His own journey in music
began when he was young; his mother, Mary Lou Malone, was a stride pianist and tuba
player and as a teen he played trombone locally before entering the Air Force.

After a tour of the South with the vibraphonist Lionel Hampton’s band, he wasn’t
enamored with life on the road. During a stop in L.A., where Tapscott had lived 
since he was 9, he hopped off Hampton’s tour bus for good. “No one discovered I 
was gone until they got to Arizona,” he said in a 1982 interview.

“He was way more interested in feeling and sounding like himself with his friends,
who were also really unique,” Session said on a video call from Los Angeles. Still,
Tapscott’s mission stretched beyond music. During the Watts riots in 1965, he had
the band play in the middle of the road on a flatbed truck. (Police responded, with
guns drawn.) The group would often perform in churches, community centers, prisons
and hospitals for little to no money, and at benefits for Black Panther leaders,
drawing attention from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Though Tapscott released his first album, “The Giant Is Awakened,” with a separate
quintet in 1969, his debut LP with the Arkestra didn’t arrive until “The Call,” 
a mix of bluesy ballads and orchestral arrangements with grand flourishes, in 1978.
Along the way, noted musicians and vocalists like Nate Morgan, Kamau Daaood, Adele
Sebastian and Phil Ranelin played in the band.

![Horace Tapscott's 'Why Don't You Listen?': New Jazz Release – Rolling Stone](https://
i0.wp.com/www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Horace-Tapscott-Warren-
Berman.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

Trible came across Tapscott in the late 1980s as a singer in another group who wanted
to work with the Arkestra. Two weeks after they performed separately at a festival,
Tapscott offered an invitation. “He said, ‘I want you to come to my house tomorrow
at 3 o’clock,’ and he hung up the phone,” Trible remembered with a laugh. “And just
about every concert that Horace played from that time on, I sang with him in some
capacity.”

Trible performed a fiery rendition of “Little Africa,” a rapturous gospel song, 
with the current version of the Arkestra at National Sawdust in Brooklyn earlier
this month. The festive night of shouts and praise featured older and younger Arkestra
members, and served as a showcase for Session, the band’s leader since 2018; Mekala
is the son of the saxophonist Michael Session, who led the band before him.

In an interview before the gig, Session recalled joining the band as a teen. “I’m
13 and my first gig with the Ark is with Azar Lawrence,” he exclaimed, referring
to the noted saxophonist and sideman to Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner and Freddie Hubbard.“
It’s actually a very humbling thing to be a medium, a conduit for the ancestors 
trying to spread this vibration as far and as hard as possible.”

The idea for the compilation arose shortly after the band’s 50th anniversary, which
came and went without much fanfare. The collective vowed to not let that happen 
for its 60th. “We were like, ‘We’re going to make a product that will introduce 
a bunch of people to this band in a way that’s comprehensive and concise,” Session
said. “This is for us, by us. We wanted to present something to the people from 
the band that can directly pay the band and support the band, and then be turned
into other projects. It’s the first time the Ark has been able to do that, really.”

Renewed interest in Tapscott and the Arkestra dates back at least seven years, when
a new crop of L.A. jazz musicians — including the bassist Thundercat, the saxophonist
Kamasi Washington and the producer and multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin — helped
the superstar rapper Kendrick Lamar create his avant jazz-rap opus “To Pimp a Butterfly,”
shedding light on the city’s still-fertile jazz scene. Since then, various labels
have reissued Tapscott’s work. But the music on “60 Years,” remastered from old 
cassettes and CDs, hasn’t been heard beyond the Arkestra.

Six decades since Tapscott formed the band, Session said the group’s mission hasn’t
changed, and he vowed to continue pushing forward. “I want to get weirder. I want
to get back to how Horace did shows at prisons and high schools and colleges for
free,” he said. “We could sell out Carnegie Hall and then come home and do the same
set for 50, 60 cats. I want that balance. It sounds impossible, but we can do it.”

Horace Tapscott founded the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and the Union of God’s 
Musicians and Artists Ascension, an artists collective.

![A black-and-white photo of a man playing an upright piano, sweating and looking
intently down at the keys.](https://i0.wp.com/static01.nyt.com/images/2023/07/15/
arts/15horace-tapscott/15horace-tapscott-articleLarge.jpg?resize=640%2C428&ssl=1)

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