The world of Great Black Music had its prophets, intellectuals, and mockers. It also had its inspired shamans, and Joeseph Jarman was just such a man. He would have been 82 years old today.
He passed away last year, and we will miss him especially, because in reality, we were bidding Jarman farewell musically long before he left to play in the great celestial orchestra.
He appeared on stage less and less frequently, actually, since 1993, when he left the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Therefore, perhaps it will be good to remember his birthday in particular.
As much as music, he was absorbed by spirituality, Buddhist practices, and another great passion: aikido.
It was during this period, in the early 1990s, that Jarman began regularly visiting monasteries in East Asia, eventually becoming a priest of the Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Church in Kyoto, Japan, and an aikido master, holding not only fifth dan but also a teacher at the Jikishinkan Aikido dojo in Brooklyn, which he founded.
It’s worth remembering, however, that the news of Jarman’s departure was not announced in an official statement, and his absence from the stage of the world’s most famous free jazz band sparked a wave of rumors about his alleged health problems and, according to others, serious alcohol problems. The rumors persisted until the very end.
Yet the period after leaving the Art Ensemble of Chicago wasn’t a time of complete musical abstinence.
He didn’t record much music back then, and he didn’t perform many more concerts. However, fans undoubtedly fondly remember his recordings with Scott Fields and Reggie Workman, his exquisite duet with Marilyn Crispell, and finally, the material he recorded with the trio Equal Interest, a group that briefly united the talents of Jarman, the outstanding violinist Leroy Jenkins, and the pianist Myra Melford, who was then conquering the jazz scene and who is now one of the most important female bandleaders on the jazz scene.
Polish admirers of his talent, or rather, musical genius, were lucky. In few places outside the United States have Jarman been able to hear and see music since his retirement from music. And yet, somehow, we managed.
It wasn’t a large concert audience, and even smaller at the opening of the exhibition by photographer Laureen Deutch at the Centre for Contemporary Art, but thanks to the efforts of the late Wojtek Juszczak and Dionizy Piątkowski, then still co-hosts of Era Jazzu, Joseph Jarman and Rob Garcia performed in the Chamber Hall of the Warsaw Philharmonic and earlier at the Blue Note in Poznań in a beautiful concert, captivating with its folk simplicity.
Yes, the folk simplicity and, as many say, the wild ethnic fervor of his playing, somehow unusually blended with lyricism, were the most important characteristics of his music and of his playing on all kinds of saxophones, flutes, and experimental instruments.
They became a pillar of the sound of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and, earlier, of Muhal Richard Abrams’ Experimental Band, because we must remember that Jarman was one of the first to join the ranks of this magnificent and still enigmatic organization-institution, the parent of the now-iconic Association of the Advancement of Creative Musicians.
They also consistently characterized the activities he undertook under his own name, both on albums and in concert. On stage, especially at AOC, he performed in shamanic ritual costumes, sometimes with impressive plumes, and mask-like makeup, drawing the audience’s attention to the theoretically incomparable and disparate elements that make up the phenomenon of Great Black Music.
For some, it was a spectacular show, as Roscoe Mitchell, dressed in impeccable business suits, and the madcap Lester Bowie, dressed in a white doctor’s coat, stood on stage next to him. For others, it was an expression of the essence of the cultural identity of the African American community, which, in its contemporary life, not only doesn’t forget its heritage, whose roots reach back to a completely different continent, but also makes it a significant source of its uniqueness.
Joseph Jarman was born on September 14, 1937, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. And if it weren’t for his military service, he likely wouldn’t have become interested in either jazz or the alto saxophone.
He began his musical education with drums, specifically the snare drum, under the tutelage of his first mentor, Capt. Walter Dyett. It wasn’t until he left in 1955 to complete his military service with the 11th U.S. Paratroopers stationed in Germany that he discovered jazz and changed his instrumental preferences.
At the time, he likely didn’t imagine that less than a decade later, he would be playing a concert in Hyde Park with John Cage himself, seeing his name in a Down Beat magazine review for the first time, and a year later, recording his debut album, “Song For All,” for Delmark Records.
The music world gained an important figure in Jarman. A man who saw his work not only as a musician and performer, bouncing from concert to concert, but also as an opportunity to show listeners that the worlds of music, dance, theater, and poetry are a vast space in which disciplines influence and draw endless inspiration from each other.
He died, perhaps, a fulfilled man, aware that he was important to his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and wife. He last performed publicly in 2017 at a concert at the Miller Theatre in Manhattan during the 50th anniversary of the founding of Art.
Ensemble Of Chicago. His great musical heart stopped beating as a result of his many battles with cancer and as a direct result of respiratory failure.
And we will be left with beautiful memories and, not so numerous, albums recorded on the most famous labels such as Atlantic, DIW, Black Saint, and ECM.
