[Ahmed] is not a singular person, it’s a quartet that pays homage to the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, an American jazz bassist and oud player who in the 1950s and ’60s made some of the first recordings that incorporated Middle Eastern influences into jazz decades before that became a thing. That’s him on the cover of [Ahmed]’s 2021’s Nights on Saturn (communication). [Ahmed] is comprised of Pat Thomas on piano, Joel Grip on double bass, Antonin Gerbal on drums and Seymour Wright handling the alto saxophone.
The salute to Adbul-Malik continues but to an even higher level of temerity with Wood Blues (Astral Spirits). Recorded live at Counterflows Festival in Glasgow on April 2, 2022, the quartet again manages to bring an exciting freshness to free jazz in raising the profile of an unheralded jazz pioneer from over sixty years ago who passed in 1993.
This follows the pattern of that Astral Spirits debut Nights on Saturn (communication), which was also a single, album-length performance recorded live. Like that record, Wood Blues swings like peak Basie, the drums and bass keeping a close connection to the Big Band era of jazz while Thomas and Wright race ahead to jazz’s frontier. All of the emotional topography is covered here, from the fragile to the confrontational. For those who see all of acoustic jazz along a single, Afro-Western continuum, [Ahmed] makes that plain to see.
Over the course of “Wood Blues,” the band goes outside and back inside and out again on whims. And a lot of times, they’re standing in the doorway. Staying true to the song’s title, however, the blues is always nearby.
The whole thing begins with a walking bass that prompts involuntary finger-snapping. Thomas and Wright turn their instruments into vessels for percussions, honking and banging with abandon to Gerbal’s four beats per bar and then suddenly they break out into a partially dissonant facsimile of raucous blues that takes jazz way back and way forward at the same time.
Around twenty minutes in, it starts to resemble a Cecil Taylor/Jimmy Lyons live recording from the 70s before Thomas settles in a hard groove and Wright is riding high on it. The energy at this point is boiling over and despite the loudness of the band, the crowd can still be heard going wild with approval. Just when they couldn’t express themselves with more urgency, Wright is testing the upper limits of his alto, then goes down low with it to baritone level.
As described above, you’d think that “Wood Blues” is completely a group improvisation, but that’s not how it started out. The band was paying homage to Abdul-Malik by playing one of his tunes, “Oud Blues” from 1961. Pretty soon, this four-minute, 12-bar blues exploded into an hour-long, free-wheeling, blues-based free jazz excursion that touches on not just the east-meets-west innovation of Abdul-Malik, but on so many other aspects of jazz itself.
Jazz is supposed to be the music of discovery, after all. Wood Blues captures [Ahmed] in the very act of discovery.
Wood Blues comes digitally and as a 45rpm double-LP. Get ’em either way from Bandcamp.
*** [ahmed] music on Amazon ***
- Patrice Rushen – ‘Prelusion’ (1974, 2024 Remaster) - January 2, 2025
- Camila Nebbia, Dietrich Eichmann, John Hughes + Jeff Arnal – ‘Chrononaux’ (2024) - January 1, 2025
- [Ahmed] – ‘Wood Blues’ (2024) - December 31, 2024
