>Back in my old DJ days (it's been over 30 years!) I remember playing a
>record (it was all vinyl back in those days ;*)> ) by Yousef Lateef in which
>he played some kind of Chinese horn... anyone have any idea what this was??
Which record are you referring to as he has released so much since
the 50's!? I have recently been doing a rather intensive study of Dr.
Lateef's music and dragging some of my shakuhachi students along the
trail with me.
On Eastern Sounds, a brilliant Lateef record from 1961 he is playing
a Chinese stone flute that sounds gorgeous.
You can see more information about him at www.yuseflateef.com
He is now in his 80's, still a full professor at U. Massachusets and
still composing, performing and touring intensively! He will actually
be on the SanFrancisco Jazz festival in the next month or 2 which i
am looking forward to.
There is a very close connection between Lateef and Coltrane!! It was
Lateef who turned Coltrane onto many forms of "world music" back in
the late 50's which set Trane off in a very different direction away
from bebop and into modal forms and messing with Arabic and other
"eastern" scales/modes (Bruno Deschenes is going to jump on me for
using the term, scales here, LOL).
Among many incredible publications that Dr Lateef has put out, there
are 2 i highly recomend for shakuhachi players who are interested in
thinking outside of the traditional shakuhachi box. One is a huge
book called "a repository of scales and melodic patterns" which is an
intensve study of different scales and modes from around the world.
The other is a book called "124 duets for treble clef instruments"
and many of those duets sound wonderful on shakuhachi.
My more advanced students are using these books along with their
honkyoku and sankyoku studies.
I have recently added a couple of Lateef compositions to my solo
concert repetoire. Recently i have come to realize he is one of the
most important American composers, performers, educators and
theorists of our time.
phil
-- Philip Gelb phil@philipgelb.com http://www.philipgelb.com ____________________________________________________
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 03 2003 - 09:09:53 PST