Don Ayler Septet – In Florence 1981 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:47:05 minutes | 1,97 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Railroad Town Music
Don Ayler’s discography as leader (rather than sideman in his brother’s bands) is limited to two revelatory tracks from a 1969 New York concert, included in Revenant’s Holy Ghost box set, an unreleased session for Amiri Baraka’s Jihad label, and the following triple LP set, recorded live at a concert in Florence, Italy in 1981.
“It is not at all strange to see in Jazz lesser known musicians who, even if they have a decisive voice in groups or schools of great importance, find their own road continuously blocked by the all pervading influence of top-class musicians and therefore they are inclined to take the expressive idea and the same artistry, transforming both into their own individual voice.
The case of Don Ayler, a musician from Cleveland, is a typical example. Don was born Oct. 5, 1942, brother and faithful partner of the famous Albert, with whom he collaborated from March ’65 to February ’68.
His formative years were conditioned and in a certain sense dominated by Albert, so that he even changed his first instrument, alto sax, into cornet, and finally trumpet. But the influence went beyond the choice of the instrument; the innovative power and the strong expressive voice of Albert transformed completely the psychic and emotive personality of Don.
When Albert died under mysterious circumstances Don was silent for many years, and only very recently his painful and emotional voice is heard again. This voice gives sound to the authentic and original music of Don Ayler, lyrical and with the full authority of a jazz-tradition, firmly anchored in the styles of a Roy Eldridge or a Frankie Newton, wedging itself into the bop and post-bop era of a Dizzie Gillespie or a Clifford Brown. In Don we can always feel the presence of the old traditions; whereas Albert expresses himself in an angry shout, Don turns towards a subtle, melancholy gasp, often motivated more by feeling than by formal technique. The drama lived by Don in his music has no longer the tragical connotation of the free jazz of the sixties. His approach is a more personal emotion whose drama results from bad experiences in life, without probing for the cosmic and omnipresent expansion that sought expression in his brother’s music.
Don Ayler expresses in a smaller and more personal world his painful and suffering notes, insinuating with deep feeling the soundtrack of the problems of life, that are the problems of a man segregated in a ghetto where he represents the loser and not the winner. Hence also the need for a solid anchorage to the common origins and backgrounds, the primeval need to find oneself back in history, even in a ghetto, and not an outcast even there. Accepting this reality costs pain and suffering, but substitutes the desperate cry of free jazz with a feeling of hope, however weak.
The music presented here was recorded in Florence, Italy, on July 18, 1981. We find Don Ayler active after a prolonged period of silence because of personal problems, a silence that lasted for twelve years, interrupted only by sporadic appearances in the Cleveland area. It should be noted that up to now no record has ever been published under his name; this record therefore is the discographical debut of a famous and well-trained musician, who however lost contact with the recent and not so recent jazz expressions. The free of Don Ayler and his six musicians who surround him in this performance in Florence is like a veil covering the genuine and substantial black expression found in that great melting pot that is to-days Great Black Music. It is hard to label music, but the musicians themselves give the answers on this record: an emotive and emotional climax, where they enter in polemics with those musical forms that are too lucidly cerebral, forms that are victims of their own cold and suicidal introversion.
Brother Albert followed a vastly different musical path, and vastly different are also the most recent jazz-expressions, but of Don Ayler we can state without fear of contradiction that he is the echo of a sound that never existed, a sound risen from deep oblivion…
Tracklist:
1-1. Don Ayler Septet – The Be-Bop Tune (15:41)
1-2. Don Ayler Septet – The African Song (16:00)
2-3. Don Ayler Septet – Coltrane’s Blues (16:12)
2-4. Don Ayler Septet – The Indian Song (17:27)
3-5. Don Ayler Septet – The Eastern Song (17:22)
3-6. Don Ayler Septet – Peace (07:19)
3-7. Don Ayler Septet – The Japanese Song (17:01)
