Rahsaan Roland Kirk: Music Is a Beautiful Thing
Rashaan Roland Kirk at Ronnie Scott's Club via Wikimedia Commons (license details below)
Breaking the mould is a phrase often encountered when people talk about a paradigm shift in some sphere of human activity. Doing something, in other words, in a completely new or original way. And it’s become the phrase of choice for the vacuous, centrist politicians who periodically seek to challenge the political status quo. Usually resulting in their ignominious disappearance from the political firmament.
The Oxford English Dictionary ascribes the first use of the phrase to the 16th Century Italian epic poem Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto. The meaning then was rather different. Breaking the mould meant the creation of a beautiful work of nature that was rendered unique once the mould was broken: “This is the goodly impe whom nature made/To shew her chiefest workmanship and skill/And after brake the mould against her will.”
It was a form of praise for the person so created. Fast-forwarding to the 20th Century, if I may, I think the phrase describes perfectly the jazz musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk, whose innovative approach to jazz left an indelible mark on the genre.
The redemptive power of music
One of the most exciting horn players in modern jazz, he played with an awe-inspiring intensity. Kirk’s understanding of jazz extended far beyond its usual boundaries. He mixed styles from early New Orleans jazz through the blues to avant-garde. Had an extensive knowledge of classical music. And even embraced pop.
He broke the rules and, in the process, opened up a world of musical possibilities.
But he rarely attracts the attention that other jazz greats receive and, despite a remarkable, and prolific, career remains criminally under-appreciated outside of jazz circles.
Kirk was the quintessential multi-instrumentalist. The term is sometimes used by critics as a way of demeaning his musical talents. But he really could play a multitude of instruments, and play them well, including the tenor sax, manzello, stritch, piccolo, flutes, harmonica and siren whistle. Not forgetting, of course, the notorious nose flute. He also designed his own instruments, including the wonderfully named ‘trumpophone’, a trumpet with a soprano sax mouthpiece.
But what set him apart was his ability to play multiple horns simultaneously. Other musicians had done this before him. But usually as a gimmick. Kirk did it to explore new sonic possibilities, creating striking new tone colours, textures and true chords in the process. This required not just technical mastery of his instruments but an innovative approach to playing them. He reshaped his saxes so that they could be played simultaneously. And could then play one with his left hand, another with his right, as well sound a note on the third.
His first recording, Triple Threat, was released in 1956, where his innovative technique was already in evidence. And by 1963 he had mastered the difficult circular breathing method, which allowed him to play without pausing for breath.
Over a 20+ year career, he released a string of remarkable albums, including Rip, Rig, and Panic, The Inflated Tear and Blacknuss.
His novel approach to instrumentation and performance significantly enriched his music. Singing or humming while playing. And experimenting with musique concrète on studio recordings. Sadly, the ‘gimmickry’, and his unique style on individual instruments, encouraged critics to mock him and tended to obscure his artistry. Even though he clearly influenced other musicians. As the photographer and writer Val Wilmer noted, “Kirk developed a way of ‘growling’ the melody line he was simultaneously playing on the flute, a concept that has been copied extensively.”
His lively on-stage persona combined virtuoso improvisation with comic asides, outspoken political commentary on African-American history and US politics, and provocative exchanges with his audiences.
But Kirk’s eclectic style, unconventional behaviour on stage and approach to both blackness and music was a challenge to the critical establishment. This meant he often failed to secure critical approval for his musicianship.
He bore all this with fortitude. He had lost his sight at the age of two as a result of a hospital blunder. And faced the usual challenges encountered by black people growing up in a country mired in racism.
When he was six, he started playing a water hose. Seriously! By age nine he was playing the trumpet. The clarinet, saxophone and flute soon followed. And by the age of 15 he was on the road, playing tenor sax professionally in R&B bands.
By the early sixties, he was attracting increasing attention. He had released a series of albums on Verve and Mercury. He had his own quartet and had played with drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Charles Mingus. And his music was growing in depth and richness.
From this point onward, Kirk mostly led his own group, the Vibration Society, recording prolifically with a range of sidemen. The name of his band offers an engaging insight into Kirk’s personal vision. He saw the band as emblematic of the entire human race and the common vibrations that hold us together.
Like many black musicians, he encountered the endemic racism and exploitation of the music industry. He had the ability to use humour to deal with this, introducing the song ‘Blacknuss’ with the words: “There’s 36 black notes and 52 white notes. We don’t mean to eliminate nothin’, but we’re gonna just hear the black notes at this time if you don’t mind.”
"God loves Black sound"
But he was also politically engaged and believed that recognition of the African-American musical heritage, and its liberating potential, was a critical element in the struggle for black identity and the Civil Rights movement. As the critic, Josh Kun, put it, “When Kirk talked of blackness and black civil rights, he did so using sonic vocabularies and made his commentaries through musical languages… The road to social change was a musical one.”
This entailed a clear understanding on his part of the Black origins of what became known as ‘jazz’: “If you talk to a lot of musicians, for example, if you talk with the people of New Orleans, the musicians didn’t have a chance to name their music, it was a European that named the music ‘jazz.’…The only reason I call it ‘black classical music’ is because I feel that Milt Jackson, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Ben Webster, Sidney Bechet, Mingus, Coleman Hawkins, Bird, all these people, I feel that they are classics, they are black classical musicians.”
Throughout his career, Kirk’s determination to assert his blackness and unique approach to music made it difficult for the critical establishment to label him and place him in the wider jazz world. While audiences loved him, this undoubtedly hampered his efforts to overcome critical indifference to his outstanding musicianship and secure wider appreciation of his abilities.
But he knew this was never going to be an easy fight. As he said in his spoken introduction to ’Old Rugged Cross’, “I’m here to tell all o’ y’all… that we got a cross that we must bear, and the cross gets awful heavy… But you still know that you got a cross you must deal with. So when it crosses you up, go on and deal with it.”
Kirk’s fight to see black artists get credit for their work, and to promote understanding of the rich African-American cultural heritage, prompted him to set up the Jazz and People’s Movement (JPM) in 1970. Aided by fellow musicians such as Charles Mingus, Archie Shepp and Roy Haynes, the aim was to significantly increase exposure for jazz musicians on TV and in the media. The JPM was short-lived, but in its seven-month existence highlighted the evident disconnect between a vibrant jazz scene and its marginalisation in a media landscape focused on white rock acts and opened peoples’ eyes to the possibilities of challenging mainstream media exclusion.
Members disrupted recordings of the Dick Cavett and Merv Griffin talk shows, blowing whistles and waving placards. And persuaded the producers of The Ed Sullivan Show to feature an all-star group. Which, rather than performing the agreed safe choice of the Stevie Wonder hit ‘My Cherie Amour’, performed a rousing version of Mingus’ ‘Haitian Fight Song’.
The way black jazz musicians were treated in the USA angered and frustrated Kirk. But his music, and his activism, represented an affirmation of collective pride in African-American cultural traditions. A world away from the ossification of jazz and cultural conservatism sometimes apparent in contemporary ‘rediscoveries’ of the ‘jazz tradition’.
He was an incredibly creative artist. A true original. And he let nothing stand in his way.
He also had a lovely sense of humour. We’ll let Roland Kirk have the final words, “When I die I want them to play the BLACK AND CRAZY BLUES, I want to be cremated, put in a bag of pot and I want beautiful people to smoke me and hope they got something out of it.”
(Header photo (cropped): Del de la Haye (Flickr name:del), CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)