(L-R: Pat Thomas, Joel Grip, Antonin Gerbal, Seymour Wright; Image James Koblin)
At the end of the electrifying March 25th set played by [Ahmed] at Brooklyn’s Roulette, and after a boisterous standing ovation, group bassist Joel Grip made a few brief comments to the audience. The March 25th Roulette show was (remarkably) [Ahmed]’s first performance in the United States, and Grip observed that just down the street on Atlantic Avenue was the childhood home of the group’s namesake and inspiration, Ahmed Abdul-Malik. The unique US visit was a chance to come close to the spirit of Abdul-Malik, and Grip said the group had a “very good chat” with the musician, philosopher, and educator. Abdul-Malik died in 1993, but of course, Grip was describing the significance of this group continuing its project of re-imagining Abdul-Malik’s “cross-cultural innovations,” only a short walk from his home.
The connections Grip described are fitting for a band with obvious chemistry and commitment to a specific vision. [Ahmed] came together after English pianist Pat Thomas met and played in Paris with drummer Antonin Gerbal and Berlin-based Grip twelve years ago. They formed the piano trio [Ism], initially documented on their album Nature in its Inscrutability Strikes Back, recorded in 2014. That album set revealed a unit “connecting different cultural and imaginary worlds” with a “continuous flow of high voltage charges.” Shortly afterward, London-based saxophonist Seymour Wright was added to the trio to create [Ahmed], a group with a particular purpose. As more fully described in Wright’s 2022 essay for The Quietus, [Ahmed] uses the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik as
“a radical, experimental and political practice of investigating, questioning the orthodox systems of our times . . . [Ahmed] is about making space for this investigation, too . . . through the (re-)imagining and (re-)interpretation integral to investigation.”
In practice and performance, [Ahmed] uses Abdul-Malik’s compositions as a springboard to reach a space of collective group dialogue and spontaneous creation. The music embodies a heady mix of intellectual and philosophical underpinnings (please read the rest of Wright’s fascinating piece in The Quietus), but remarkably, that all supports rather than diminishes this group’s overwhelming visceral impact.
Until March 25th, the only way of experiencing [Ahmed] here in the US has been through their albums. Fortunately, most of those have captured live performances, and on albums like 2021’s Nights on Saturn (communication) and especially last year’s Wood Blues, the album listener could hear performances where minds being blown as [Ahmed] was in action. The experience of these recordings only fuels the excitement of seeing and hearing this music in the room where it’s created and realizing the potential of live music to levitate the audience. At Roulette, you could feel this excitement even before the show started – a packed house buzzed with anticipation, clearly an audience that knew the significance of this group and this concert.
Then, the band took the stage, and a hush fell over the audience. [Ahmed] quickly started playing the opening notes of Ahmed Abdul-Malik’s composition “El Haris (Anxious),” which Abdul-Malik recorded on his debut album Jazz Sahara (1958) as part of a groundbreaking hybrid of Eastern and Western ideas and sonorities (a wonderful appreciation was written by none other than Pat Thomas!). The music started with a menacing tone that befits a piece called “Anxious”: Thomas struck chords inside the box of the piano while Wright produced intense percussive clucks from his horn. Then Grip and Gerbal joined the tune, and the drums pushed the energy and urgency forward as Wright’s phases moved toward insistent, repeated slashing tones. As this concert-length piece evolved, a pattern developed where the band would settle into articulating an idea based on a riff, which would hold in place until either Thomas or Wright played an extension or counterline, moving the band collectively into another area of the music. Meanwhile, Grip and Gerbal would feed the propulsive intensity that sometimes simmered, sometimes burned, and always mesmerized. This band does not play solos, dispensing with the most elemental aspect of ordinary jazz. Instead, live, you could see and experience the band’s careful listening and patient music-making that is integral to the concept of [Ahmed] – incrementally and as an organic group concept of instant composition, they built “El Haris (Anxious)” out to a 45-minute performance. When you’ve heard [Ahmed]’s discography on albums like the ones I mentioned above, and especially last year’s massive Giant Beauty, you know that each performance follows these contours. Yet, each is a unique and spontaneous event.
Seeing this band also confronts some misunderstandings of so-called “free music.” While the music of [Ahmed] proceeds without chordal information or solos, it is music very much built around rules. First, there’s the knowledge and respect for the goals of this group and the patient way this band develops the performance around ideas built in real-time as the set develops. Then, there is the role of dissonance and melody. While the strident fire of “the cry of jazz” dominates this aesthetic, both Wright and Thomas build blocks of sound around insistent, repeated melodic kernels. Occasionally, and at surprising moments, these insistent fragments would be forged into something else, such as mid-set when Wright switched from a run of two repeated notes to developing a series of bent tones that revealed a set of glorious chromatic overtones. Later in the performance and at the end of the set pianist Thomas switched to a lilting, melodic figure that sounded like a nursery rhyme over the burning rhythms. These uncanny moments stuck out against the constant fire of the evening’s playing – with [Ahmed], beauty is hidden, and then suddenly appears. And then there’s swing: it’s often observed how ferociously this band swings, but to experience this live is overwhelming. Maybe they don’t produce a pulse to dance to, but the coiled energy of [Ahmed] is ferocious all the same, and you could feel the audience release that energy as the last notes ended, in the form of a collective exclamation that made people jump to their feet and cheer.
I don’t know if [Ahmed] usually plays encores or not, but they did for the Roulette audience – while clapping and whops still belted out, the band huddling at the side of the stage, and returned to play Monk’s “Epistrophy.” After the bass iconic bass intro played by Grip, Thomas stated the see-saw theme, and then the band quickly moved into playing based on rhythmic and dynamic manipulation, ending in the thunderous drum solo from Gerbal. It was fascinating hearing [Ahmed] covering material other than that written by the band’s namesake – while the creativity of these musicians on their chosen ground shows no end in sight, it’s exciting to think what they would do playing different composers or their own material.
I can only say that if you have the opportunity, go see [Ahmed]. While the records are great, experiencing the full visceral impact of this music and getting a better understanding of its structural and intellectual complexity demands that you experience [Ahmed] in person. Live, you also see and hear the way [Ahmed] connects worlds – Ahmed Abdul-Malik’s world and ours, and the vision of four extraordinary musicians with an audience that on March 25th at Roulette, got to participate in a remarkable meditation on the power of music.
More links:
See the Livestream and hear the audio!
Roulette has to be one of the most generous arts venues anywhere – while most clubs keep access to their content carefully gated, Roulette lets you stream almost all their shows for free if you can’t make it there, and keeps an archive – which goes back years – of their shows. Free to watch – you may (and I have) spent hours just soaking all their incredible shows. So here’s the page where you can watch the [Ahmed] performance you just read about. Like I said, it’s not the same as being there – make sure you go out and support the arts! – but a magnificent resource nonetheless.
Give the Drummer Some
I didn’t spend much time discussing the individual musicians of [Ahmed], each one an outstanding genius of music. If you read this blog, you know I could talk about Pat Thomas all day. But right here, I want to give props to the incredible drummer Antonin Gerbal. I don’t know if there’s a group anywhere that is propelled the way [Ahmed] is by Gerbal’s assertive polyrhythms, singing cymbals, massive beat, and sheer endurance. If you were not there, check out Gerbal’s powerful solo on “Epistrohy” (at 1:04:30 in the Roulette archive video). Everybody in [Ahmed] is essential – but those drums! I can’t say it better than Peter Magarask, who dubbed Gerbal “a goddamned bulldozer, albeit one with the agility of a dancer.”
“A Good Theme of the Day”
I didn’t want to empathize our sorry political state in a space where I would prefer to rhapsodize about my favorite band in the world, but I can’t end this without observing that [Ahmed] chose “El Harris (Anxious)” for their American live debut during the most retrograde federal government in over a century. Grip made the point briefly when he took the mic, calling “Anxious” “a good theme of the day.” We are celebrating the spirit and artistic vision of Ahmed Abdul Malik, a Black Muslim who was born at a time when lynchings were still common; it’s important to remember that the art we are celebrating on this blog lies at the margins, created by geniuses that our current government wants to destroy. An “anxious” time, indeed. Help your friends and neighbors, support the disenfranchised, and the arts that give are one of the few outlets for their voices.
More Thomas, More Monk!
While I was getting ready for the show and checking out more Pat Thomas (a not-infrequent hobby for me), I landed on a new album (out 3/7/25) featuring Pat Thomas, released by bassist Luke Stewart. As an aside, I’m sure I saw Stewart in the audience at Roulette; also make sure you note the upcoming 4/25/25 release of Stewart’s Silt Remembrance Ensemble album The Order – it sounds incredible. As I was saying, Pat Thomas is featured on another Luke Stewart album that does not have any press or coverage that I can find, called Blacks’ Myths meets Pat Thomas – The Mythstory School. Here, Stewart and Thomas are joined by drummer Trae Crudup in a live recording from London’s Vortex, and they sound wonderful. Thomas is especially exuberant in this setting, nowhere more than the two tunes devoted to Monk – “Goodbye Monk,” which is a reharmonization of “Trinkle Tinkle,” and “No More Work” which plays with “Misterioso.” It is a fantastic and unheralded release; make sure you listen at Bandcamp and get your (digital) copy.