Julius Hemphill – Dogon A.D.
Personnel: Julius Hemphill – alto sax, Baikida Carroll – trumpet, Abdul Wadud – cello, Phillip Wilson, drums
Unfortunately Dogon A.D. has been name-dropped more than heard, owing to it’s scarcity. In Ben Ratliff’s “A Critic’s Guide To The 100 Most Important Jazz Recordings”, citations to where to buy the discussed records are conveniently provided. Dogon A.D. is the only record out of this “top 100” where Ratliff’s book (published in 2002) simply states it’s “out of print.” For this reason exposing new listeners to this record has always been a public service, and is a great way to christen this blog!
Recorded in winter 1972 in St. Louis by the then little known Hemphill, Dogon A.D. was self released on his own Mbari label. The original pressing was only 500 copies; it was rereleased in 1975 on the Arista/Freedom label, but has largely been unavailable since. Hemphill performed Dogon A.D. live again and again during his career, with a variety of arrangements which included with vibes and bass, with guitars and for a big band. It was original conceived as a sextet (check out the original Mbari album cover below), but was first performed as the quartet posted above. Hemphill treated Dogon A.D. as a touchstone, and it’s his most important composition.
Original Mbari Record Cover, 1972. Check out the personnel depicted – it seems to have been originally conceived as a sextet?
This performance is the original and is certainly definitive. It demonstates that avant-garde music can be direct, easy to follow, and really burning! The rhythm is economically generated by Wilson’s pulsating beat, which is locked into wave after wave of vamps created by Wadud’s cello. Hemphill’s solo immediately stamps this track as a classic, employing blues vocabulary contrasted with dissonent notes, to great effect. Like all great solos, it takes us on a journey. This intensity is effectively contrasted with the atmospheric and more relaxed solo by Carroll.
What does the mysterious title of the piece refer to? In a terrific intervew with Bomb magazine, Hemphill states:
“The title refers to the African tribe in Mali called the Dogon. . . the A.D. stands for adaptive dance, and I had in mind a dance all along. I read an article about how the Dogon had decided to reveal some of their sacred dance ritual, to attract the tourist trade. I had seen some of the dancing on video, and I had read a little about the Dogon and their cosmic view, and it was quite extraordinary. They have been proclaiming the existence of a companion star to Sirius, which could not be seen. And finally, Western scientists have telescopes that can see it. So how did these people living in these mud huts know this about the solar system? Like elliptical orbits, and all of these uncanny things. The Dogon seemed to be singular in their beliefs; they claim that they were visited by star people, and they have drawings of some of these events that they had kept hidden. There were a lot of fairly mind-boggling stories. And what they understand about the planets, without a telescope, mind you, researchers, especially French and British researchers, have been trying to poke at for 40, 50 years. The real clincher was the discovery of the star Sirius B, as it is called, and it’s there, like they said it was. The orbit for this invisible star to come around Sirius takes 55 years. And every 55 years the Dogon have a festival. So, I find them extraordinary and unique among Africans.”
You can hear the source inspiration in this music. It is dance like, but the rhythm is explicty African and quite advanced – just try to count out it’s slippery 11/8 meter! Part of Dogon’s A.D. accessibility is that it has one foot grounded in blues expression and the other in the avant garde. It places a direct, urgent vocabulary in a cliche free advanced form. Reviewing a Hemphill concert for the New York Times where Dogon A.D. was performed, Robert Palmer describes the captivating duality of “in” and “out” in this music: “Mr. Hemphill simultaneously invented a new style and drew on the reassuring kinetic qualities of an old one. But a fruitful dialogue between experimentation and tradition informs all his music, and that is what makes it so fascinating and so valuable.”
Listen and judge for yourself!
James Koblin
Photo of Hemphill, courtesy of the Integrated Arts People