Yusef Abdul Lateef

Yusef Abdul Lateef (born William Emanuel Huddleston) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer and educator for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community after his conversion to the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam in 1950.

Although Lateef's main instruments were the tenor saxophone and flute, he also played oboe and bassoon, both rare in jazz, and also used a number of non-weestern instruments such as the bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, xun, arghul andkoto. He is known for having been an innovator in the blending of jazz with "Eastern" music. Peter Keepnews, in his New York Times obituary of Lateef, wrote that the musician "played world music before world music had a name."

Lateef was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His family moved, in 1923, to Lorain, Ohio and again in 1925, to Detroit, Michigan, where his father changed the family's name to "Evans".

Throughout his early life Lateef came into contact with many Detroit-based jazz musicians who went on to gain prominence, including vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Elvin Jones and guitarist Kenny Burrell. Lateef was a proficient saxophonist by the time of his graduation from high school at the age of 18, when he launched his professional career and began touring with a number of swing bands.

In 1949, he was invited by Dizzy Gillespie to tour with his orchestra. In 1950, Lateef returned to Detroit and began his studies in composition and flute at Wayne State University. It was during this period that he converted to Islam as a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

Lateef began recording as a leader in 1957 for Savoy Records, a non-exclusive association which continued until 1959; the earliest of Lateef's album's for the Prestige subsidiary New Jazz overlap with them. Musicians such as Wilbur Harden, bassist Herman Wright and Hugh Lawson were among his collaborators during this period.

By 1961, with the recording of Into Something and Eastern Sounds, Lateef's dominant presence within a group context had emerged. His 'Eastern' influences are clearly audible in all of these recordings, with spots for instruments like the rahab, shanai, arghul, koto and a collection of Chinese wooden flutes and bells along with his tenor and flute. Even his use of the western oboe sounds exotic in this context; it is not a standard jazz instrument. Indeed the tunes themselves are a mixture of jazz standards, blues and film music usually performed with a piano/bass/drums rhythm section in support. Lateef made numerous contributions to other people's albums including his time as a member of saxophonistCannonball Adderley's Quintet during 1962–64.

Lateef's sound has been claimed to have been a major influence on the saxophonist John Coltrane, whose later period free jazz recordings contain similarly 'Eastern' traits. For a time (1963–66) Lateef was signed to Coltrane's label, Impulse. He had a regular working group during this period, with trumpeter Richard Williams and Mike Nock on piano. They enjoyed a residency at Pep's Lounge during June 1964; an evening of which was issued across several albums.

In the late 1960s he began to incorporate contemporary soul and gospel phrasing into his music, still with a strong blues underlay, on albums such as Detroit and Hush'n'Thunder. Lateef expressed a dislike of the terms "jazz" and "jazz musician" as musical generalizations. As is so often the case with such generalizations, the use of these terms do understate the breadth of his sound. For example, in the 1980s, Lateef experimented with new age and spiritual elements.

Later career

His 1987 album Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony won the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album.

His core influences, however, were clearly rooted in jazz, and in his own words: "My music is jazz."

In 1992, Lateef founded YAL Records, his own label for which he recorded until the end of his life. In 1993, Lateef was commissioned by the WDR Radio Orchestra Cologne to compose The African American Epic Suite, a four-part work for orchestra and quartet based on themes ofslavery and disfranchisement in the United States. The piece has since been performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Lateef died on the morning of December 23, 2013 at the age of 93 after suffering from prostate cancer.

Education and teaching

In 1960, Lateef again returned to school, studying flute at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. He received a Bachelor's Degree in Music in 1969 and a Master's Degree in Music Education in 1970. Starting in 1971, he taught courses in autophysiopsychic music at the Manhattan School of Music, and he became an associate professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in 1972.

In 1975, Lateef completed his dissertation on Western and Islamic education and earned a Ed.D. in Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

In the early 1980s Lateef was a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Nigerian Cultural Studies at Ahmadu Bello University in the city of Zaria, Nigeria. Returning to the US in 1986 he took teaching positions at the University of Massachusetts and Amherst College. To the end of his life, he continued to teach at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Hampshire College in western Massachusetts.

Lateef wrote and published a number of books including two novellas entitled A Night in the Garden of Love and Another Avenue, the short story collections Spheres and Rain Shapes, also his autobiography, The Gentle Giant, written in collaboration with Herb Boyd.[8]

Along with his record label YAL Records, Lateef owned Fana Music, a music publishing company. Lateef published his own work through Fana, which includes Yusef Lateef's Flute Book of the Blues and many of his own orchestral compositions.

Autophysiopsychic Music, Lateef's term, refers to music which comes from one's physical, mental, and spiritual self. Lateef wrote extensively on the topic and included it in his book Method To Perform Autophysiopsychic Music. In this view, it should be the goal of every musician to combine their theoretical knowledge with their life experience, and to offer to and accept knowledge from their personal source of strength, inspiration and knowledge.

Awards and honors

In 2010 he received lifetime the Jazz Master Fellowship Award from NEA, National Endowment for the Arts which is an independent federal agency.

National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters is the highest honor given in Jazz established in 1982.

WGBH Jazz, a popular public radio from Boston, Massachusetts, aired a special-documentary program for Lateef, titled A portrait of saxophonist Yusef Lateef in his own words and music.

Manhattan School of Music, where Lateef earned a bachelor's and a master's degree, awarded him a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012.

Discography

• Jazz for the Thinker (1957)
• Jazz Mood (1957)
• Jazz and the Sounds of Nature (1957)
• Prayer to the East (1957)
• The Dreamer (1959)
• The Fabric of Jazz (1959)

Impulse! 1963-1966

• Jazz 'Round the World (1963)
• Live at Pep's (1964)
• 1984 (1965)
• Psychicemotus (1965)
• A Flat, G Flat and C (1966)
• The Golden Flute (1966)

Atlantic 1967 -1991

• The Complete Yusef Lateef (1967)
• The Blue Yusef Lateef (1968)
• Yusef Lateef's Detroit (1969)
• The Diverse Yusef Lateef (1969)
• Suite 16 (1970)
• The Gentle Giant (1971)
• Hush 'N' Thunder (1972)
• Part of the Search (1973)
• 10 Years Hence (1974)
• The Doctor is In... and Out (1976)
• Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony (1987)
• Concerto for Yusef Lateef (1988)
• Nocturnes (1989)
• Meditations (1990)
• Yusef Lateef's Encounters (1991)

YAL Records 1992-2002

• Tenors of Yusef Lateef and Von Freeman (1992)
• Heart Vision (1992)
• Yusef Lateef Plays Ballads (1993)
• Tenors of Yusef Lateef and Archie Shepp (1993)
• Woodwinds (1993)
• Tenors of Yusef Lateef & Ricky Ford (1994)
• Yusef Lateef's Fantasia for Flute (1996)
• Full Circle (1996)
• CHNOPS: Gold & Soul (1997)
• Earth and Sky (1997)
• 9 Bagatelles (1998)
• Like the Dust (1998)
• Live at Luckman Theater (2001)
• Earriptus (2001)
• So Peace (2002)
• A Tribute Concert for Yusef Lateef: YAL's 10th Anniversary (2002)

Meta Records

• The World at Peace (1997)
• Beyond the Sky (2000)
• Go: Organic Orchestra: In the Garden (2003)
• Towards the Unknown (2010)
• Voice Prints (2013)

Other labels

• Before Dawn: The Music of Yusef Lateef (Verve, 1957)
• The Sounds of Yusef (Prestige, 1957)
• Other Sounds (New Jazz, 1957)
• Lateef at Cranbrook (Argo, 1958)
• Cry! - Tender (New Jazz, 1959)
• The Three Faces of Yusef Lateef (Riverside, 1960)
• The Centaur and the Phoenix (Riverside, 1960)
• Lost in Sound (Charlie Parker, 1961)
• Eastern Sounds (Moodsville, 1961)
• Into Something (New Jazz, 1961)
• Autophysiopsychic (1977, CTI Records)
• In a Temple Garden (1979, CTI Records)
• Yusef Lateef in Nigeria (Landmark, 1983)
• Influence with Lionel and Stéphane Belmondo (2005)
• Roots Run Deep (Rogue Art, 2012)

As sideman[edit]

With Cannonball Adderley

• The Cannonball Adderley Sextet in New York (Riverside, 1962)
• Cannonball in Europe! (Riverside, 1962)
• Jazz Workshop Revisited (Riverside, 1962)
• Autumn Leaves (Riverside, 1963)
• Nippon Soul (Riverside, 1963)

With Nat Adderley

• That's Right! (Riverside, 1960)

With Donald Byrd

• Byrd Jazz (Transition, 1955)

With Art Farmer

• Something You Got (CTI, 1977)

With Curtis Fuller

• Images of Curtis Fuller (Savoy, 1960)
• Boss of the Soul-Stream Trombone (Warwick, 1960)

With Grant Green

• Grantstand (Blue Note, 1961)

With Charles Mingus

• Mingus Revisited' (1960)

With Sonny Red

• Breezing (Jazzland, 1960)

With Leon Redbone

• Double Time (Warner Bros., 1976)

With Doug Watkins

• Soulnik (New Jazz, 1960)

With Randy Weston

• Uhuru Afrika (Roulette, 1960)