Saxophonist Shola Emmanuel

In the shed with Shola Emmanuel

Nigerian saxophonist, composer, and arranger Shola Emmanuel visited me in Lagos recently. He was introduced four and a half years ago as the best saxophonist in Abuja and his skills have only improved since then. He is playing music nobody else in Nigeria is doing today. Hip hop and so-called contemporary R&B have eradicated local music like afrobeat and juju from the West African airwaves, and jazz, which never had that strong of a local scene, is low-profile. Shola is one of the foremost musicans keeping jazz alive and vibrant in Nigeria today, blending a strong grounding in African rhythms with fluid and creative improvisation.

Shola just self-produced his first CD, Nine Lessons by the Rhythm & Sax Orchestra, nine original compositions and arrangements with Shola up front on alto and tenor saxes (and trumpet on one track) over large group backings. The CD was launched at a concert in Abuja on October 21 which, by all accounts, was a sellout. Shola primarily plays alto although he pointed out to me that he, like many hornmen in Nigeria, started out on trumpet. Here is a Youtube video of Shola playing one of his originals, Into D Woods: 

We jammed for six or seven hours, part of the time joined by friend Tunde who plays alto. I played tenor and Shola split his time between his alto and borrowing my second tenor. He got a powerful sound out of the Kohlert. We mostly played out of my book which meant a heavy dose of Gene Ammons tunes, Jammin' with Gene, Treux Blue, and Happy Blues. Showboy dropped by and gave us all a workout in afrobeat; we played the horn sections of several Fela tunes and jammed through Night In Tunisia. I caught the proceedings on my Zoom recorder and have sampled two tracks for download, duets with Shola on alto and me on tenor: Caravan and Doxy, which we played in tribute to our mutual colleague, the late Dare Peter; click to listen. It is easy to identify each of us and Shola's fluent sound is apparent. 

Shola is a musician who has advanced significantly since I met him and will definitely be going places. His web site www.rhythmandsax.com is currently under construction as of this writing, but check back soon for downloads and gig notices. 

New Acquisition - Kohlert '55 Tenor

During my recent trip to the US I picked up a Kohlert '55 tenor sax, a nice original lacquer horn in about as good a shape as you can expect from an instrument going on 60 years old. Pads are new and it plays easily from top to bottom.

Post-WWII Kohlerts were made in Winnenden, near Stuttgart in what was then West Germany. My '55 was actually made in 1956 and sports rolled tone holes, left hand bell keys, and a non-articulated G#. Not that many were made - Kohlert produced about 14,000 instruments of all types in 1955 and 1956 - so I imagine only a few hundred of these still exist, if that many. Kohlerts have a reputation as great R&B and rock 'n' roll horns and I will soon find out...I haven't had it out of the house yet.

Welcome to the family.

Another Great Has Passed - John Tchicai RIP

I'm almost afraid to read the jazz news this year. Heard yesterday that saxophonist John Tchicai has passed away in France at the age of 76. One more great I will never have the chance to see perform live. Not much in the press yet but here is an obit from the Washington Post. 

He was one of the creators of the so-called "New Thing" in the early 1960s and recorded on John Coltrane's seminal Ascension as well as with Albert Ayler (New York Eye and Ear Control), Archie Shepp (New York Contemporary Five) and Roswell Rudd (New York Art Quartet). Maybe the only European player to record with Trane (the media always noted how he was born in Denmark of a Danish mother and Congolese father). He was one of the few accomplished players who was equally adept on soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones. 

John Tchicai didn't sound like anyone else and there aren't any music schools teaching the John Tchicai style, so we will have to be satisfied with his recorded legacy (which is fairly prolific but all on smaller labels). It is the greatest compliment to say that a musician stayed true to his creative self for his entire career, and that can truthfully be said about John Tchicai. Rest in peace and we will continue to listen to the sounds you created while you were here. The sound is timeless.

Rhythm & Sax Orchestra - Shola Hits the Big Time

Received this invitation to the upcoming Rhythm & Sax Orchestra concert in Abuja on October 21. I thought the guy holding the sax in the poster looked awfully familiar and sure enough, it is Shola, my running buddy from Abuja in 2008 with whom I had lost touch. Looks like he has hit the big time: =N=10,000 for a VIP ticket to hear him play is a long way from scuffling for bar and hotel gigs. That's about 60 bucks for a seat! I phoned Shola and we will try to get together in Lagos soon.

It is great to see the progress he has made over the past four years. I met Shola the first week I was in Nigeria, at the Nigerian PGA tournament at the IBB Golf Course where I had been invited to sit in with the band. Shola was introduced to me as the best saxophone player in Abuja. Over the next six months or so we jammed innumerable times at my hotel room, at his house, and at various gigs. I've got a bunch of our rehearsal recordings in the can and even went so far as to write out the lead sheet to one of his compositions, which I've got in my book as Shola's Blues.

If you are in Abuja in late October and have the chance to see him perform, go for it. Here's a photo of Shola sitting in on keys with Dare Peter's band at the legendary Elephant Bar in Abuja back in November, 2008. Note the horn case hanging from his shoulder.

Shola Emmanuel on keys at the legendary Elephant Bar in Abuja, 2008. George on drums.

Learning to Play Afrobeat First Hand

Getting the chance to learn to play afrobeat first hand in Lagos. Had two successive days of learning side-by-side with excellent players. 

First, finally got Showboy to come by and teach me some of Fela Kuti's music. Showboy is a legend from the years he spent anchoring Fela's horn section on baritone sax, and he is an encyclopedic repository of original afrobeat which he learned directly from its inventor and master. The music is all up in his head rather than written down on charts, scores and fake sheets. You can't buy a book of Fela sheet music anywhere to my knowledge. Showboy is currently music director of Egypt 80 which backs Fela's youngest son Seun Kuti. 

Showboy was injured badly in a hit and run accident in Lagos about three years ago and can't hold a sax because of damage to his left hand. He sure can sing, though, and he taught me Dog Eat Dog and Trouble Sleeps by scatting the themes and horn backing parts while I picked out the notes on my tenor. After about 90 minutes I had both down well enough to take a break before my brain exploded. I wasn't that familiar with Trouble Sleeps so we listened to it on iTunes a few times to catch the theme. Showboy taught it to me in Eb but the recording seems to be in Db so I had to transpose to match the record. It is all in the timing and phrasing and it is a challenge to play without a rhythm section - Showboy helped me by counting out the beats and conducting my entrances. 

Then last night, Femi Kuti's tenor player Dotsax came by and we jammed freely for an intense nonstop hour. He just got his horn out and started playing and of course I didn't have my Zoom on and missed recording our jam, given the choice between playing along or messing around with the recording equipment. He's a quiet guy and didn't say a word so I had to chase him entirely by ear, which worked out pretty well in the end. Spoke through our horns. Before he left he wrote down some patterns for me to practice, but of course he wrote them in DO-RE-MI format which I now have to convert to C-D-E or 1-2-3 before I can play them since I never learned the European notation system. Something clicked and patterns suddenly made sense as Dotsax has a Coltrane kind of sound. Our styles contrast as I tend to play more melodies and backing riffs than he does but he plays a whole lot more notes than I do. And plays them very well, I might add.

Fela's Musicians - Interview with Rilwan "Showboy" Fagbemi, Part 7

Showboy at the New Africa Shrine with Femi Kuti's band (and some of Femi's kids)

Showboy: I repair saxophones. I repaired Fela's saxophones. If anything happens to your horn, I can fix it. (interrupted by phone call) 

Ron: This young guy plays the bari now. 

Showboy: He took over from me when I had the accident [Showboy was nearly killed in Lagos by a hit and run driver in 2009, and the injuries have suspended his saxophone playing career for now]. He was a tenor saxophone player.

My baritone is Series II Selmer. I have a friend in Atlanta, he just sent me an Armstrong tenor saxophone from Atlanta. I've got it at home, Seun brought it from America. When I go to New York, I have this guy, Rod Baltimore you know him? New York instrument repairer, 47th by 9th Avenue in Manhattan, New York, Rod Baltimore, it's one of the biggest instrument repair shops. 

My Series II, Henri Selmer did only 15, out of the 15 Fela got 2, I was asked to sell my Series II for the (name unclear) Theater in New York , they wanted it bad because there was no more. When you go down, the lower you go, the bigger the sound. 

Ron: (showing photos of my daughter Jackie playing sax at a gig) 

Showboy: She's playing alto here. Wow. It's like this girl, what's her name, she is a tenor saxophone player, she used to play for Burning Spear...Jennifer Hill, Jenny, we played together, we played Reggae Sunsplash together. She was a tenor saxophone player. Freakin' people out man. She got the strength from you. She saw you do it. That's why she can do it better. 

Ron: So when is your next gig? 

Showboy: The last Saturday of the month. Once a month. The Shrine. Once a month. 

Ron: When are you touring next? 

Showboy: Well, the band, they are touring, they are going on the 28th. I cannot move yet, I am still under care, under medical care. I have to stay home, take care of my body until my hand, until I can play my instrument, I am an instrumentalist, without my instrument I am nothing. 

Ron: What other music venues around Lagos still play Afrobeat? I really don't care too much for the newer styles of music. 

Showboy: There is this brass band, they play Afrobeat, and sometimes I sing with them. They are performing tonight in Lagos, in the city of Lagos. They just sent me a message, I got it. Eko Brass Band. There are places you can play your saxophone. In Lagos you can play the saxophone, the beach side, you can have a good time. 

Ron: When I don't touch my horn I feel like a baby. 

Showboy: That's it, this feeling, this relationship between yourself and your saxophone, I always say, my saxophone is my first wife. Without my saxophone I'm nowhere. Sometimes, my saxophone change my orientation, my thinking, my mood. 

Ron: I thought it was just me. I tell people I have a relationship with my saxophone and they think I'm crazy.  

Showboy: No, no, they don't know, they cannot understand, they cannot. Let e tell you something the saxophone if you touch it every time you discover new things every time. If you don't touch it, if you stay away from it, if you don't touch it you get disappointed. Because the moment you come back to it, it won't be as you left it. You have to work hard to achieve that standard. 

Ron: Crazy bent brass tube. It's a genius invention. 

Showboy: You're damn right. 

There was a day when we were talking with Fela, he now asked me "Did you listen to Art Pepper?" That was the question he asked me. He said "Showboy, go and listen to Art Pepper." I did. He said I sound and I play like Art Pepper, on baritone. A BAAD motherfucker. [end of interview]

Fela's Musicians - Interview with Rilwan "Showboy" Fagbemi, Part 2

Rilwan "Showboy" Fagbemi

Showboy: I'll tell you what I was doing. You know when before I became an instrumentalist, Ronnie, I was an acrobat. I was a stage dancer.

So, as I was saying, one day, I asked myself that why don't I play something like a musical instrument? Because I was around when Fela started playing the saxophone; he taught himself a lot of things about the saxophone. Because Fela was a trumpet player, you understand. He picked up the saxophone, I think in '74. You understand? He pick up the saxophone around '73-'74. 

Ron: He studied music, right? 

Showboy: Yes, yes, at the Trinity College of Music in London. He came back, he was writing his music, he had broken it, made it easy for everybody, because one, you need to be able to read, you need to be able to understand the reading, and you have to have this (points to his head), you've got to be fast thinking because when Fela is writing he never waits for no one, the moment he wants this, out of four, two are getting it two are not getting it, he will ask the two who are not getting it to just shut the fuck up and listen to the two who have got it and learn from what they are doing. So by the time he finishes that rehearsal the next time you come...rehearsal is about perfection, about you know trying to complete what you are doing. 

Ron: That is what rehearsal is all about, there is no musician in the word who nails it the first time every time. 

Showboy: No, no, you have to go through it. And you see, I wish you saw one of the rehearsals of Fela himself. You know why? When Fela is on stage rehearsing man that stage is ON FIRE! The concentration of everybody because you know he is like a conductor, like a choirmaster. When we are rehearsing he's facing us, he is backing the audience, and people are free, people are free to come and watch the rehearsals. Then he starts. When he is writing the new music, he starts this way: he invites the rhythm to the house. The guitar with the conga. To keep the guitarist on tempo, the conga is taking the job of the metronome, to maintain the rhythm, to give the guitarist the idea and the speed of the music he is about to write. 

Now, when he starts, he practice with the guitarists, at home. When the guitarists are OK, he now brings them to the Shrine and now calls for general practice. That's when he starts infusing the whole line. 

Ron: (discussing the triumvirate of James Brown, Miles Davis, and Fela) 

Showboy rehearses Egypt 80 at the New Africa Shrine

Showboy: You got it right because I remember when we had this benefit for James Brown release at the Apollo Theater, we did two concerts in one night and the two concerts were sold out. I was on front page of the New York Times on June 24, 1990. They described my saxophone like a bull elephant, the way I sound. Yeah, I was bad, I was a bad, hot baritone saxophonist. 

So, now, after that show, you know in 1986 we had a Humanity Festival in Paris, we played with Miles Davis, he was there live, before his death. The last show was the Apollo Theater concert, it never happened, an African band direct from Africa stormin' New York. 

Ron: So how did you do? 

Showboy: Oh shit, it was BAAAD. I played at the (name unclear) on 53rd, at the Madison Square Garden, I played at the Apollo Theater... 

Ron: This [the New Africa Shrine] is the Carnegie Hall of Africa.

Two of Penang’s Best Young Saxophonists

Today I’ll feature a couple of young players who are already deep into the horn in their teens. Hopefully you will hear much more to come from these two. 

Emily Brokaw: Emily is 17 years old and soon to graduate from Dalat International School. She has been playing for more than 6 years already, since entering middle school at Dalat, which has an American-style band program. She chose saxophone because both of her parents were professional saxophonists! Emily’s mom, Valeri Brokaw, is the middle school music director at Dalat and also directs the high school jazz band (along with a ton of other duties; Valeri is extremely hard working and you’d be hard pressed to find a nicer person). Dalat has the best school band program on the island and Emily is Dalat’s premier saxophonist. 

I asked Emily a few questions about her interest in the saxophone and here is what she wrote: 

• I currently play both tenor saxophone (a Yamaha intermediate horn) and alto saxophone (currently, a Selmer Mark 7). 
• My favorite music: Concert band - anything by David Holsinger (Gathering at the Ranks of Hebron and Havendance) and Holst's First and Second Suites; Jazz band - Take Five, Blues in the Night, most anything; Solo work - Tableaux de Provence by Paule Maurice. 
• Most memorable performances were in the 2010 and 2011 South East Asia Honor Bands and all [Dalat] Fine Arts concerts. 
• Future plans: I plan to study music education in university [in the U.S.] next year and continue playing in ensembles of all sorts. 

Emily is still a bit shy of improvisation but I am sure that will change as she progresses. You can catch her solo on Take the A Train with Dalat’s jazz band on YouTube. 

Jackie Ashkin: 15-year-old Jackie plays alto and has been playing for 2-1/2 years. In middle school, to my delight, she decided on saxophone. Valeri Brokaw was her first instructor. Jackie is a fast learner and traded in her POS Yamaha school horn for a vintage King Zephyr circa 1937 once we found out that she liked playing. If you like playing on a YAS-23 you will LOVE playing on a Zephyr! 

Jackie has a great voice and has been singing in school since about fourth grade. In Kazakhstan she performed for the International women’s group at age 9, singing in both Russian and English and playing dombra, the local two-stringed instrument. She continued with voice lessons in Malaysia and the ear training has paid off in an accelerated ability to play sax. In Dalat’s high school concert band she gets the chance to play every day, which keeps her chops up and has seriously improved her sight reading. She has played in Dalat’s jazz band for the past two years (both on alto and as featured vocalist – see the A Train video), and she has paid her dues in town doing section work with the Northern Jazz Ensemble big band. 

On stage with Jackie at the G Spot, Summer 2011

Last year I started taking Jackie out on gigs with me and basically just threw her in at the deep end. She had her first professional gig at age 14, at this point has performed in public quite a bit for her age (although never enough). She is learning to improvise by ear, as opposed to reading her solos like most of her peers, who are either scared to death of having to improvise or else sound like a bleating billy goat when they do. She is not afraid to get up on stage, she knows what sounds good, and she is her own worst critic. She intuitively understands key concepts like swing and syncopation and knows that music is all about sound, not about dots on a page. A big advantage is that she has actually listened to the greats of the tradition (Dexter, Jug, Dolphy et al.) and knows what a saxophone is supposed to sound like. Jackie currently plays on a Johnny Hodges-era Buescher Aristocrat (ca. 1936) that gives her the intonation necessary to play in concert band along with the flexibility to play jazz. You can see Jackie in action on our YouTube channel. A 15-year-old already playing Trane and Miles and improvising with originality. 

Go girls!

Who's on My Turntable (or CD Player or iPod)

Surprise, all horn players.

Basic everyday vocabulary: 
Coleman Hawkins
Lester Young
Charlie Parker
Dexter Gordon
John Coltrane
Sonny Rollins (*)
Ornette Coleman (*)

And onward, I'm sure I'm inadvertently leaving some out:
Billy Harper (*)
Booker Ervin
Budd Johnson
Charles Brackeen (*)
Chris Potter (*)
Dewey Redman
Eddie Harris
Edward Wilkerson (*)
Ellery Eskelin (*)
Eric Dolphy
Frank Lowe
Fred Anderson
Gene Ammons
Jemeel Moondoc (*)
Joe Harriott
Joe Henderson
John Gilmore
John Tchicai (*)
Julius Hemphill
Kalaparusha (*)
Ken Vandermark (*)
Lucky Thompson
Odean Pope (*)
Paul Gonsalves
Paul Jeffrey (*)
Rahsaan Roland Kirk
Rob Brown (*)
Sam Rivers
Sean Bergin (*)
Tina Brooks
Tony Malaby (*)
Von Freeman (*)

(*) These guys are still around; seek them out and support their performances.

State of the Horn, One Player's View

Playing sax is a never ending learning process. Most of the players I like are way older than me – the recently passed Sam Rivers was close to 90, Fred Anderson was in his late 70’s when he left, Ornette and Sonny are now 80, Vonski is about 88 now and still going.

Since my school days the music in many ways has transformed from a vibrant, free, expressive art form to a stodgy, academic, ossified craft you learn in class by studying method books based on John Coltrane’s 1959 approach, an approach he himself rapidly advanced away from. So-called jazz can now be “graded” and there are “jazz competitions” with monetary prizes awarded. I've never understood how an art form founded in self expression could be treated as a competition like weight lifting or horse racing.

Ornette is back to being considered radical again more than 50 years after he established the mainstream. Learning jazz is now mostly “take a random mathematical pattern like 1-3-6-5, memorize it in every key, then play it as fast as you can”. Harmonic complexity is treated as the only value worth striving for; formulaically twiddling up and down chords at high speed is what makes you a good horn player. The more complicated the better. Memorizing solos, other people’s solos, is mandatory (but only those that slavishly follow chord changes, the kind of music the pioneers abandoned in the late 50’s, mainly because formulas can be replicated but creativity cannot). The conventional wisdom after 30 years of musical Reaganomics is that music is like speech – you imitate your mother to learn to speak, so you must imitate other musicians to play jazz. An inaccurate analogy – I learned to speak from my mother but my voice sounds nothing like hers, I never needed to ape her voice pitch, emphasis, and inflection to speak, and I never had to copy her exact words, grammar, and syntax to be understood. There is still a pocket of creativity in the music today but it is small and the giants are leaving us one by one. Much of what I hear labelled “jazz” is corporate pap and the word is close to becoming meaningless since many uncritical listeners confuse lounge music that incorporates a bit of syncopation and a blue note or two with the creative storm that stems from the tradition of Pops, Pres, Bird, Miles, Trane, and Ornette. Where I live it is difficult to hear a horn at all.

My Musical Biography, Part 1

I don’t know how I caught the bug for saxophone. I certainly didn’t come from a musical family. My parents had a Dean Martin record, a Frank Sinatra record, and Andy Williams singing Moon River. My big brother once had a friend who played accordion at Bar Mitzvahs when I was real small. We had an organ in the living room but nobody in the family could play it. My parents were a young couple in New York in the late 40’s around the time 52^nd Street was hot, so maybe that rubbed off on me somehow. My dad did have an 8-track tape player in his car.

I grew up in rust belt Terre Haute, Indiana and went to the world’s best elementary school ever, the Lab School. In fifth or sixth grade music was mandatory and we were divided into choir, orchestra, and band. I couldn’t sing worth a darn and still can’t, so choir was out; I hated the sound of violins and still do, so orchestra was out; so band was it for me. I remember being taken into the band instrument room at Lab School and staring in awe at the racks of instrument cases. I still remember the smell – the musty old instrument case aroma of my current practice room reminds me of that – cognitive bliss since sensory memory is so intense. My first instrument was a plastic Bundy clarinet. My first band teacher was the legendary Wilburn Elrod. In junior high we took the yellow school bus up to Elkhart, then the band instrument capital of the world, and toured the Conn factory. Wow. Must’ve been a few years before some wise accountant figured that moving production to Tijuana would save a few bucks.