Ahmed Abdul-Malik
The Music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik

THE REVIEW

"East meets west".

The album where Coltrane's man, the perfect stand-in for "Cannonball," manages to convert the white skeptics of New Jersey to a new animist language, and guides them on a river expedition in search of the African sources of jazz; thus the crew includes Turrentine's singing trumpet, guaranteed Clifford Brown, Dixon's tenor sax, Count Basie's nightingale, Scott's distorted cello, Cyrille's equatorial skins, and Bilal Abdurrahman's tools, among which "An ancient Korean reed instrument so obscure neither he (Malik), nor Ahmed was sure of its name"¹.
To mark the route, the strong bass of Ahmed-Abdul, sultan of Sennar: "To Khartoum, via New York!".

So hats off to this dreamlike crossing of the White Nile, recounted by musician sorcerers in a state of pure grace.
A "hustling" among calypso-song nuggets on the clarinet jeweled with African-bop, ("The Hustlers"), space-age crescent moon jazz, with Malik's lulling oud that opens, sweeping huge sand dunes, ("Nights on Saturn") and then sinks into the lament of Mahdist pentatonics ("Oud Blues"), High-Life from street parties ("Hannibal's Carnivals) and arabesques of sorrow for the poor Mother ("La Ybkey").

A photograph of history, which entrusted wise men with the task of guarding the secret of its sounds, but nonetheless the perfect companion, with these mists, for invocations and equatorial embraces worthy of General Gordon. A true delight.

¹ Joe Goldberg, The Music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, New Jazz, May 23, 1963