Milford Graves - Children of the Forest '2023

Tracks list

Recorded at Milford Graves' basement workshop just weeks before he dubbed his
iconic 'Bäbi' LP, 'Children of the Forest' is a dizzying unreleased session
from the unparalleled percussionist, featuring Arthur Doyle on tenor horn and
fife, and Hugh Glover on klaxon and a Haitian trumpet. Absolutely remarkable
gear for anyone into free jazz's most vital fringes. In 1976, Graves was playing
regularly as a bandleader across NYC with a reliable cast of the Loft scene's
eclectic weirdos. A few years earlier, the drummer had been touring with free
jazz legend Albert Ayler, and when he died in 1970, Graves applied himself to
his own experiments, jamming in the basement of his Queens house, the
workshop-cum-laboratory where he would develop some of his notorious instruments
and techniques. 'Children of the Forest' was recorded over three breathless
sessions with Doyle and Glover, two reed players best known for lending their
squeal to 'Bäbi', one of the indisputable classics of the free jazz era. That
album was recorded only weeks later, but Doyle and Glover don't sound as if
they're rehearsing the ideas that ended up there - the instrumentation isn't
even the same. Here Doyle backs up his expected tenor wail with the fife's
piercing, militaristic whistle. Often associated with European medieval folk
music, the instrument was widely used in battle - most notably in the American
Civil War - and was adopted by enslaved peoples who added it to the blues
lexicon. Glover meanwhile, who was almost always included in Graves'
shapeshifting outfits, was inspired to play the klaxon horn and the vaccine, a
single-note trumpet from Haiti. On its own, this information might be a
footnote, but Graves' original reel of tape for these sessions - labeled 'Pygmy'
- includes recordings of music from the Mbuti peoples of the Congo Basin that
cast a light on the percussionist's intentions. "It's important to keep that
tribal possession-state feel," said Glover in a new interview with Graves'
student Jake Meginsky, who made the unmissable 'Full Mantis' documentary a few
years back. Graves' liquid, shifting rhythms are able to shine completely here,
galloping with a ferocity that's still being unpacked with each archival find.
"It's not a Hollywood gallop," Glover adds. "It's very much about the energy."
The drummer was fascinated by Cuba's batá players, who transformed
Yorùbá techniques into frothy, multi-rhythmic modulations, usually handled
by multiple percussionists. "(Graves) shows you can do it as one player," says
Glover. "He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the rhythms of the Caribbean,
rhythms of Africa, plus rhythms of jazz. He can move around without losing the
feel." For their part, Glover and Doyle sound possessed by Graves' deeply
humanistic performance; years later the polymath would develop a style based
around the human heartbeat, and here it sounds as if he's making the same
deductions, capturing his collaborators in a pulse that's undeniably biological
- breathing and sweating and screaming and crying out in anguish. Doyle's reed
sounds aren't always identifiable, and aren't always completely coherent.
There's a motion that comes across as just as forceful and rhythmically-charged
as Graves' drumming, aptly backed up by Glover's bizarre bleats and honks.
Together it sounds not so much like a conversation but an attempt to unpack
centuries of folk logic, swirling each element into a vortex of noise and
shattered harmony. Graves works as a sonic codebreaker, ethnomusicologist and
historian, unraveling hidden knowledge in an eruption of kinetic vibrations and
unhinged dynamism. We're in tatters over this one, do yrself a favor and absorb
it without further thought - thank us later.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Milford Graves, Arthur Doyle, Hugh Glover - March 11, 1976 I (11:50)
1.02 - Milford Graves, Arthur Doyle, Hugh Glover - March 11, 1976 II (4:42)
1.03 - Milford Graves, Arthur Doyle, Hugh Glover - March 11, 1976 III (9:38)
1.04 - Milford Graves, Arthur Doyle, Hugh Glover - January 24, 1976 I (10:11)
1.05 - Milford Graves, Arthur Doyle, Hugh Glover - January 24, 1976 II (6:09)
1.06 - Milford Graves, Arthur Doyle, Hugh Glover - January 24, 1976 III (1:41)
1.07 - Milford Graves, Arthur Doyle, Hugh Glover - January 24, 1976 IV (6:55)
1.08 - Milford Graves, Arthur Doyle, Hugh Glover - February 2, 1976 I (3:14)

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