Archie Shepp

Archie Shepp was born in 1937 in Fort Lauderdale Florida He was 7 years old when his family moved to Philadelphia in the black neighborhood of Brick Yard He started playing the banjo with his father then he studied piano and saxophone at the same time as he did his secondary studies at Germantown College He entered university got into theatre frequented novelists and poets like Leroy Jones and wrote his first play The Communist an allegory on the situation of black Americans At the end of the 50s Archie Shepp met the most radical musicians of the time Lee Morgan Bobby Timmons Jimmy Garrisson Ted Curson Beaver Harris During this period his political conscience found expression in plays and theatrical productions that only allowed him to survive It was at the beginning of the 60s that he met Cécil Taylor and made two recordings with him that would be decisive In 1962 he signed his first album as coleader with Bill Dixon The following year he founded the New York Contemporary Five with John Tchicaï recorded four albums for the Fontana Storyville and Savoy labels and discovered Europe with the same group From August 1964 he worked with Impulse 17 albums were recorded including Four for Trane Fire Music Mama too Tight which are among the classics of Free music His collaboration with John Coltrane took shape in Ascension in 1965 and marked a turning point in avantgarde music His participation in the creation of the Composers Guild with Paul and Carla Bley Sun RA Roswell Rudd Cecil Taylor reflects his militant commitment In July 1969 he went to Africa for the first time to the PanAfrican Festival in Algiers a city that was home to many black American opponents at the time On this occasion he recorded live for the Byg label the first of six albums in the Actuel series and he played on stage with a group of Tuaregs From then on Archie Shepp would multiply the musical encounters world with Gwoka from Guadeloupe Hungarians CD Hungarian bebop with Mihaly Dresch and many others From 1969 he taught ethnomusicology at the University of Amherst Massachusetts he continued to perform around the world asserting his identity as an African American musician Francis Marmande wrote about him in the Dictionnaire du Jazz published by Robert Laffont An artistic and intellectual personality of the highest order Archie Shepp a leading musician of the free avantgarde was able to join without abandoning the essential of this aesthetic the royal road of jazz art By deepening the spirit and the letter of the two sides of the song originating from NegroAmerican music the blues and the spiritual Of which he never ceases through classical pieces or composed by him Black Water Blues by Bessie Smith or Mama Rose etc to revive the force of strangeness in the face of European music in a unique mix of wounded violence and immemorial nostalgia In recent years Archie Shepp multiplies the audacious encounters without ever fearing to take risks