Randy Weston
Pianist and composer who brought African rhythms to American jazz but was banned in South Africa
RANDY WESTON, who has died aged 92, was a pianist and composer devoted to exploring the connections between American and African music. It was a creative exploration, resulting in more than half a century of diverse music-making and an impressive body of recorded work.
Randolph Edward Weston was born in Brooklyn, New York, on April 6 1926, the son of a barber (later a restaurateur) and a domestic servant. His parents separated when he was a small boy. Weston’s father, who was a keen supporter of the black nationalist Marcus Garvey, often reminded him, “You’re an African, born in America.”
After piano lessons as a child, the teenaged Weston became interested in jazz, hardly surprising since this was the height of the swing era, and worked in his father’s restaurant until drafted into the army in 1944.
On his release three years later, he found his neighbourhood badly affected by the new scourge of hard drugs and decided to move out. He toured with a few early R&B bands and later took a job as a hotel cook in Lennox, Massachusetts, also playing piano for the cocktail hour. His debut album, with the curious title of Cole Porter in a Modern Mood, was released in 1954.
Weston’s first musical inspiration was Thelonious Monk. He would call at Monk’s Manhattan apartment and sit, observing his mentor’s unique technique: “When he played the piano it was no longer a piano, it became for me another instrument entirely, with notes between the cracks.”
His second album, The Randy
Weston Trio (1955), earned Weston a Rising Star award in that year’s
Downbeat critics’ poll. By the end of the decade he was a well-established figure in contemporary jazz, and in an art that was showing ominous signs of taking itself too solemnly, his smiling, optimistic style stood out. It is typified by his breezy, tuneful sextet album,
Little Niles (1959), named for his young son.
In 1960 Weston released Uhuru Afrika, his first explicitly Africaninfluenced album. It employed 24 of New York’s leading jazz musicians, two vocalists and a narrator, and was by far his most elaborate LP to date. Lyrics and programme notes were by the poet Langston Hughes. It was greeted with five-star reviews, sold well and was banned in South Africa.
The following year, Weston made his first visit to Africa, as a member of a cultural delegation to Nigeria. Along with the interest kindled by his father, he felt a compulsion to find out “why we play music like we do” which was to dominate the rest of his musical life.
He returned to Africa in 1967, travelling widely and taking in all the music he could find. In Morocco he was particularly fascinated by the music of the Gnawa, an ethnic group originally brought from Sub-saharan Africa as slaves. He often incorporated Gnawa musicians in his later work.
With his son, Niles (also known as Azzedin), he settled in Tangier until 1972. While there, he opened and ran the African Rhythms Cultural Centre.
Back in New York, Weston recorded what he described as “my only hit”, Blue Moses, in 1972. Initially suspicious of the glossy image presented by the label, CTI, and disgruntled at being required to play an electric piano, he succeeded in making a beautiful and enthralling album that was also commercially successful.
The 50-odd albums that Randy Weston recorded, with bands of various sizes or simply as a solo pianist, were almost always ahead of the trend. This is especially true of his work from the 1960s onwards. It was not until others had followed him that the label “World Music” was devised – and even then he evaded capture. His 1991 album, The Spirits of Our Ancestors, which has been called the first classic of World Music, was recorded in New York by a band of heavyweight jazz musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie, and arranged by Melba Liston.
In later years he travelled the world. The last time he appeared in Britain was at the 2014 London Jazz Festival, playing expansive duets with the saxophonist Billy Harper. They were probably the two tallest men in the Queen Elizabeth Hall that night, Weston at 6ft 7in and Harper about the same.
Weston’s 90th birthday was celebrated with a concert at Carnegie Hall. He recorded his final album, The African-nubian Suite, in 2017.
Randy Weston was married twice, his first marriage ending in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, Fatoumata Mbengue-weston, and three daughters. His son predeceased him.
Randy Weston, born April 6 1926, died September 1 2018