Rashied Ali Expands Jazz to Eternal Free Space

Rashied Ali garnered acclaim and approval mostly as John Coltrane's last drummer. It is natural that such an affiliation would lead to lots of independent opportunities subsequently.

Ali, a Philadelphia native, started his career in his musically fertile hometown. He moved to New York City when he was 30, and worked with Bill Dixon, Paul Bley and Alice Coltrane before he was offered the second drummer seat, next to Elvin Jones, on John Coltrane's what became his revolutionary free-jazz album, "Ascension". Ali dropped out, however, and his collaboration with Coltrane was postponed until the "Meditations" album. This collaboration lasted until Coltrane's premature death in 1967.

In the late 60s and onward, Ali became a steadfast believer in independent artistry, both in terms of liberties in the creation process and the independence in music business. His loft club, Ali's Alley, in New York's Soho district, was a forum for experimental creations in the 1970s. He successfully defied the established record companies, and started his own Survival Records label and Survival Studio where he recorded many of his albums. He continued to occasionally record for other small labels as well.

Ali passed away last year at the age of 76. Several new posthumous releases are now available. The historically most interesting one is with scat vocalist Eddie Jefferson, Live at Ali's Alley from 1976, a one-night live recording, which includes all introductions and even a few miscommunications in the band. Configurations is Ali's amendment of Coltrane's late works from "Stellar Regions". He teams up with Prima Materia, a group of young New Yorkers whose interest met with Ali's visions of finding a new angle to the thirty-year old and mostly since untouched material.Cutt'n Korners (note the rather adventurous spelling), is according to Ali in his last interview in August 2009, "all about my thing", and in many ways personifies and sums up his career, with original compositions by himself, his then and former band members, and John Coltrane.

Rashied Ali's impact on drumming could be summed up as a stretch of time, legalised to open new worlds of expressive dimensions. This originated according to Ali from "Philly" Jo Jones. Ali would thus be one of the first non-regular, non-timekeeping drummers, who would equally contribute to music with sounds of the drums and cymbals, as opposed to mere repetitive rhythm. These aspects are now present in much of creative music, and owes honour and respect to the development and refinement Ali authored during his life.