Home » Jazz Musicians » Rashied Ali
Rashied Ali
Rashied Ali is a progenitor and leading exponent of multidirectional rhythms/polytonal percussion. A student of Philly Joe Jones and an admirer of Art Blakey, Ali developed the style known as "free jazz" drumming, which liberates the percussionist from the role of human metronome. The drummer interfaces both rhythmically and melodically with the music, utilizing meter and sound in a unique fashion. This allows the percussionist to participate in the music in a harmonic sense, coloring both the rhythm and tonality with his personal perception. By adding his voice to the ensemble, the percussionist becomes an equal in the melodics of collective musical creation rather than a "pot banger" who keeps the others all playing at the same speed. Considered radical in the 1960s and scorned by the mediocre, multidirectional rhythms, polytonal drumming is now the landmark of the jazz percussionist.
A Philadelphia native, Rashied Ali began his percussion career in the U.S. Army and started gigging with rhythm and blues and rock groups when he returned from the service. Cutting his musical teeth with local Philly R&B groups, such as Dick Hart & the Heartaches, Big Maybelle and Lin Holt, Rashied gradually moved on to play in the local jazz scene with such notables as Lee Morgan, Don Patterson and Jimmy Smith. Early in the 1960s the Big Apple beckoned, and soon Rashied Ali was a fixture of the avant-garde jazz scene, backing up the excursions of such musical free spirits as Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Paul Bley, Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon and Albert Ayler. It was during this period that Rashied Ali made his first major recording “On This Night,” with Archie Shepp, on the Impulse label, and began to sit in with John Coltrane's group at the Half Note and other clubs around Manhattan.
In November 1965 John Coltrane decided to use a two- drummer format for a gig at the Village Gate; the percussionist Trane chose to complement the already legendary Elvin Jones was Rashied Ali. Thus began a musical odyssey whose reverberations are still felt in the music today—Trane probing the outer harmonic limits and changing the melodic language of jazz while Rashied Ali turned the drum kit into a multirhythmic, polytonal propellant, helping fuel Coltrane's flights of free jazz fancy. The rolling, emotion-piercing music generated by the Coltrane/Ali association is still being discussed, analyzed, reviewed and enjoyed in awe as the new compact disk format introduces the era to a new host of the sonically aware.
Read moreTags
Alan Shorter: Mephistopholes To Orgasm Revisited
by Chris May
It is often said of a musician, be they alive or no longer with us, that they deserve to be better known. This is emphatically true of the wayward trumpeter and composer Alan Shorter, who was overshadowed during his lifetime by his brother, Wayne Shorter, and who continues to be passed over today in 2024. Some responsibility for his obscurity lies with Alan Shorter himself. Known as Doc Strange to his teenage schoolmates in Newark, New Jersey, ...
read moreMarion Brown: Why Not? Porto Novo! Revisited
by Chris May
Alto saxophonist Marion Brown was part of the band on John Coltrane's Ascension (Impulse, 1965), though you would not guess it from Why Not (ESP, 1968). Like fellow Ascension alumnus, tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders' contemporaneous Tauhid (Impulse, 1967), Brown's album inhabited an intensely melodic section of the 1960s' New Thing. As were Sanders' own-name releases from 1967 onwards, Brown's work was deeply lyrical and embraced South Asian, Maghrebi and West African instruments and constructs. As bandleaders, the two ...
read moreLife After Rashied: Live at the Woodstock Playhouse 1965; Why Not?; Eddie Jefferson at Ali's Alley; Configurations--The Music of John Coltrane; Mystic Journey
by Gordon Marshall
Burton GreeneLive at the Woodstock Playhouse 1965Porter2010 Marion BrownWhy Not?ESP2009 Rashied Ali QuintetFeaturing Eddie Jefferson at Ali's AlleyBlue Music Group2010 Rashied Ali with Prima MateriaConfigurations--The Music of John ColtraneBlue Music Group2009 Azar LawrenceMystic JourneysFurthermore2010 ...
read moreRashied Ali: Meditations, Live in Europe and Art-Work
by Kurt Gottschalk
John Coltrane Meditations Impulse! 2009 Rashied Ali Live in Europe Survival Records 2009 Hal Galper Art-Work Origin Records 2009 The eight years John Coltrane spent as a leader before his truly untimely death have been parsed and evaluated endlessly, with such vague qualities as importance, significance ...
read moreRashied Ali Quintet: Judgment Day, Volume 1
by Erik R. Quick
Rashied Ali is most commonly associated with his short tenure as John Coltrane's drummer on Interstellar Space (Impulse!, 1967). His significant participation in the New York loft-jazz movement by opening “Ali's Alley in 1973 is also frequently cited. His most recent collaborations with saxophonist Sonny Fortune continue the conception of Ali as an explosive participant in free improvisation. Nevertheless, Ali's Judgment Day, Volume 1 is a strictly mainstream outing where he focuses his efforts as a teacher to those relatively ...
read moreRashied Ali Quintet: Judgment Day, Vol. Two
by Russ Musto
Although rightfully revered as one of the fathers of avant-garde drumming for his role in John Coltrane's last band, Rashied Ali grew up in Philadelphia during the heyday of hard bop, so it should come as no surprise to find him at the helm of a group that reflects the influence of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and the Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet, as much as that of the freer music that flowed from the font of Coltrane. This ...
read moreRashied Ali Quintet: Judgment Day, Vol. One
by Jeff Stockton
Rashied Ali has always been unfairly typecast as the guy who usurped Elvin Jones from Coltrane's Classic Quartet, enforcing the dividing line between A Love Supreme and Trane's final phase, when the leader became all dissonant and difficult. Trane knew better than us, of course, but Ali's career after Trane didn't do much to change the perception that he was strictly a free jazzer, thanks to first-rate duet work with the late Frank Lowe, stellar performances in trios led by ...
read moreJazz Musician of the Day: Rashied Ali
Source:
All About Jazz is celebrating Rashied Ali's birthday today!
Rashied Ali is a progenitor and leading exponent of multidirectional rhythms/polytonal percussion. A student of Philly Joe Jones and an admirer of Art Blakey, Ali developed the style known as “free jazz" drumming, which liberates the percussionist from the role of human metronome. The drummer interfaces both rhythmically and melodically with the music, utilizing meter and sound in a unique fashion...Rashied Ali is a progenitor and leading exponent of multidirectional rhythms/polytonal ...
read more
Henry Grimes and Rashied Ali - Spirits Aloft (Porter Records, 2010)
Source:
Music and More by Tim Niland
This recoding documents a live meeting between two of the legends of the “new thing" free jazz movement of the 1960's, drummer Rashied Ali, who was best known as John Coltrane's last drummer, but was also a loft jazz club entrepreneur and label owner, along with being musical pioneer and longtime band leader. Henry Grimes, playing bass and violin here, played with everyone from Sonny Rollin to Alber Ayler back during the first phase of his career, then famously dropped ...
read more
Jazz Musician of the Day: Rashied Ali
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Rashied Ali's birthday today!
JAZZ MUSICIAN OF THE DAY Rashied Ali
Rashied Ali is a progenitor and leading exponent of multidirectional rhythms/polytonal percussion. A student of Philly Joe Jones and an admirer of Art Blakey, Ali developed the style known as “free jazz" drumming... more
Website | Photos | Articles
Follow Rashied Ali
Put AAJ's Musician of the Day box on your website or blog ...
read more
Rashied Ali's Last Interview (Recorded August 5, 2009) Now Available
Source:
Michael Ricci
Drummer and composer Rashied Ali, who passed away on August 12, speaks in a 17-minute interview with pianist and composer Mika Pohjola. The interview was made on August 5, one week before Mr. Ali passed away. Mr. Ali talks about his time as John Coltrane's drummer, the music scene in the 60s, the downtown New York loft scene in the 70s when he owned the legendary jazz club Ali's Alley, and his philosophy as a music entrepreneur and a leader ...
read more
Rashied Ali, Free-Jazz Drummer, Dies at 76
Source:
Michael Ricci
Rashied Ali, whose expressionistic, free-jazz drumming helped define the experimental style of John Coltrane’s final years, died Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 76. The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Patricia Ali. Mr. Ali, who first encountered Coltrane in their Philadelphia neighborhood in the late 1950s, made the leap from admiration to collaboration in the mid-1960s, when he joined Elvin Jones as a second drummer with Coltrane’s ensemble at the Village Gate in November 1965. Mr. Ali recorded ...
read more
Rashied Ali, Jazz Drummer, Dies
Source:
Michael Ricci
Rashied Ali, whose expressionistic, free-jazz drumming helped define the experimental style of John Coltranes final years, died Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 76. The cause of his death was a heart attack, his wife, Patricia Ali, said. Mr. Ali, who first encountered Coltrane in their Philadelphia neighborhood in the late 1950s, made the leap from admiration to participation in the mid-1960s, when he joined Elvin Jones as a second drummer with Coltranes ensemble at the Village Gate in November 1965 ...
read more
Rashied Ali
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Rashied Ali, a drummer who applied his advanced technique to free jazz, died today in New York. He was 76. Born Robert Patterson, Ali became a disciple and close colleague of his fellow Philadelphian John Coltrane. He played on some of the most uninhibited recordings of Coltrane's final years, including the astonishing Interstellar Space, a series of free duets. I was on a selection committee for Grammy nominations in 1974, the year Impulse! Records released Interstellar Space. Pianist Billy Taylor, ...
read more
Rashied Ali, an Iconic Musician, Has Left Time
Source:
Michael Ricci
Rashied Ali, the great free jazz drummer, who is mainly known as a member of John Coltrane's last band, passed away yesterday, August 12, 2009 in New York City. In addition to Coltrane, Ali had worked with numerous musicians; Paul Bley, Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, John Zorn and several generations of younger musicians. Rashied Ali, who was also an avant-garde music activist in the 70s, owned a New York downtown jazz club, Ali's Alley, which is described in his last ...
read more
Joris Teepe
bass, acoustic
Jon Lipscomb
guitarPhotos
Music
Videos
Similar
John Coltrane
saxophone
Max Roach
drums
Buddy Rich
drums
Cecil Taylor
piano
Albert Ayler
saxophone, tenor
Archie Shepp
saxophone, soprano
Ari Hoenig
drums
Wadada Leo Smith
trumpet
Sonny Sharrock
guitar, electric
Charles Gayle
saxophone
Chris Cheek
saxophone
Hamid Drake
drums
Julius Hemphill
saxophone, alto
Randy Weston
piano
Lester Bowie
trumpet
Dewey Redman
saxophone, tenor
Rashied Ali
Instrument: Drums
Born: July 1, 1935
Died: August 12, 2009
_with_Skip_Mcdonald_(Right)_23_n.jpg)
