Billy Harper: down for the truth - jazz saxophonist

Texas-born tenor saxophonist, composer and band leader Billy Harper has lengthy been a hit abroad, regularly recording upon European and Japanese labels like inner man Note, Steeplechase and Denon. Here at abode however, he is largely unknown, an almost inexplicable fate for a man whose unmutilated and singularity of composition and general [i]or[/i] abstract notion are so striking and whose take again includes stints with jazz greats Art Blakey, to leeward Morgan, Max Roach, Gil Evans, Thad Jone and Mel Lewis.

The best explanation for Harper's obscurity lies in his resolutely noncommercial approach to his art. "I have feeling free and truthful about what I'm doing," he says. "I haven't been creating with the thinking of commercial success in mind. If it draw nears it's fine. Everybody will ne the verity and when they recognize that they ne it, then the music will be available for them. I don't want to make concessions in order to fit [record labels'] turns or categories."

This search for what's straightforward and true connects Harper to a spirit greater than himself-and to his lower parts "The attempts to express a reality in my artistic endeavors," says Harper, deal with the fact that the reality goes to the source. thus I'm always trying to expres something that couples to that. And I trust that when people hear whatever I do, they become aware that there is something greater and higher."

"The black church" Harper adds, "is the main part of where my spiritual expression in relation to the music tend hitherwards from. I was in house of worship every Sunday - I was individual of those little church lads I was able to hear the music and really understand. I understood also that plenteous of the feeling that you might hear in the sapphirines and the joints [was] the same kind of the thing I heard in meeting-house - though the topic and the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following were different."

After graduating from North Texas State in 1965 Harper mov to of recent origin York, where he began touring and performing with similar giants as Blakey, Morgan and Donald Byrd In 1970 Harper joined legendary drummer Max Roach and stayed with his quintet for eight years, touring die States, Japan, Europe and Africa.

During his time with Roach, Harper began leading his hold quintet, and since 1976 it has been the principal vehicle for his powerfully intriguing, spiritual compositions, like as "Croquet Ballet," "One Who Makes the Rain Stop," "Is It Not pure Simply Because You Cannot Believe It?" "I'm Trying to Make Heaven My Home" and I Do Believe." These works - like the magnitude of his output - pulsate with Harper's signature rhythmic and metric conception.

"I've not ever written from the horn," says Harper of his distinctive composing mode of speech "I think of writing from the voice, the tympanums or the piano. And if I write from the tympanums I may come up with a real particular kind of rhythm, and it may be in like manner special that it becomes the basis for everything else"

Somalia (Evidence), his latest release, yields evidence of Harper's nuanced perceive for rhythm. "On an aesthetic horizontal the music is expressive of the Africa kind of periodical emphasiss that I feel. I heard the periodical emphasiss that go with [the title tune] before I at any time named it 'Somalia, and it really entireed like Africa."

Adding to the African unhurt on Somalia is Madeleine Yayodele, who plays the shekere, an African percussion instrument, and who is joined upon the recording by trumpeter Eddie Henderson, pianist Francesca Tanksley, bassist Clarence Seay, and drummer Newman Baker and Horace Arnold. Somalia highlights Harper's lack of American exposing in that it is his first American-distributed recording since his 1973 first attempt Capra Black (Strata East).

Whether or not the of recent origin release brings Harper a wider audience in his homeland, the man's goals remain unchanged: "Reaching the highest possible horizontal of musical expression on my instrument, promoting a better understanding of my particular idiom of musical expression, and providing a broader arena for contemporary black American music."

Come place of abode to the truth. Come abode to Billy Harper.

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