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Salim Washington

The story of jazz saxophonist-composer-scholar-activist Salim Washington paints a harlequin voyage in search of one’s roots. His parents were born and raised in the sharecropper plantations of Mississippi, met in Caperville, Tennessee, got married and moved to Detroit with hopes of a better life. His mother sewed at the Levi’s Jeans factory, and his father worked in construction and labor jobs. Although his mother prematurely passed away when he was twenty-one, Salim has careful memories of a selfless, courageous spirit who was fearless for her family. The gracious resilience of his father, who persevered to complete his education while working and raising a family, gave Salim the inspiration that he would later follow.

As the first generation in his family to be born outside of the plantations, Salim was born in the housing projects in Memphis, Tennesee. The narrative of Salim’s exposure to music is a remarkable one. When his family moved to Detroit, they lived in the notorious “Black Bottom” area during the 1960-70’s Detroit riots. As a young boy in what he calls “one of the most violent neighborhoods in Detroit”, he was drafted into the neighborhood gang at the age of 9. The leader of the gang played the trumpet and, having a soft spot for this young boy, goaded him into learning to play. Salim became very proficient, even surpassing the leader. Noticing the boy’s potential, the leader excused him from the gang. Salim credits this gang leader to introducing him to the trumpet, his first musical instrument.

The defining moment came in the 1970s after hearing John Coltrane in Exotica (Call Sonny) and Miles and Monk at Newport; “It was the most powerful, most intelligent and beautiful thing I have ever heard. It was about me and my experience in a much more elevated form than anything I have heard…it changed everything.” This stirred him to buy a saxophone with money from odd jobs. Salim was enlightened with the intelligence in Coltrane’s music, which also triggered the passion and emotion that he gets from church music and songs like Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly. Often demoralized by teachers for his musical ideas and afflicted by racial and social discrimination in school, this was the much-needed affirmation to pursue music.

Salim first entered Harvard in 1976 and subsequently dropped out to become a jazz musician. Over the next few years, he played in many towns and cities with several bands, including a traveling Chitlin circuit group. He also expanded into political activism, organizing protests against drug dealers in Roxbury, as well as working on support for the anti-Bakke decision and the Disinvestment movement from South Africa. He finally returned to Harvard in 1993 and completed his PhD in 2000, while still remaining active as a performer, writer, activist and family man.

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Album Review

The Paxton / Spangler Septet: Ugqozi

Read "Ugqozi" reviewed by Chris May


Ugqozi is a celebration of modern, urban African music, especially that from South Africa, with which co-leaders trombonist John “Tbone" Paxton and percussionist RJ Spangler have been in love for decades. It is also an affirmation of the vibrant Detroit scene of which the multi-generational Paxton / Spangler Septet is a part. Actually, the band is not a septet. Depending on whether one goes by the sleeve credits or the press release, it is either an octet ...

3
Album Review

Alchemy Sound Project: Afrika Love

Read "Afrika Love" reviewed by Jerome Wilson


The group Alchemy Sound Project is the result of five accomplished composers and bandleaders pooling their resources. The five are saxophonists Salim Washington and Erica Lindsay, trumpeter Samantha Boshnack, pianist Sumi Tonooka and bassist David Arend. Each one contributes a composition to this, their third release together. The result is a varied set of complex and restless modern jazz, arranged to showcase the playing talents of the group's members. Arend's “The Fountain" is a jangling group collage which ...

8
Album Review

Alchemy Sound Project: Afrika Love

Read "Afrika Love" reviewed by Troy Dostert


Confirming the many advantages of a regular working ensemble, the Alchemy Sound Project came together in 2014 to provide an additional venue of exploration for several members of the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute in Los Angeles. Although the group possesses an affinity for fusing classical composition techniques with expansive improvisation, what stands out on Afrika Love, the collective's third release, is its undisguised love of the jazz tradition. With a three-horn core of trumpeter Samantha Boshnack and multi-instrumentalists ...

2
Album Review

Gunter Gruner: The Invisible Landscape

Read "The Invisible Landscape" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


An ardent student of no less a legend than Andrew Cyrille, drummer/composer Gunter Gruner's fondness for jumpy, adroit, noir landscapes comes with a decisively Pink Panther stroll: lanky, animated, wise-ass but humble. His side-street detours to survey The Invisible Landscape involve more than the usual walk down free-form lanes. With downtown, free-jazz giant Daniel Carter on sax reaching back to go further forward, Gruner's arrhythmic compositions involve the usual micro tonalities, fractured harmonics and head space, but never ...

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Interview

Salim Washington: To Be Moved to Speak

Read "Salim Washington: To Be Moved to Speak" reviewed by Seton Hawkins


To audiences in Boston or New York, Salim Washington is not just a great musician, he is a community builder. Having first established the Roxbury Blues Aesthetic, then the Harlem Arts Ensemble, Washington has throughout his career carefully nurtured collectives of musicians who in turn generated irreplaceable music scenes at venues like Connolly's in Boston and St. Nick's Pub in New York. In tandem with his collaborators, Washington also honed his chops as a composer, tackling ambitious, genre-defying works that ...

1
Album Review

Salim Washington: Live at St. Nick's

Read "Live at St. Nick's" reviewed by AAJ Italy Staff


Dopo le esperienze con la Cadence Jazz Records e la CIMP Bob Rusch ha deciso di aprire una nuova serie, la CIMPoL, con registrazioni rigorosamente dal vivo. Si sente il calore del pubblico presente, gli applausi e l'interazione con i musicisti, che rendono il tutto in qualche modo “vero" anche nell'ascolto sull'impianto di casa. Al solito c'è il lavoro di Marc D. Rusch dietro il banco di missaggio alla ricerca di un suono naturale e senza troppa compressione, in equilibrio ...

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Album Review

Salim Washington: Live at St. Nick's

Read "Live at St. Nick's" reviewed by Jim Santella


Long a Friday night fixture at St. Nick's Pub in New York's Sugar Hill section, Salim Washington's Harlem Arts Ensemble--the leader on tenor, flute and oboe, pianist Donald Smith, violist Melani Dyer, bassist Aaron James, drummer Mark Johnson and trombonist Ku-Umba Frank Lacy, who also plays a mean flugelhorn--shares fresh ideas with an aware audience on this live document from the aforementioned club. In his liner notes, Washington points out that the Friday night audience is so hip that it ...

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Performance / Tour

Celebrating Cal Massey: Fred Ho and Salim Washington Concert on April 22

Celebrating Cal Massey: Fred Ho and Salim Washington Concert on April 22

Source: Michael Ricci

CELEBRATING CAL MASSEY with Fred Ho & the Afro Asian Music Ensemble and Salim Washington & the Brooklyn College Big Band Thursday, April 22, 7 pm, Gershwin Theater Brooklyn College, Campus Road and Hillel Place FREE to Public This concert features a rare performance of the gifted composer and trumpeter Cal Massey's piece, The Black Liberation Movement Suite. Presented by the H. Wiley Hitchcock Institute for Studies in American Music and The Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium ...

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Recording

Salim Washington & Harlem Arts Ensemble New CD "Harlem Homecoming" (Ujam Records)

Salim Washington & Harlem Arts Ensemble New CD "Harlem Homecoming" (Ujam Records)

Source: Jim Eigo, Jazz Promo Services

Harlem Homecoming (Ujam Records 126, 2006), is Salim Washington's latest release with the Harlem Arts Ensemble, The group consists of Washington (tenor saxophone, flute, oboe and vocals); Kuumba Frank Lacy (trombone, flugelhorn); Waldron Ricks (trumpet); Melanie Dyer (viola); Kurtis Rivers and Henry Cook (reeds/woodwinds); Rumas Barrett (percussion); Donald Smith (piano); Andy McCloud and Steve Neil (bass); Malik Washington, Mark Johnson and Taru Alexander (drums); Aaron Johnson (tuba).

Harlem Arts Ensemble is a rare organism in today's marketplace - not a ...

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Ugqozi

Eastlawn Records
2022

buy

The Invisible...

Self Produced
2021

buy

Afrika Love

Artists Recording Collective
2021

buy

Dogon Revisited

Passin' Thru
2018

buy

Live at St. Nick's

CIMP Records
2008

buy

Timbre Suite

Abstract Recordings
2008

buy

The Fountain

From: Afrika Love
By Salim Washington

Videos

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