Force majeure

The audiences I was trying to reach were not interested in the harp, period, and they were certainly not interested in seeing a Black woman playing the harp – states Dorothy Ashby in the book “Living the Jazz Life”. Meanwhile it was in fact black women who introduced this instrument to the history of the genre. Out of spite, out of love, in order to tell a story…

Once upon a time, two brothers set off on a long journey. Unfortunately they got lost in the wilderness and their supplies ran out quickly. The older brother therefore asked the younger brother to wait for him while he hunted. After some time he came back with a piece of meat, all of which he gave to his brother, telling him that he’d already eaten enough. This saved the younger brother’s life. After a few days, however, the older brother fell ill with a fever due to an infection, and only then did the younger brother notice that he was injured. He immediately understood that his brother hadn’t hunted any animal, after all they hadn’t seen a single one on the horizon in a long time. He had cut a piece of his own body to save his brother. Fortunately they both survived, and from then on the younger sang a song in honor of the older brother, thereby becoming the first griot in history. So goes one of the legends about the origins of the African tradition of cultivating memory by means of words and sound – a multi-generational heritage of poet-singers who recounted ancient stories to people. In the process of telling these stories, they often aided themselves with plucked stringed instruments, specifically the kora – a type of 21-string harp used in West Africa. And although griot is a term usually reserved for men – jelikelu, women also followed this custom – jelimusolu, and they usually specialized not in speech but in singing. They were always characterized by the strength (of their voice) and the possibility to have an impact on society.

The harp is one of the oldest instruments known to humankind – the descendant of the musical bow, whose history dates back thousand of years, where in ancient Mesopotamia it was used to accompany singing and recitation.  Its contemporary triangular shape – with 46 or 47 strings – only became popular in the Western world in the XVIII century, thanks to the compositions of Georg Friedrich Händel and Christoph Willibald Gluck, and also…to the queen of France, Marie Antoinette, who was a talented harpist.  It was indeed then that the instrument took on its courtly, aristocratic nimbus, which for long decades took the harp away from people, and took away from the harp itself the possibility to tell stories, which it had always had the predisposition and inclination for. This is the very dependence that Dorothy Ashby talks about in the quote that begins this text. Still underappreciated and in many works unfortunately omitted, one of the most important jazzwomen in the history of the genre, for not only was she a woman in an extremely male world, she was also a black woman who played the harp – an instrument better suited to a philharmonic than a club, a living room rather than a saloon, serious rather than popular music. And even though it took her years to convince other musicians that the harp is not too classical and…ethereal for jazz, she finally made it, and she herself became “The Jazz Harpist”, like the title of her first record in 1957, and her instrument turned out to be a real “Hip Harp”, like the title of her second LP, published a year later by Prestige. In the process of cajoling people to the sound of these forty-seven strings on which she wove her history, she was supported by love (she often played at weddings), generosity (she often played for free) and a burning need to tell stories. Her first concerts with her husband John Ashby were based not only on playing but also on conversation, her instrumentation rather quickly expanded to include singing, and her later albums (with the completely separate 1970 album “The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby” at the forefront) all existed at the intersection of jazz and soul, bop and free, America, Asia and Africa.

Another great harpist in the history of jazz was Alice Coltrane – one of the most important figures of the spiritual movement that revolutionized the genre in the 1960s. After building her language of expression on experiences in church choir, receiving a classical academic education and playing grooves in Detroit and Paris night clubs, Swamini Turiyasangitananda (the name she took on after her Hindu awakening) became a totally unique artist. Regardless of whether she used the piano, the harp left her as a posthumous present by her life partner or the synthesizers she discovered only years later, her expression was never strictly musical. 

Using sound she talked about her life: the heroin addiction of her first husband, the illness and death of her second spouse – the unsurpassed John Coltrane – and the Vedic destiny that sent her on a path to sannjasy, i.e. the liberation from the illusion of materialistic life and spiritual leadership. On her next dozen records she talked about “Universal Consciousness” (1971), our galaxy (“World Galaxy”, 1972) and the “Lord of Lords” (1973), of her own “Illuminations” (1974, with Carlos Santana), universal eternity (“Eternity”, 1976) and the constant pursuit of transcendence (“Transcendence”, 1977), about a love that is beginning, continuation and end of everything – like in the cover of “A Love Supreme” written by Alice Coltrane spoke her guru Swami Satchidananda.

Brandee Younger, meanwhile, is the third most important harpist in jazz history and the silent initiator of this text. Less than a year after the premiere of her latest album “Brand New Life”, released by Impulse! Records, she performed on stage at Jassmine on 3 April. In a similar fashion to her predecessors and idols Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane, Younger, with equal eloquence and grace, treads on the outskirts separating classical and popular music, pop music from avantgarde and all possible genres from each other. For nearly two decades of her creative career she has collaborated with Pharaoh Sanders and Lauren Hill, Jack DeJohnette and Moses Sumney, Makaya McCraven and Drake, she has played standards and progressive covers of The Beatles. In addition to that she was the curator of a concert in memory of Ella Fiztgerald and member of The Tonight Show band with Salaam Remi and The Roots. Just like Ashby she played at weddings and in her honor she recorded her third album “Wax & Wane” (2026). Meanwhile she is connected to Alice Coltrane by her next LP “Soul Awakening” (2019), her career breakthrough, in which for the first time she recorded compositions by Turiyasangitananda, which she has been studying for years with her son Ravi Coltrane.

She began her concert at Jassmine with an interpretation of “Rama Rama”. This track from the album “Divine Songs”, published on samizdat cassette in 1987, is a sound meditation recorded by Swamini with students from her Vedic center written for synth and voice. Two floors below the intersection of Wilcza and Koszykowa streets, this prayer resounded with a harp and a powerful, very lively rhythm section courtesy of Rashaan Carter on bass and Allan Mednard on drums. Most people are still not used to the sight of a harp outside a philharmonic, so when Dorothy Ashby took it to clubs in the 50s it must’ve caused quite a bit of consternation. Decades later, when Alice Coltrane started playing harp more often than piano, this also wasn’t received well by jazz critics. And to this day many musicians don’t want to play harp because they prefer to choose a “powerful”  instrument like the saxophone or the trumpet. For me, however, the most important moment was when I started playing works by Ashby and Coltrane consciously and intentionally. It’s from them that I became convinced that the harp suits every musical genre and it was their story that made it incomparably easier for my generation  – says Brandee Younger a moment after getting off the stage.

During her performance she mentioned both of her predecessors many times – before “Turiya and Ramakrishna” she ardently invited the audience to listen to Turiyasangitananda, and when nobody in the audience recognized her solo interpretation of Stevie Wonder’s “If It’s Magic”, she almost cried. She dedicated “Essence of Ruby” to the prematurely deceased Casey Benjamin, and Gaye’s “I want You” to the audience, which reacted enthusiastically to every other track from her solo discography but also to lesser known tracks like the “Unrest”, which deals with social issues despite having been composed during the pandemic. The deep, low grooves of Rashaan Carter and the sonorous, imposing solo of Allan Mednard, every word uttered by Younger into the microphone and every sound played by her on the forty-seven strings of her harp all received applause and cheers. The harp, which at times sounds like a plucked string instrument (which it is) and at other times like a keyboard instrument – like a piano, guitar or koto – like a story told with sound. When i first heard “Blue Nile” by Alice Coltrane it was…oh God, I can’t even describe it – the author of “Brand New Life” continues the story of her fascination with the sound of this instrument – Dorothy Ashby however was decades ahead of her time – she reached into the past playing the koto, she recorded pop hits of the time with Bill Withers, she added to her repertoire themes from films that had just come out in theaters…And that’s also why so many hip hop producers sampled her recordings “Afro-Harping”, “Dorothy’s Harp” and “The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby”- three albums published by Cadet, and simultaneously three in which a very lively, powerful rhythm section so beautifully interacted with the harp. That’s what both beatmakers and I are attracted to.

Brande Younger’s first performance in Poland was also based on this dynamic – against common thought patterns, out of love for music, in order to tell stories. The harp I play took on this shape only in the XVIII century in Europe, which makes people forget its centuries long African tradition, and its cultural significance, which emanates from Alice Coltrane’s music. This sound carries so much content, so many meanings and history… – says the irreplaceable continuator of the ideas of Ashby and Turiyasangitananda, after which she pauses and thinks for a long moment.The heritage resonating out of her music, however, lands today on much more fertile ground – in the current new era of Aquarius, of the fall of patriarchy and at a time when only love can still save this world, the harp seems to be the perfect instrument for these totally unique circumstances. Forty-six or -seven strings on which the thread of life is stretched, with the help of which – thanks to the sacrifice of predecessors – it’s now possible to play literally anything: from classical through jazz to r&b, rap and pop; with whose accompaniment it’s possible to tell, once more, one’s history, or rather herstory.