The world of Jazz music since the end of the Second World War seems to be dominated by a few figures. Giants such as Charlie Mingus, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Art Blakney and Eric Dolphy through force of personality, talent, and reputation overshadowed many a man or woman as skilled, if not better than them. That's not meant to cast aspersions on any of those great players but merely to point out reality.
Not everyone is meant for or seeks out the limelight. In fact many of those who have found themselves in the spotlight probably had had no desire for it. You set out to play music and sometimes by a fluke what you love playing ends up being what people just happen to want to listen to. Or there's something about you personally that captures people's imaginations and you become a person of renown.
There are also those who somehow or other have never received the recognition they deserved. Brilliant sideman who got lost in the shuffle while playing for more illustrious band mates might have received the recognition of their peers, but the public never heard of them. Any sideman who was able to keep up with and match Coltrane note for note would have been showered with accolades if he had been soloing, but Marion Brown has become America's greatest Jazz secret.
To honour Brown's music, the Michigan-based performance troop His Name Is Alive had conceived the idea of a one-off concert at the University of Michigan's Museum of Art.
Members of Nomo and Antibalas, two other contemporary music groups, joined them for the evening. Reaction was so positive to the concert that they committed to the process of recording Sweet Earth Flower almost immediately and the result is an amazing tribute to not only the creative powers of Brown, but the performance abilities of His Name Is Alive
Somehow passing under everybody's radar, Marion Brown has quietly gone about the business of creating introspective and intelligent jazz music in relative anonymity. Perhaps it's because his vision of music is more akin to the composer of full orchestral pieces than that of a jazz musician. Instead of focusing on expressing a theme within the parameters of the 20-minute song, his work was in terms of albums.
He also eschewed the idea of the individual performer in favour of the collective composition. Afternoon Of A Georgia Faun, an obvious nod to Stravinsky's La Pres-midi a la Faun, was created with three amateur "assistants" who played what Brown referred to as little instruments including the Brown invented Top O'Lin. (Pot lids fixed on a board and bowed like a fiddle). The instrumentalists on "Georgia Faun" worked independently of each other in an effort to create what Brown referred to as "interchangeable discourse"
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