I was born Joseph W Phillips, on 25 August 1944 in Cleveland, Ohio. It was there that The Black Unity Trio’s Al-Fatihah album was recorded in December 1968. We released it ourselves the following year. Before I moved into the area of music heard on this album, I was, you might say, drawn by works with lugubrious undertones. Compositions like “Odds Against Tomorrow”, by The Modern Jazz Quartet and “Sounds of Nature” by Yusef Lateef were meditative.

Among the compositions featured on Al-Fatihah, “Birth, Life And Death” is tempered with mercy. At the beginning there are bells, mallets and the cello opening up the arrangement in a hovering, detached from any particular direction. Then, without notice it moves into the demanding aspects of life. At the end of the composition, there’s a recline in which you can hear what I mean by ‘lugubrious’, expressed with the cello.

With The Black Unity Trio, it was very easy to include Abdul Wadud. He had a great ear and command of his instrument. He also had a sixth sense about what was happening in the music and how to supply an undercurrent, which is an intricate part in the cohesion sought by The Listener of free-form music. There were always current events on the world scene worth taking serious note of and, coupled with his own world experience, that was transferred through the drumming and energy of Hasan Shahid. He kept the reality of the times in constant comprehension.

As my journey moved on, I found, in the midst of what was already taking place musically, the work of Igor Stravinsky — “Spring Round Dances” from The Rite of Spring — and compositions like “Siegfried’s Funeral March” from Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. Wagner’s music seems to have had an effect on Adolf Hitler. I often pondered how people of dissimilar walks of life could have things in common musically.

Before recording Al-Fatihah I made another album, with trumpeter Norman Howard. Norman had played on Albert Ayler’s album Spirits, which also featured Norman’s “Witches And Devils” composition. The exact date of our session, I’m not certain. My thinking is it was sometime in 1967, as Norman and I started playing together around 1966. We formed a group, and we were grateful for bassist Walter Cliff. He was known and liked around Cleveland, and associated with a lot of fine musicians. Finding a compatible drummer was no easy task, so we called Sunny Murray in New York. He was more than happy to come to Cleveland, but at the time Norman and myself were married, had children, and in those days a round trip ticket from New York to Cleveland plus living expenses was beyond our reach. So Norman decided on Cornelius Milsap as the drummer. He had a willing spirit and the courage to do something different.

Among the compositions recorded during this session was “Sad Miss Holiday”. Norman and I both are big fans of Billie Holiday, so we collaborated. I wrote the music and Norman wrote the lyrics. It is a mournful dirge reflecting the life experiences of the great singer who pleased audiences worldwide while at the same time being ensnared by systemic injustices and bad circumstances, starting at a very early age. At the time, the music remained unreleased but an illegal unauthorised copy of this album was eventually issued by Bernard Stollman of ESP-Disk' as Burn Baby Burn in 2007.

ESP had a problem with ethics. Trying to explain to Walter Cliff and Cornelius Milsap the theft of the music we had recorded was difficult. In those days, we thought we had a friend in Bernard Stollman, but it didn’t turn out that way. After Walter Cliff, Abdul Wadud came on board. There was another recording session with Abdul, Norman, myself and drummer Oscar Hood. I am looking into including a different recording of “Sad Miss Holiday” – featuring Norman’s lyrics for the first time – on a CD I am releasing in January, which is in part a tribute to the Ayler family. It will be entitled Sketches Of The Invisible.

Before I heard Albert Ayler play in person, his dad Edward Ayler, a longtime friend of my family, had brought my mother a copy of Albert’s album Bells. Albert was not around town much, he was in New York or Europe. I in fact only saw him once, in a Cleveland concert he held at WHK Auditorium in February 1967.

One afternoon, around 2009, during a conversation with Albert’s father at his home, I brought up the subject of working with some of the ideals that Albert was exploring. He wanted to know if I was playing outside, so I gave him a copy of recordings I had made in memory of Albert in the 1980s – the only time I’ve recorded with another artist in mind. I wanted Mr Ayler to know that his son was appreciated. Sketches Of The Invisible will contain this music.

A great Poet by the name of Kahlil Gibran once stated that “you could see liquor but what’s hidden is its spirit”. So it is with music. You could hear music but what’s hidden is the spirit. It cannot be seen, but you can react to it. The same applies to the spirit animating the human body. There is dark music, and then there’s dark music with a light at the end of the tunnel. Albert’s life ended as darkness upon the face of the deep. The East River, where his body was found in 1970, became the express purpose in creating the composition “Albert’s Cry In The Wilderness” on the upcoming release.

Another important source of inspiration was John Coltrane. When Brother John transitioned out of the tunes he was playing, the freeform music was already happening. But Brother John became its Apex, a gathering Force, the Vedas taught by the scriptures. As Brother John once mentioned, the “clarified butter”, which is fluid or a flowing river, the source of creation. He was just born to be a musician. Even at an early age his playing got the ear of most listeners. It became apparent as he moved on in life that his focus shifted out of the realm of bebop and into the Psalms of the Hebrew Bible. He also directed his attention towards Eastern philosophies and belief systems, as well as balance through meditation. When thinking about the book of Psalms, harp music comes to mind, and Alice Coltrane’s in particular.

After the recording of Al-Fatihah, I travelled to Los Angeles. In conjunction with Brothers in different parts of the country, the ideal of gathering musicians under one concept of self-determination was part of my objective. During this period, I was playing string bass. In Los Angeles, I worked with Charles Tyler, Horace Tapscott, Arthur Blythe, Butch Morris, among others. Riding along on the way to the studio session for Horace Tapscott’s The Giant Is Awakened album in 1969, I had a copy of Al-Fatihah with me and we dialogued around the self-determination endeavour. Some of the work I did in LA was recorded. Tapes with pianists Linda Hill, Nate Morgan, saxophonist Will Connell, drummer Tylon Barea and others are part of the Horace Tapscott Jazz Collection at the UCLA Library.

If the freeform music was to fall into a comparative art analysis, Francis Bacon would be a good example of going against the imaginary grain of what art should look like. Fruit bowls and flower vases do not tell the complete story of the human condition. I can’t think of a better way to express the harsh realities of life than through art. The consciousness of man is constantly expanding, and people like Francis Bacon and Albert Ayler have something in common. I wouldn’t term Albert’s music as grotesque, but at first encounter ‘startling’ for some would be an appropriate word. Nevertheless, their contributions have been significant. There has been a lot of talk about spirits and ghosts. This is why the upcoming album is entitled Sketches Of The Invisible.

Read more about The Black Unity Trio and avant garde jazz in 1960s Cleveland in Wire interviews with drummer Hasan Shahid and bassist Mutawaf A Shaheed. Saxophonist Hasan Abdur-Razzaq's memories of witnessing The Black Unity Trio at work have been published by Chimurenga.

Full tracklist

Modern Jazz Quartet
“Odds Against Tomorrow”
From Music From Odds Against Tomorrow
(United Artists/Blue Note)

Yusef Lateef
“Sounds Of Nature”
From Jazz And The Sounds Of Nature
(Savoy)

Black Unity Trio
“Birth, Life And Death”
From Al-Fatihah
(Salaam/Gotta Groove)

Billie Holiday
“Yesterdays”
From I Gotta Right To Sing The Blues/Yesterdays and The Complete Commodore & Decca Masters
(Commodore/Hip-O Select)

Igor Stravinsky/The Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Pierre Boulez
“Spring Round Dances”
From Le Sacre Du Printemps
(Columbia Masterworks/Sony Classical)

Yusuf Mumin & Norman Howard
“Sad Miss Holiday”
From Burn Baby Burn
(ESP-Disk')

John Coltrane
“Serenity”
From Meditations and The Impulse! Albums: Volume Three
(Impulse!)

Horace Tapscott
“Funeral” (from music for King Christophe)
From CD included with The Dark Tree: Jazz And The Community Arts In Los Angeles by Steven L. Isoardi
(University of California Press)

Yusuf Mumin Free-Form Ensemble
“The Blackout In New York”
From Sketches Of The Invisible
(Yusuf Mumin)