The great Yusef Lateef has passed

"I believe that all humans have knowledge," he said in a 2009 interview for the National Endowment for the Arts. "Each culture has some knowledge. That's why I studied with Saj Dev, an Indian flute player. That's why I studied Stockhausen's music. The pygmies' music of the rain forest is very rich music. So the knowledge is out there. And I also believe one should seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. With that kind of inquisitiveness, one discovers things that were unknown before." – Yusef Lateef, during interview with National Endowment for the Arts

Dear friends,

I just received some very sad news this morning. Yesterday, December 23, 2013, a long time and dear friend of mine passed. The Grammy award winning and legendary musician Yusef Lateef has left a legacy that will continue for generations. Towards the late 1980s, I move my family from Philadelphia to Amherst Mass., after years of visiting my brother Eshu there. It’s where I raised all of my now grown three children. The small historical town, during the 70s and 80s, was a literal mecca of the world’s finest artists and intellectuals, with a list of names that could hardly be matched by major cultural centers like Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia.

While I’d been listening to his music since the 1960s,I first met Yusef personally, about 25 years ago, through my dear friend, music mentor, and brother Archie Shepp, another great music legend in his own right. For a decade after that, aside from occasionally speaking over the phone, Yusef and I would run into each other, in a variety of situations, from social gatherings to often in the local supermarket, while shopping for our families (btw, his son Yusef and my son Kwame were close friends).

On one of those occasions, back in the mid-90s, while engaging in one of our typical long intellectual discussions, I started talking about one of my pet peeves; that being: Young musicians of today, regardless of their musical genres, don’t listen to enough different kinds of music, nor do they appreciate the story of how the music has evolved as an artistic expression of any particular culture. Instead, the aforementioned young musicians and their listeners simply pander to the the insatiable greed of the "market". The result being that their music is stale and has no “soul”. Moreover, I believe that within the context of their heritages and the spiritual/innermost bases of same, all cultures have "soul music", as well as "soul food", not just African Americans.

In any case, Yusef said that he agreed with me, and, in fact, liked what I was saying. He then concluded our conversation by asking me if I would give a Masters class/seminar to a group of music majors that he was teaching at Hampshire College. I accepted his offer, and only a few weeks later taught the class that I called “Playing with soul” to about two dozen, very receptive students/musicians.

Afterwards, Yusef presented me with a generous honorarium and an album/CD that he had just recorded called “Cantata”. It is a beautiful, musical/historical piece that includes not only his saxophone playing, but also, a great deal of his own spoken words.

Many years later, after writing and publishing a play in book format called “Voice of a Panther”, I decided that at some point I was going to contact Yusef, so we could sit down and talk about some of the specific vision and thoughts that inspired him to do “Cantata”. Unfortunately, my procrastination has gotten the best of me. I never got around to calling him. Nevertheless, while I’ll no longer be able to discuss/interview him about the work, I still plan on finishing the play one day.

“Love lives forever!” – Stevie Wonder

G. Djata Bumpus