Cedric I’m Brooks "United Africa" 1978 Jamaica Reggae,Jazz Funk
full vk
Classic roots / funk / jazz album from Cedric Im Brooks. Long out of print. “Satta-Masa-Ganna” & the killer “Silent Force”….~
Cedric I’m Brooks was a Jamaican saxophonist and flutist known for his solo recordings and a member of major jazz groups such as The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, The Sound Dimensions, The Light of Saba, and The Skatalites.
An artist whose fantastic technique and different, brought another air to jazz. “United Africa” track from the album that gets the same name is one of Brooks’ masterpieces. An odd musical quality. The harmony contained in this song where he mixes jazz with some Jamaican moods makes this single something unusual that deserves to be heard…..~
Though chiefly known as a virtuoso saxophonist, Brooks was also a talented arranger whose approach yielded some of the most complex and challenging works of the roots reggae era of the 1970s. He was also an intense spiritualist with an individual interpretation of Rastafari, another reggae magus who pursued ethereal connections in an effort to link spiritual devotion with musical expression. Meeting this quietly contemplative yet forceful man in person, it was easy to understand why he named his band the Mystics during a time when most other Jamaican groups were concentrating on love ballads and dance tunes.
Cedric Brooks was born in 1943 in the west Kingston slum of Denham Town, which borders onto the more famous Trench Town. He was raised in the same household as the noted trumpeter, Baba Brooks, and the dwelling was owned by a Salvation Army major, so both church music and secular songs were rehearsed at the space throughout his youth.
At the age of eight he was sent by to the Alpha Boy’s School, the infamous Catholic charitable home for wayward or abandoned youth, which had a strong element of musical instruction for selected students thanks to the resident jazz-mad nun and erstwhile sound system selector, Sister Mary Ignatius Davies. Brooks started on piano and clarinet at Alpha, benefiting from the tutelage of bandmasters Ruben Delgado and Charles Clarke, as well as the great Lennie Hibbert, who would later cut excellent vibraphone albums at Studio One. Training was rigorous at Alpha and young Cedric showed strong musical aptitude.
After Alpha, Brooks joined the Jamaica Military Band on clarinet. In 1961, while still a teenager, he travelled with the Jamaican Military Band to perform in distant Newfoundland in Canada, and by the time of the trip he’d already found his way into the Vagabonds, which swiftly became one of the most popular nightclub and hotel acts of the day. He switched to tenor saxophone while in this group, finally finding his way to the instrument on which he would truly excel, though at this point, he was still mostly playing popular foreign cover tunes in a live setting. Brooks cut a few debut recordings with the Vagabonds at this time, including the fast-paced instrumental single ‘Hula Twist,’ which he composed and led.
In 1964, after connecting with Canadian manager Roger Smith, the Vagabonds moved to London, but Brooks stayed behind to enjoy tenures in all of Jamaica’s leading live jazz acts. He was initially playing with Sonny Bradshaw’s big band, as well as Kes Chin and the Souvenirs, but then joined the Granville Williams Orchestra on baritone sax, rubbing shoulders in that group with fellow saxophonists Roland Alphonso and Tommy McCook, as well as guitarist Ernest Ranglin.
Brooks then spent a year in the house band at Montego Bay’s Club 35 with keyboardist Leslie Butler and guitarist Headley Jones, before briefly joining Cecil Lloyd’s group at the Playboy Club in Oracabessa, only to leave shortly thereafter for the Bahamas in Carlos Malcolm’s Afro-Jamaican Rhythms. Brooks subsequently backed Jamaican lounge music specialist Teddy Greaves at a hotel in Freeport, and played for a time at Peanuts Taylor’s club in Nassau, but soon tired of performing for tourists.
Thinking of Brooks’ mindset in the ‘60s, he can be considered a true pioneer of ‘world music’. In addition to jazz players from the black American avant-garde such as John Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders, Brooks was highly inspired by an early compilation of Ethiopian music he encountered at this time, which opened his mind to the possibility of non-Western melodies, chord structures and time signatures.
A major artistic and personal turning point came with his move to Philadelphia in 1968, where he enrolled at the esteemed Combs College of Music. Meeting saxophonist Sonny Rollins, avant-garde vocalist Leon Thomas, and perhaps most importantly, members of Sun Ra’s outer-worldly Arkestra, expanded Brooks’ musical and philosophical horizons, and he subsequently sought to draw the two spheres together to express an unorthodox spiritual philosophy which drew from an awareness of a denigrated African heritage.
When Brooks returned to Jamaica in 1970, his head was bald and he wore a prominent beard, visible trappings of his Philadelphian transformation. He began recording at Studio One, making an instant impact in the chilling horn fanfare that frames Burning Spear’s landmark single, ‘Door Peep’. Teaming with trumpeter David Madden as Im & David (the ‘Im’ referencing his adoption of the Rastafari faith in an abbreviated form of Halie Selassie’s ‘Imperial Majesty’ appellation), Brooks recorded a handful of intense instrumentals at Studio One, with ‘Money Maker’ causing the greatest impact, followed by the popular ‘Candid Eye’ and other more challenging creations..
Determined to start an Afrocentric group that would explore Jamaica’s rich musical traditions more overtly, Brooks then formed the Mystics with Madden and a handful of other players that were not particularly known at the time, including Lloyd ‘Gitsy’ Willis (who passed through the Upsetters, and who would later play with Sly and Robbie, among others), the upright bassist and poet Joe Rugglus, plus drummer Danny Mowatt and a singer called Chuku, aiming to push the boundaries of reggae by incorporating elements of free-form jazz.
Determined to start an Afrocentric group that would explore Jamaica’s rich musical traditions more overtly, Brooks then formed the Mystics with Madden and a handful of other players that were not particularly known at the time, including Lloyd ‘Gitsy’ Willis (who passed through the Upsetters, and who would later play with Sly and Robbie, among others), the upright bassist and poet Joe Rugglus, plus drummer Danny Mowatt and a singer called Chuku, aiming to push the boundaries of reggae by incorporating elements of free-form jazz.
In April 1971 the group gave a collaborative performance with Count Ossie’s Rastafarian drum troupe, and the end result was a fusion of the two entities, known as the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari (though Madden and several other members then broke away to form Zap Pow, displeased by the move towards non-standard forms of spirituality). Hugely influential in Jamaica and the broader Caribbean, the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari toured Guyana, Trinidad, Canada and the USA in 1972, and later performed during the official state visits of African leaders to Jamaica, including Mozambique’s Samora Machel. Their debut album, the incredibly raw three-LP set, Grounation, was unlike anything that had preceded it, being a wild, no-holds-barred expression of Rastafari consciousness and free jazz, inspired by the African motherland. Brooks played a prominent role in the creation of the album, and in nearly all of their subsequent releases.
In 1973, Brooks began running musical workshops at the University of the West Indies’ Mona campus, and soon formed a new group called the Divine Light, which was closely connected to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and modelled somewhat on Sun Ra’s Arkestra, with Fela Kuti and Hugh Masakela among the other prominent musical influences. In addition to their grounding at the Ethiopian Orthodox Church on Maxfield Avenue, the group performed regularly at the uptown Turntable club, as well as at Brooks’ home, and their debut album, From Mento to Reggae to Third World Music, explored the evolution of the island’s traditional folk forms as they moved into ska, rocksteady and reggae, serving as a recorded parallel to the popular lectures Brooks gave in this era at the Institute of Jamaica in downtown Kingston.
The group was renamed Light of Saba in 1974, using an alternate appellation for Ethiopia, and the self-titled album that was soon issued took the form of a complex stew of instrumental reggae jazz with African rhythmic underpinnings. The following year the group toured Cuba at the request of Fidel Castro, and Brooks was prominently featured on the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari’s wonderful second album, Tales of Mozambique, being responsible as well for its musical arrangements.
The following year saw the issue of The Light of Saba’s In Reggae, another superb set, and although less grand in structure, Brooks’ 1977 Studio One solo album, Im Flash Forward, was also excellent, highlighting the emotive power of the melodies he blew over classic Studio One rhythms; One Essence was another tremendous set to surface that same year.
Like many of his peers, Brooks also moonlighted as a session player for much of his career, which is why he was present on classic roots reggae albums such as the Abyssinnians’ Arise, Ernest Ranglin’s Ranglin Roots, Beres Hammond’s Soul Reggae, Junior Delgado’s Taste of the Young Heart, Culture’s Cumbolo, Rico Rodriguez’s That Man Is Forward, and Rita Marley’s Who Feels It Knows It. But Brooks did more than simply play on records like these. He took a far more active role at such sessions, greatly influencing the overall result.
Like many of his peers, Brooks also moonlighted as a session player for much of his career, which is why he was present on classic roots reggae albums such as the Abyssinnians’ Arise, Ernest Ranglin’s Ranglin Roots, Beres Hammond’s Soul Reggae, Junior Delgado’s Taste of the Young Heart, Culture’s Cumbolo, Rico Rodriguez’s That Man Is Forward, and Rita Marley’s Who Feels It Knows It. But Brooks did more than simply play on records like these. He took a far more active role at such sessions, greatly influencing the overall result.
By the time Light of Saba’s Sabebe album was released in 1979, Brooks had formed United Africa, a huge conglomerate of over 30 members, their sole album a masterpiece of Afrocentric big band reggae jazz. Brooks also appeared prominently on another MRR album, the mysterious One Truth, which may have been cut significantly earlier. Following his subsequent relocation to New York, his musical output inevitably slowed, though this is partly because he spent long periods in Ethiopia, studying spiritual matters and becoming acquainted with the music and culture of the country.
Brooks recorded with Carlos Malcolm in Los Angeles in 1998, and also collaborated with the California-based Rhythm Doctors on a 2004 single, ‘Mad Dog’. A new album surfaced early in the new millennium too, A No Nut’n, which had some inspired melodies from Brooks, but the musical backing was largely lacklustre. Following the death of Roland Alphonso, Brooks also became a longstanding member of the reformed Skatalites, and toured widely with them before being hospitalised himself in 2010, suffering from diabetes, hypertension, and eventually pneumonia, which ultimately led to his death in May 2013.
Here are a baker’s dozen of Cedric Brooks’ most outstanding moments, each an example of the impact he brought to bear through his unusual playing style and incomparable arranging skills…..BY DAVID KATZ….~
Credits
Alto Saxophone – Gerrard Salmon
Bass – Boris Gardiner
Bass Drum – Desmond Jones
Bass Drum, Percussion – Lloyd Barnes
Bass Drum, Voice – Aston Russell
Bass, Voice – Tony Allen (3)
Clarinet – Maxine Mitchell
Drum [Funde], Percussion, Voice – Gilbert Golding
Drum [Funde], Voice – Austin Ricketts
Drum [Repeater] – Joel Crawville
Drums [Traps] – Calvin McKenzie, Nelson Miller
Guitar – Ernest Ranglin, Lennox Gordon
Organ – Leslie Butler
Percussion – Alvin Haughton, Beres Hammond
Piano – Harold Butler
Soprano Saxophone – Dean Frasier*
Tenor Saxophone, Drum [Repeater] – Cedric ‘Im’ Brooks*
Trombone – Al Ahmad, Calvin Cameron*, Joe McCormak*
Trumpet – Arnold Brakenridge*, David Madden, Jackie Willacy, Vivian Hall
Voice – Cedric Brooks*, Joan Francis, Marcia Bailey, Paulette Chambers, Sandra Brooks
Tracklist
A1 Satta Masa Ganna 7:10
A2 United Africa 5:05
A3 African Medley 4:40
B1 Silent Force 6:21
B2 River Jordan 2:13
B3 Praises 4:27
B4 Elehreh 3:27