by June Brown Garner
from Detroit News, January 18, 1972
The Sounds of a Jazzman Who is 41 Years of Rage
The bass fiddle, in the hands of a jazzman, makes soft sounds. They hide
somewhere behind the piano and the drums, which are louder. When the piano
and drums stop for a moment, then you can hear the bass, heavy and low, rich
but soft.
The bass is not the instrument for expressing exultation or rage.
But in Detroit there is a bassman known as Ali the Chosen and Beloved, who
says he is the greatest in the world. And, however soft his music, he makes
his bitterness clear.
"My name is jazz," says Ali Muhammad, "and I am 41 years of rage.
"I lived in New York City for the past 18 years, working with every authentic
jazz star who would have me...Diz, Mingus, Monk, Sonny Rollins, Mary Lou
Williams, Hank Crawford, Thad Jones, Billie Mitchell, the late John Coltrane
and his beautiful wife, Alice.
"But I am bitter about many things, but most of all, our youth. Will they be
exploited like myself and so many of my colleagues?
"I've seen great talent debauched and stifled by the Mafia mobster machine. I
made money only with white groups like Stan Getz, Terry Gibbs, George
Shearing.
"I starved with black groups like Sir Charles Thompson and James Moody. I
worked with Sassy, Lady Day, Mr. Bee, Earl Garner and had a semi-successful
group with the late Bubu Turner and my brother, Oliver Bops, Jr.
"We would have made it all the way if we had given the mob most of the money
like many groups did who made it. But if it hadn't been for the Mafia, I
wouldn't have made any money at all.
"The mob did not allow us to think and really produce beauty and art the way
Art Tatum, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Bird did, and my colleagues feel
the racist faction in this country knows that main stream jazz is one
ingredient they don't like."
Ali's parents were early followers of Prophet Elijah Muhammad and they named
their son Ali Muhammad long before Cassius Clay was born. Although he was
raised in that religion, he is no longer a believer.
Born in Detroit, Ali went to work in the foundry at 14 and bought a bass
violin, giving up the piano which he had been playing since the age of seven.
Later he attended Wayne State but didn't graduate.
Like many black musicians, Ali got into heroin but he has pulled himself out,
although needle-marks still scar his hands. Because he refused to use
methadone, he can't get a job as counselor at any of the methadone clinics,
but other jobs have come his way and gone.
He was hired to teach jazz at Oberlin University but was asked to leave
because "I exposed Stephen Foster and other whites as musical thieves and
frauds. But I love Stephen Foster--if it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't
have known what was stolen from my people."
He has contempt for black music teachers who still teach music in the
traditional white manner.
"We need black studies that will include Beethoven to Duke Ellington, plus
the whys and wherefores, and turn out musicians who can play any kind of music
. If a student can play Charlie Parker, he can sure enough read and analyze
Mozart and Bach."
Black militants have failed, too, according to Ali.
"All the cats that played on the Black Panther Party got rich, but they were
no more interested in the ideals of the Black Panther Party than in who's
going to win the seventh race at Hialeah."
Poverty programs don't earn this praise either.
"Working at Metro Arts Complex gave me a complex. Like all poverty programs,
it is not adequate. It is designed to pacify, not to create. The ghetto
kids have bad instruments or none at all, and I feel it is planned this way
by the higher echelons of the country all the way down to the city and state
heads.
"I just have to speak up. I can't bear this rape of culture any longer.
Detroit is the greatest city in the world in its production of musicians and
their problems are your problems, too. Ask your CIA man - he knows how
powerful American Afro folk music is."
"How do I exist? I may be giving jazz lectures at Oakland Community College
and Oakland University, playing at the Blue Bird Inn. But wherever I am, I
do sho nuff teach jazz and music history. I'm not a pimp, I don't use dope,
I have a beautiful wife and I don't want power or money. All I want to do
now in life is save the children and make the old folks comfortable.
"The only way I know to alleviate this bitterness is to leave a better black
bassist to follow in my path - one who won't be as bitter and as lost as I
was - one who will have at 41, a respectable posture in the community."
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