Archie Shepp, "the Babelian memory" of jazz releases a new album

Archie Shepp "

is the Babelian memory of jazz

", says a specialist of him.

At the age of 83, the legendary saxophonist released

Let my people go

, a record where this storyteller digests on classics that are the basis of the history of African-American music.

Read also: Archie Shepp, The White Stripes, Yungblud ... Discover our weekend playlist

“

Babelian, because it covers a large part of the spectrum of black American music.

From gospel which he sings magnificently to free jazz, he has embraced many phases of this music,

”specifies the French writer-journalist Franck Médioni.

Read also: Jazzman Archie Shepp gives impetus to the Pre-Screening Festival at l'Entrepôt

After experimenting with radical free at the dawn of the 1960s in New York with pianist Cecil Taylor, trying in vain to sound like John Coltrane, Archie Shepp will find his style: he improvises, on the tenor or on the soprano, demonstrating audacity and avant-garde while taking root in the tradition of singing, that of negro-spiritual and blues.

"

I found that blacks weren't too interested in avant-garde music, the audience for this kind of music was always white,

" Archie Shepp told AFP from his home in Ivry- sur-Seine, south of Paris, where he lives with his wife, a former producer at France Culture.

“

After leaving Cecil Taylor, I looked more and more towards the blues, which swings, because I wanted to attract more blacks to my music.

It was a choice,

”says the musician.

And he has never ceased to trace this link between various African-American musical trends.

Adored father

Archie Shepp, born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida before moving to Philadelphia, in the Brickyard neighborhood at age seven, was introduced to music very early on, thanks to a father who was a plumber and a banjo player.

“

The first fundamental meeting was with my father, who showed me the way to music,

” he says.

The second will be with John Coltrane.

His participation in

Ascension

, one of the last

Trane

recordings

in 1965, and his records released on the

Impulse

label

!

, that of Coltrane, will legitimize it.

“

Even today, I work in part thanks to the impact of my records recorded for

Impulse!” Writes Archie Shepp in the preface to the book

John Coltrane, the supreme love

of Franck Médioni, in 2018.

Archie Shepp, it's also a sound, his signature.

"

He is able to make his saxophone scream or to put a round, mellow sound on ballads

", describes Vincent Anglade, programmer of the Jazz festival at La Villette, in Paris.

Archie Shepp still wants to be a Marxist

“

It can go from a very fleshy sound like Ben Webster or Coleman Hawkins to the stridencies and the cry of an Albert Ayler,

” adds Franck Médioni.

More than a sound: a clamor, where we find the joys and sorrows of a people who have gone through slavery and oppression.

Because Archie Shepp is above all a political conscience, a commitment, that of a man who has never deviated from the cause of Black Power, which he embraced very early on, and who today still defines himself as Marxist.

"

In my music there is a message for the liberation and justice of my people ... While trying not to be too intellectual, to keep a certain simplicity

", he says.

Before choosing music, Archie Shepp had studied law to become a lawyer, then branched out into drama.

But the saxophone offered by his grandmother was never far away, and changed everything.

Sixty years after his professional debut, this character still wearing classy suit-jacket and borsalino still has the "

spirit

".

"

He has nothing more to prove, has written everything, his legendary status is there, but instead of falling asleep on his laurels, he still has this desire, this desire, to meet, to renew himself

", notes Vincent Anglade who learned to know this “

quiet force

” by developing with him projects and sometimes surprising encounters, such as his collaborations with the Cuban pianist Chucho Valdes, the choreographer Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker or around hip-hop.

The last manifestation of this creative spirit, his album “

Let my people go

”, with the title borrowed from the standard “

Go Down Moses

”, where the descendants of African-American slaves are assimilated to the Hebrew people enslaved by the pharaohs of Egypt.

Go Down Moses

by Archie Shepp and Jason Moran