Milford Graves - Babï

milford graves is a percussionist, acupuncturist, herbalist, martial arts renegade, programmer and professor.

in 1964 after meeting the new york art quartet began playing the drums, also playing john coltrane’s funural that year. 

he has collaborated with albert ayler and sonny shrrock as well as paul bley and don pullen.

in 1972 he invented a new martial art called ‘yara’ based on the movements of the praying mantis, african ritual dance and windy hop.

in 2000 he won a guggenheim fellowship and began to study human heart vibrations to better understand music’s healing potential.

he is a professor emeritus at bennington college where he taught for forty years. 

an icon of avant-garde jazz with kaleidoscopically varied interests, milford graves remains one of the most influential living figures in the evolution of the form.

milford graves' recorded output is downright scarce in relation to the imposing reputation his drumming holds amongst adherents of free music. in particular, his work during the 1970s rages with a distinctive fury matched by few before or since. the album "babï", released in 1977 on graves own imprint ips, is the best authorized representation of this innovator operating at peak intensity. it features wild, superhuman saxophone playing by longtime cohorts arthur doyle (still in the scene, but now operating from his homebase in alabama) and hugh glover. recorded live for wbai-fm on march 20, 1976, this unique, rough-hewn recording brims with excitement. often, the horn players are very far off microphone, wailing away like hellishly agitated spectres in the background while graves' drums remain front and center, heavily focused on the ancient traditions of deeply resonant one-headed toms and eschewing the traditional rattle of the modern snare drum completely. graves' signature vocal punctuations help underline the ritualistic aura of his group's frenzied rites.

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