Thursday 22 May 2014

Dorothy Ashby

Afro-harping ...

The other jazz harpist (after Alice Coltrane) ... She became more pop and soul oriented in the 1970s ...

Soul Vibrations ...


In the 50s she was a jazz star ...

There's a small hotel ...



In the 70s she worked with Stevie Wonder ...


"This requires a keen ear, one that really has heard all kinds of jazz for years. It requires a sharp mind, one that has learned jazz outside of the formal educational system. Of course, we learned the basics of music techniques at school, but we did not study the art of improvisation. Jazz, being the product of the moment, must have spontaneous creation." She goes on to explain its instructional function, "how to create endlessly varying melodies and rhythms in a particular idiom, using a given set of chords; how to fashion continuous harmonic variations for a given melodic line in one or a multitude of forms; and how to design combinations of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic variations for this spontaneous improvisational form we call jazz."...thestranger.com ...

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