Randy Weston
Morocco: Africa-Thelonious Monk Connection
Brooklyn native and jazz pianist Randy Weston did not only incorporate African music into his compositions but settled in Tangier, Morocco, where he operated his African Rhythms club for seven years. Below he talks to Marian McPartland on NPR about Monk and the Duke...... about how he wanted to live in Africa. There's a bit in there about how he might have ended up in Nigeria, which he visited in '63-4, but there was the Biafra war going on. So he ended up going back to Morocco which was the last country he toured in '67.
Weston on the Africa-Thelonious Monk connection:
My good friend, the bassist Ahmad Abdul-Malik's people were from the Sudan, and he played the oud, which has this thing of playing notes between the notes," Weston says. "I couldn't get that sound on the piano. But when I heard Thelonious Monk play, I heard this same magic on the piano; even his way of swinging had that same element."
