The harp has lengthy been part of classical music. Mozart used it, memorably, in his Concerto for Flute, Harp and Orchestra, and the composers of the Romantic Period in Europe featured it closely. The instrument invokes pictures of the gentry in music salons or angels amongst clouds. It wasn’t till centuries later that the harp could be reworked from a solely orchestral instrument to a sublime fixture on the planet of jazz. The girl accountable for this innovation is Detroit-born jazz composer, Dorothy Ashby, who launched her groundbreaking debut album, The Jazz Harpist in 1957, introducing the world to a wholly new sound and use of the stringed instrument.
Ashby was already nicely versed in jazz composition and efficiency earlier than she grew to become a recording artist. Her father, guitarist Wiley Thompson, hosted jam periods at their home in Detroit with native jazz musicians. Ashby earned her chops by sitting in and taking part in piano. She continued to review the piano at Cass Technical Excessive Faculty, Detroit’s historic magnet highschool that boasts graduates like Donald Byrd, Regina Carter, Zeena Parkins, and Geri Allen. In Cass Tech’s music program she had the chance to discover many devices, considered one of which was the harp. The varsity’s Harp and Vocal program was – and nonetheless is – esteemed all through the music world, and Ashby’s eventual instructor was among the best, a lady named Velma Fraude. “[Velma] was a bit of a pill, but she was a really amazing teacher,” remembered Zeena Parkins in an interview with Pitchfork in 2010. “You had to fall into line, but if you decided to go with her, you really learned how to play the instrument.”
Cass Tech launched college students to mastery-level coaching the place they might have by no means given the harp a thought, resulting from lack of publicity or entry. Some merchandise of the famend program determined to pursue their abilities in each conventional and extra up to date methods, like alum Pat Terry Ross, who went on to change into one of many longest taking part in members of the Michigan Opera Theater, however was additionally an everyday session participant for Motown. Ashby continued finding out piano at Wayne State College, however selected the harp when attempting to interrupt into the 50s Detroit jazz scene. It wasn’t straightforward, however she had allies like flutist Frank Wess, who grew to become a frequent collaborator and organized her first report offers. In the course of the early Sixties, Ashby and her husband John additionally hosted a four-hour radio present twice per week the place they talked about jazz releases, the issues inside the jazz scene, and reviewed performances. She additionally wrote album evaluations for the Detroit Free Press, which allowed her to be a voice and contributor to the dialog across the style.
However Ashby’s voice was heard most loudly world wide through her music. Throughout her profession, she recorded 11 full-length albums as a bandleader. Probably the most celebrated launch was 1968’s Afro-Harping. The Wire described it in 2003 as “a humid mix of exquisitely scored soul, jazz and funk… over which Ashby’s playing fans like an ocean breeze.” On the sturdy 1970 ethno-jazz album The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby, Ashby additionally performed the koto, a 13-stringed Japanese instrument, showcasing simply how far out her sound may go.
Dorothy Ashby is credited for being the primary artist to translate harp to bebop and jazz in an actual means – even earlier than up to date (and fellow Cass Tech alum) Alice Coltrane began recording with the instrument. However she was additionally recognized for manipulating the harp’s sound in numerous methods, typically even imitating the sound of her father’s jazz guitar. Inside her experimentation, Ashby’s sound moved comparatively linear from the modal sounds of her earliest jazz albums. Her later albums, though distinctive, have been at all times digestible and stylish. That experimentation and adaptation of sound was probably out of necessity; a couple of years earlier than her demise, Ashby spoke to the a number of layers of her profession challenges, stating, “It’s been maybe a triple burden in that not a lot of women are becoming known as jazz players. There is also the connection with Black women. The audiences I was trying to reach were not interested in the harp, period – classical or otherwise – and they were certainly not interested in seeing a Black woman playing the harp.”
Later in her profession, she started to characteristic increasingly more on pop information, together with Stevie Surprise’s “If It’s Magic,” Minnie Riperton’s “Love and Its Glory,” and Peabo Bryson’s I Am Love. Her legacy lives on through hip-hop as nicely. Ashby has been sampled by Jay-Z, Flying Lotus, Madlib, and plenty of extra. Extra not too long ago, her model of “Windmills of Your Mind” might be heard on “Final Fantasy,” a observe on Drake’s 2018 darkish opus, Scorpion.
Coltrane (who additionally went to Cass Tech and realized the harp below the tutelage of Velma Fraude years later) has been celebrated with numerous reissues and reappraisals over the previous few years. Ashby deserves the identical type of recognition, residing as a fixture in jazz and music historical past. In a means, although, she already has. She is a hero to a number of the world’s most revered musicians – together with Ross, who credit her profession to Ashby permitting her to apply at her house throughout school breaks – and so they maintain her legacy alive by integrating her into their private music expressions. With out Dorothy Ashby, the harp wouldn’t sound the way in which it does in the present day. In a 1970 interview, she stated, “A fellow harpist [recently] asked if I were a Grandjany or Salzedo disciple. I had to say I was an Ashby disciple because, after all, I had to create my own technique to get what I wanted from the instrument.” Ashby is a bridge and a marker of the place one period of music ended and the place music’s exploratory, fashionable sound begins.
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This text was initially revealed in 2020. We’re republishing it in the present day in celebration of Dorothy Ashby’s birthday. Black Music Reframed is an ongoing editorial sequence on uDiscover Music that seeks to encourage a special lens, a wider lens, a brand new lens, when contemplating Black music; one not outlined by style parameters or labels, however by the creators. Gross sales and charts and firsts and rarities are necessary. However artists, music, and moments that form tradition aren’t at all times best-sellers, chart-toppers, or rapid successes. This sequence, which facilities Black writers writing about Black music, takes a brand new take a look at music and moments which have beforehand both been missed or not had their tales instructed with the correct context.
