🔗 Share this article

The interview with Jack DeJohnette got off to a rocky start. It was the summer of 2000, when DeJohnette had come to London for a series of concerts with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Referring to him in my initial question as a “drummer” seemed logical, but DeJohnette didn’t appreciate being categorized and responded sharply: “I’m a complete musician.” A few days later, attending a performance at the Royal Festival Hall watching the Standards Trio, an instance of pure enchantment thrilled me as Jarrett held a long sequence of repeated notes high on the piano and DeJohnette powered the music forwards with a labyrinthian drum solo as harmonically searching as anything Jarrett had played. Truly a multifaceted artist.

“The concept of spontaneous creation,” DeJohnette told me, “is tied up in the very essence of being. We don’t anticipate life unfolding without transformation and we never know what lies ahead – why should music be any different?”

He went on to clarify that each part of his drum kit he viewed as a musical being “in its own right.” He designed and tuned his cymbals to his own specification. Combine the tones of cymbals with the drums and then “your approach becomes melodic on the kit,” he added. The auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head could never be contained by the conventions of drum technique. He was also a pianist of significant talent – who released a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and each aspect of his musicianship was consistently evident continuously, until his passing at the age of 83.

A Unique Life-Force in Musical Expression

Numerous percussionists tune their kit to a bespoke design, but DeJohnette’s playing radiated a vitality that was uniquely personal. To hear him play on “What I Say” from Miles Davis’s album Live-Evil is to marvel at seemingly boundless energy as he maintained an impactful funk/rock beat for 20 minutes. DeJohnette, who additionally performed on Davis’s groundbreaking Bitches Brew, had by 1970 become the trumpeter’s drummer of choice in a meeting of mighty musical minds. His drums rooted What I Say deep in the Earth and gave Davis, and subsequently saxophonist Wayne Shorter, all the space they needed to experiment, while DeJohnette filled his performance with complex percussive interjections – keeping a continual discussion with the other musicians.

Pioneering Beginnings and Creative Autonomy

His own 1968 first record, The DeJohnette Complex, immediately proposed that his was a style intimately connected with a jazz scene rapidly diversifying around him, while he remained doggedly independent. The pieces DeJohnette wrote for his album were harmonically ornate and embodied a fusion vibe while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He featured himself playing a wind instrument, and his rustic tune creations took flight.

The DeJohnette Complex demonstrated that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was indeed delightfully complex and, after leaving Davis, he joined ECM Records. In 1976 he issued Untitled, a hectic quintet album, but also Pictures in which he performed on multiple instruments, and duetted on some tracks with guitarist John Abercrombie, an album that was sparse and bare-bones in contrast to Untitled.

Landmark Collaborations and Essential Recordings

His 1981 ECM album with saxophonist John Surman, The Amazing Adventures of Simon Simon, emerged as a pivotal point for both musicians, and a much-loved classic too. Surman and DeJohnette performed on their primary tools while also adding electronic elements, merging their personal styles inside lavishly orchestrated soundscapes of pastoral tones. Another essential album was Oneness, recorded in 1997, which presented expansive forms with pieces such as “Free Above Sea” and “Priestesses of the Mist,” their titles mirroring the primal energy expressed through the music. Listening to that album around the time of its release, it recalled an earlier encounter with DeJohnette, when I listened to his band Special Edition play in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance was in no hurry to establish its space, as ambient, slow-burn forms slowly condensed towards percussive climaxes.

Reflective Thoughts on Music and Life

Conversing with DeJohnette all those years later, these ideas of stress-testing form and scale made more sense. He told me how he loved playing those funk figurations with Davis because “I could sit in grooves and let them saturate me,” but also spoke of his desire to create broader auditory landscapes, always unrestricted and therefore healthy for the brain. He complained about the “predictable limits” of pop music with its repetitive patterns. “With improvisation, though,” he said, “you embrace a complete spectrum of options. People are capable of highly inventive but only seem to tap into their potential during crises. But if people were more aware of our place within nature, stopped abusing the Earth and put things back into it, we would have a healthier environment and society.”

Undoubtedly DeJohnette heard his music as reflecting those utopian goals. “Creativity mirrors the soul of that purification, which is passed to us as energy – and all artists must tap into that source.”