joel dorn

In his New York Times obituary of Yusef Lateef – who died on December 23rd at the age of 93 – Peter Keepnews describes him as a “decidedly unconventional musician,” and quotes Lateef as saying “My attempts to experiment with new instruments grew out of the monotony of hearing the same old sounds played by the same old horns. When I looked into those other cultures, I found that good instruments existed there.”

Keepnews also writes that Lateef “professed to find the word ‘jazz’ limiting and degrading; he preferred ‘autophysiopsychic music,’ a term he invented. He further distanced himself from the jazz mainstream in 1980 when he declared that he would no longer perform any place where alcohol was served. ‘Too much blood, sweat and tears have been spilled creating this music to play it where people are smoking, drinking and talking,’ he explained to The Boston Globe in 1999.”