Jack DeJohnette: More Than a Jazz Percussionist – A Unstoppable Power in Musical Arts

The interview with Jack DeJohnette got off to a rocky start. This occurred during the summer of 2000, when DeJohnette was visiting 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 resisted being categorized and shot back instantly: “I’m a complete musician.” Shortly after, sitting in the Royal Festival Hall watching the Standards Trio, a moment of pure enchantment thrilled me as Jarrett sustained a long sequence of repeated notes high on the piano and DeJohnette powered the music forwards with a complex percussion display as melodically exploratory as anything Jarrett had played. Truly a multifaceted artist.

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

He further explained that every component of his percussion setup he viewed as a musical being “with its own identity.” He crafted and adjusted his cymbals to his own specification. Mix the sound of cymbals with the drums and then “your approach becomes melodic on the kit,” he noted. The auditory ideas inside DeJohnette’s head could never be contained by the traditional rules of percussion. He was also a pianist of considerable merit – who issued a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and every facet of his musicianship was consistently evident all of the time, before his death at the age of 83.

An Unmatched Energy in Artistic Performance

Numerous percussionists adjust their equipment to a bespoke design, but DeJohnette’s playing exhibited a life-force that was entirely his own. 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 epoch-defining Bitches Brew, had by 1970 become the trumpeter’s drummer of choice in a collision of brilliant artists. His drums anchored the track firmly and gave Davis, and subsequently saxophonist Wayne Shorter, ample room to explore, while DeJohnette filled his performance with complex percussive interjections – keeping a continual discussion with the other musicians.

Early Innovations and Artistic Independence

His own 1968 debut album, The DeJohnette Complex, immediately proposed that his was a voice intimately connected with a jazz scene exploding in a thousand directions around him, while he stayed fiercely autonomous. The compositions DeJohnette created for his album were harmonically ornate and embodied a fusion vibe while also sometimes drifting into free-form improvisation. He included his own playing a wind instrument, and his folky melodic inventions took flight.

The DeJohnette Complex revealed that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was indeed delightfully complex and, after leaving Davis, he was signed to ECM Records. In 1976 he released Untitled, a energetic five-piece record, 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 Key Albums

His 1981 ECM album with saxophonist John Surman, The Amazing Adventures of Simon Simon, became a landmark moment for both musicians, and a highly regarded work too. Surman and DeJohnette performed on their primary tools while also adding electronic elements, merging their personal styles inside richly arranged compositions of pastoral tones. A further critical record was Oneness, recorded in 1997, which dealt up large-scale structures with pieces such as “Free Above Sea” and “Priestesses of the Mist,” their titles reflecting the primal energy unleashed by the music. Hearing that work around the time of its release, I was reminded of an previous experience with DeJohnette, when I listened to his band Special Edition perform in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance was in no hurry to establish its space, as ambient, slow-burn forms gradually telescoped towards rhythmic blows.

Reflective Thoughts on Art and Existence

Talking to DeJohnette much later, these ideas of stress-testing form and scale made more sense. He explained that he loved playing those funk figurations with Davis because “I could sit in grooves and allow them to envelop me,” but also spoke of his desire to generate more wide-angled musical soundscapes, always open-ended and therefore beneficial for the mind. He complained about the “predictable limits” of pop music with its recurring motifs. “With improvisation, though,” he said, “you’re open to a full range of possibilities. People are capable of very creative yet often only access their potential when there is a major earthquake. But if people were more aware of our place within nature, stopped abusing the Earth and restored balance, we would have a healthier environment and society.”

No question that DeJohnette viewed his art as modelling those idealist aspirations. “Creativity mirrors the soul of that purification, which is transmitted as vitality – and all artists must tap into that source.”