Oriental Jazz

Lloyd Miller’s Oriental Jazz – “an intense echo in an unfamiliar key”

Think of oriental jazz and titans like Don Cherry or Tony Scott might spring to mind. Unless you’re a serious collector, or have had your ears pricked by the incredible ‘Gol-e Gandom’ on the recent 'Spiritual Jazz' compilation on the Jazzman label, the name of Lloyd Miller will probably elude you. Where others dabbled Miller went deep to the source, traveling from his home in California to Tehran in 1959 where his total absorption in Persian music and culture resulted in some of the deepest and most prescient jazz of the period. However, whether it was scraping a living around the basements of Paris in the early 60s or having just 300 copies of his classic ‘Oriental Jazz’ LP pressed, Miller was never given the acclaim he deserved. Always working outside the mainstream, Miller was in the words of critic Francis Gooding “an intense echo in an unfamiliar key”. His complete immersion in the music of the East set him apart from other modal jazz voyagers, and it is perhaps this dedication to his art that has left Miller in the shadows. As he explains in “Music and Song In Persia”, the journey of the musician should be towards an ‘interior’ spiritual light rather than the ‘exterior’ of critical acclaim. “I don’t care if anyone ever knows Lloyd Miller,” he says. “If they can just feel a spark of joy from something I have recorded”. Yet while recognition in his homeland has largely escaped him, Kurosh Ali Khan (as he became known in his adopted home) has received both love and respect in Iran where he received a PHD in Persian music as well as hosting his own prime time TV programme. On the cusp of the release of a new collection of the multi instrumentalist’s cultish jazz on Gerald Short’s aforementioned label, I caught up with the forgotten spiritual jazz man for a rare interview.

What was your introduction to Persian music and what impact did it have on you?

I first heard Persian music played on a solo tar (skin-covered plucked instrument) on the radio in Tehran in 1957 and I knew the peaceful spiritual sound and quiet spaces was what I had been seeking all my young life.

How important was learning Farsi and immersing yourself in the culture with regard to mastering the music?

No one can really understand and fully absorb a system as deeply metaphysical as Persian music, especially with its Sufi song texts, without fluency in Farsi.

You’ve talked about the music of the East being related to the blues. Can you explain?

The basic blues scale is a version of the Persian modal system Segah which was adopted by the Arab world after Islam came to Persia. And the blues came from the Touareg nomads of the sub-Sahara through northern Nigeria and on to New Orleans.

You went on to play a wide range of instruments from Santur to Dan Tranh. Which was the hardest to master and why?

It was impossible for me to conjure up the patience for the Sitar, with its rigid and very slow system of learning for years. A long time student told me “they (the teachers) don’t like prodigies or geniuses, just obedient, patient lifetime learners.”

Many jazzmen have worked with Eastern music. Who do you most respect?

I like Tony Scott’s Japan stuff, also bassist Adbul Malik did pretty well on one Arabic cut, and Paul Horn was cool on some recordings. But no one should try to blend east and west, we just need to place them side by side and leave them in their natural states.

What are the challenges then for combining Eastern music and jazz?

Since Eastern music has millennia of history, it should never be altered in the slightest by anyone, especially not anyone who isn't a fully authorized master. The Persian music system, for instance, was most likely the music that God taught David and which was used in Solomon's temple… Of course, medieval European music was taken from the Arabs who had adopted their music from the Persians and was thus charming and somewhat spiritual. Finally Debussy incorporated inspiration from a gamelan he heard and developed a more peaceful, nature-oriented rather than pomp-oriented sound. It was those complex harmonies of major and minor sevenths and modal-oriented 'cool' chords that were taken over by the bebop and cool jazz movement which finally became very modal with simple or no chord changes during the Miles Davis era. So jazz and Eastern music have the same roots and through simple or non-chordal improvisation they both find common ground. Not through silly blending, but only through the tasteful placing of both in proximity, without touching the authenticity of either. This way Oriental Jazz can happen.

Dr. Lloyd Miller – performing Gol-e Gandom on national Iranian TV

Could you talk a bit about Eastern Arts and your more recent work?

Eastern Arts was established first as East-West Records in the early 1960s then became an organization which promotes, produces and presents concerts of music and dance of eastern lands, countries which were part of the ancient Persian Achaemenian Empire.

Finally, how important is it to spread a positive message through music with the global situation we face today?

If we ever achieve mutual understanding and peace in the world it will have to be along the same philosophy that I used in my Oriental Jazz work. Both cultural systems, Western and Eastern, will have to be placed together without altering either...If we appreciate Eastern values and leave them alone, peace can happen. And if we learn from and adopt some aspects of Eastern cultures, peace and happiness will be guaranteed.

Lloyd Miller - A Lifetime In Oriental Jazz
is out 5 October on Jazzman Records

Andy Thomas

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