The following essay was first published in the April 2026 issue of Jersey Jazz Magazine as part of a celebration of Weston’s centennial (April 6, 2026). It is reprinted here with permission. (To become a member of the New Jersey Jazz Society, click here).
In the history of jazz, no American musician’s career has been more interconnected with the continent of Africa than that of the great pianist and composer Randy Weston. Weston, whose centennial we celebrated on April 6, 2026, was a giant, not only as a creative and spiritual force, but standing six feet, seven inches, an imposing figure in the venues at which he performed throughout the world.
Interestingly, he didn’t consider himself primarily a musician. In his own words, “I come to be a storyteller; I’m not a jazz musician. I’m really a storyteller through music and I’ve had some amazing and unique experiences…God is the real musician. I’m an instrument and the piano is another instrument. Africa taught me that” (African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston, Randy Weston & Willard Jenkins, Duke University Press, 2010).
Influenced by both Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington, Weston created a significant legacy throughout a seventy-year career, involving over 200 compositions, many of them waltzes such as the haunting “Little Niles,” and fifty albums as a leader on record labels both foreign and domestic including his most commercially successful effort Blue Moses for the CTI label in 1972. Although emerging during the hard bop period of the 1950s, his creative work, starting in the 1960s, incorporated the music and spiritual content of Africa, especially the Gnawa people of Morocco with whom he developed an enduring bond.
Randolph Edward Weston was born April 6, 1926 in Brooklyn, New York and raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of that borough. His father, Frank Weston, was of Jamaican and Panamanian descent, a follower of activist Marcus Garvey, and from an early age instilled in his son a sense of pride in his African American heritage. His mother was Vivian Moore from Meredithville, Virginia, but the couple split when Randy was only 3 and it would be Frank who was most involved in his son’s life, indoctrinating the young man with Afro-centric concepts including the often-overlooked fact that Black history predates slavery.
The family was not musical. Randy didn’t start piano until the age of 14 and he didn’t make the decision to become a professional musician until he was 29. He had several teachers who provided the basics and he learned much from listening to many of the older musicians in his neighborhood. Soon after graduation from high school, he was drafted into the Army in 1944, ending up in the Signal Corps, stationed in Okinawa where he survived typhoons and snipers.
Upon returning to Brooklyn after discharge, he worked at restaurants during the day and played piano at night, gaining exposure to the jazz scene and its dangerous aspects, specifically heroin. Seeing the effect this drug had on many of his friends, along with the advent of gangs and violence in his Brooklyn neighborhood, Weston needed an escape hatch. This turned out to be ten summers spent in the Berkshire resort area of Massachusetts. He received a great response after playing a concert at Windsor Mountain School in Lenox that led to interactions with people like poet and activist Langston Hughes, actor Geoffrey Holder, Cuban percussionist Candido Camero and musicologist Professor Marshall Stearns. It would be Stearns whose lectures at Music Inn alerted Weston to the concept that originally, jazz comes from Africa, not New Orleans. This direct connection of music from America and Africa would be an overarching concept throughout the pianist’s long career.
Weston’s professional musical activities began in earnest in 1949, in the rhythm and blues band of singer/saxophonist Bull Moose Jackson. His first recordings took place as a member of a band led by saxophonist Frank “Floorshow” Culley and included the very first Atlantic recordings by the R&B vocal group The Clovers. These experiences served to convince Randy that in order to perform the music important to him, he would need to be in charge. As it turned out, most of Weston’s recordings and performances were under his own leadership.
In 1954, Riverside Records was looking for young artists to record modern jazz and the label’s owner, Bill Grauer, tapped Weston to be the first. His initial album was a duo outing with Sam Gill on bass, entitled Cole Porter in a Modern Mood which shows him, at this point, very much influenced by Thelonious Monk. Four more albums for Riverside would follow, some featuring his Brooklyn friend baritone saxophonist Cecil Payne. During 1956 and 1957, Weston recorded for the Dawn and Jubilee labels and in 1958, half of an LP for MetroJazz (New Faces at Newport) which included the very first version of “Hi Fly,” his most popular composition which would be made famous through the album The Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco (1960). By this time, Weston’s prowess as a composer was being recognized.
An important Weston collaborator was the arranger and trombonist Melba Liston (1926-1999) with whom the pianist had strong personal as well as musical relationships. Between 1958 and 1995, Liston penned arrangements for eight of Weston’s albums including the innovative Uhuru Afrika (Roulette Records, 1960), Weston’s first overt effort to pay tribute to his African heritage. The ensemble was an all-star big band augmented by the presence of poet Langston Hughes, baritone Brock Peters, soprano Martha Flowers and Nigerian percussionist Babatunde Olatunji. Weston’s goal is his own words: “I wanted to create a large-scale suite to illustrate that the African people are a global people and that what we do and who we are comes from our collective experience, from our African cultural memory.” The album was sufficiently controversial to be banned in apartheid South Africa.
Weston’s first trip to Africa took place in 1961 through an exchange program run by the American Society of African Culture, spending ten days in Nigeria where he met the influential musicians Fela Kuti and Bobby Benson. But it wouldn’t be until 1967 that he was able to take his own ensemble and music to the continent, this time a tour arranged by the US State Department. The band he assembled for this tour included trumpeter Ray Copeland, saxophonist Clifford Jordan, bassist Bill Wood, drummer Ed Blackwell and percussionist Chief Bey. Lasting three months during which thirteen countries were visited, the experience encouraged Weston to consider living in Africa.
Discouraged by the direction that jazz was taking in the late 1960s at home and anxious to explore his African roots, Weston moved to Rabat, Morocco in 1967 and a year later to Tangier. He found the strongest bond with the Gnawa musicians and healers of North Africa and was schooled in their ways by guimbre (guitar-like instrument) player Abdellah El Gourd. Weston’s musical abilities were revered in this new setting and he opened the African Rhythms Club in Tangier where he frequently performed with his son, percussionist Azeddin Niles Weston.
In September 1972, Weston organized the first Tangier Jazz Festival featuring both American and African artists. While the event was an artistic success, it was a financial disaster and left him deeply in debt. The situation forced him to return to the USA where he recorded the Blue Moses album for CTI Records. Featuring trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, flutist Hubert Laws and saxophonist Grover Washington, Jr., it would be his most successful album, the royalties from which allowed him to pay off the debts incurred by the festival.
Weston made France his home base for ten years, traveling and performing widely. After returning to the USA, his later years were very productive and centered on an ensemble he called the African Rhythms Quintet comprising saxophonist, flutist and musical director T.K. Blue (Talib Kibwe), trombonist Benny Powell, bassist Alex Blake and percussionist Neil Clarke. With these talented musicians as the core, Weston produced several important albums including The Spirits of Our Ancestors (1991, Antilles) with guest appearances by Dizzy Gillespie and Pharoah Sanders, Spirit! the Power of Music (1999, Arkadia Jazz) with Gnawa master musicians of Morocco and The Storyteller (2009, Motéma). His last recording was Solo Piano Sound released on his own label, African Rhythms, in 2017.
Weston was the recipient of many awards and honors including the French Order of Arts and Letters (1997), NEA Jazz Master (2001), Honorary Doctor of Music from Brooklyn College (2003), Guggenheim Fellowship (2011) and Doris Duke Artist Award (2014). He died in Brooklyn, New York, in 2018, at the age of 92.
Noal Cohen, Montclair New Jersey, 2026
T.K. Blue on Randy Weston
April 6, 2026 marks the actual Centennial of an iconic figure in jazz history: NEA Jazz Master Dr. Randy Weston. Dr. Weston was one of the most prolific composers in Jazz History and many of his compositions are considered Jazz Standards. His pianistic style was a complete synthesis of Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington, both of whom he knew intimately! Randy was also one of the very first jazz artists to incorporate and utilize the African cultural aesthetic within the realm of his musical expression, often in collaboration with a multitude of African musicians throughout the continent. His biggest selling LP Blue Moses (CTI Records) is a perfect example where he expands on rhythms indicative of the Gnawa musical tradition from Morocco. Randy also paid tribute to many African composers adding their compositions to his musical repertoire: “Niger Mambo” (Bobby Benson from Nigeria) “Love, The Mystery Of” (Kofi Ghanaba from Ghana). It was an absolute pleasure and blessing to be part of Randy’s African Rhythms for 38 years and his musical director. After the passing of Randy’s chief arranger NEA Jazz Master Melba Liston in 1999, I was also called upon to arrange some of his later suites: Ancient Future and The James Reese Europe Suite.
Lastly it is extremely important to note Dr. Weston was a cultural warrior highlighting the greatness of African culture and civilization in his attempt to counter beliefs that were quite discriminating and contrary to the truth regarding the importance and compelling facts of the African and African American accomplishments!! May Dr. Weston’s legacy live onward!!
T.K. Blue, January 16, 2026, from Accra, Ghana
On May 3, 2026, at the Madison (NJ) Community Arts Center, long time Weston collaborator T.K. Blue celebrated Randy Weston’s centennial by leading an all star quartet that performed Weston’s music. The band members were Aaron Graves (piano), Asante Santi Dibriano (bass) and George Coleman, Jr. (drums). Prior to the concert, T.K. and I discussed Weston’s legacy. Here is a photo from the event.
Randy Weston Resources
African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston by Randy Weston and Willard Jenkins
Randy Weston Collection at Harvard University
A Conversation with Randy Weston
Guide to the Melba Liston Collection at Columbia College Chicago
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to:
T.K. Blue (Talib Kibwe), Jim Brown, Tom Ferrara, Michael Fitzgerald, Louis LoCicero