Gary Bartz: Music Is His Sanctuary

GARY BARTZ:
MUSIC IS HIS SANCTUARY
By Marshall Bowden

Gary Bartz is one top-notch jazz musician whose profile has suffered because he dared to believe that jazz and other black music genres are not separate, but rather are pieces of a great whole. Bartz was part of Davis’s anti-funk/anti-jazz band, but didn’t do much recording with Davis, though he can be heard on some live recordings such as Live-Evil and Isle of Wight. Interestingly, Bartz and his Ntu Troop (‘Ntu’ is the Bantu word for ‘Unity’) performed at the fledgling Montreux Jazz Festival on July 7, 1973, while Davis and his band performed there on July 8. Davis and company performed two typically murky and difficult sets. On the recently released Complete Miles Davis at Montreux you can hear the audience’s befuddlement at the end of the first set and some definite booing. Bartz’s performance was also recorded and was released by Prestige in 1974. Though it’s been out of print for some time, Fantasy Records has recently reissued it, and rightfully so: I’ve Known Rivers and Other Bodies is one of the best jazz fusion-influenced recordings of the time, and a classic in any time.

Not every band playing what might be called fusion was doing a heavy electrified funk thing, and Bartz here walks a wonderful line between established genres, including jazz, R&B, funk, soul, and avant-garde. Like some other musicians, Bartz referred to what he was playing as Black Music or African-American Music rather than jazz, and I think that he meant it. There’s even some of the playfulness and theatricality of groups like the Art Ensemble of Chicago in Ntu Troop’s work.

Before joining Miles and forming Ntu Troop, Bartz was immersed in the jazz tradition. He played with the Max Roach/Abbey Lincoln group and established himself as one of the freshest alto sax voices in New York since Cannonball Adderley. Bartz and Adderley share a tone on the instrument that brings to mind the bold, bright sound of Charlie Parker along with some funkier overtones. Gary joined Charles Mingus’ Workshop and in 1965 became a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. In 1968 Bartz began working with McCoy Tyner, which was especially important to him because of his strong pull toward John Coltrane. At the same time he also worked with Max Roach again, the drummer providing a strong link to Charlie Parker. For someone with the spiritual sensibility and understanding of history that Bartz displays, both of these connections—to Parker and to Coltrane—were clearly inspirational wells from which he drank deeply. Gary also recorded a couple of really great albums during this period. Libra is a straight-ahead affair featuring trumpet player Jimmy Owens and Kenny Barron at the piano. The time spent with Blakey shows clearly on this recording. Then there’s Another Earth, which features Pharoah Sanders along side Bartz, and it’s one of Gary’s best recordings as well. Milestone has reissued both albums on a single CD, and it’s one that everyone should have in their collection. Prior to putting Ntu Troop together, Bartz and Andy Bey, along with Ron Carter and others, formed the group Harlem Bush Music and recorded the albums Taifa and Uhuru. These have been available on a single import CD, but it appears that they may well have gone out of print.

Throughout the 1970s Bartz recorded solo work as well as the Ntu Troop material. Much of this was funky fusion-oriented music like Music Is My Sanctuary, just reissued as part of Blue Note’s Rare Groove Series. The album is a vital snapshot of a time when seriously talented jazz musicians were creating recordings that healed the rift between black music genres that were artificially divided by the music industry. Jazz, R&B, soul, blues, and funk could be combined to create music that was much more than the mere sum of its parts. Music Is My Sanctuary contains some wonderful grooves laid down by a band that includes Eddie Henderson, George Cables, Larry Mizell, and percussionists Mtume (another alumni of the Miles electric funk band) and Bill Summers (who played on Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters and went on to co-found Los Hombres Calientes). The group plays with spirited energy and demonstrates that any style of music can have authenticity if it is played with attention. Bartz’s sax playing is as great as ever, no matter what the listener may think of the musical setting for his solos. This is not necessarily the most challenging music that any of these musicians ever played, but they give it their full attention.

Unfortunately, the 1980s were a time when a great many jazz musicians looked backward, with the result that any real development in the music stopped. To be fair, jazz musicians were not the only ones who did this; things became much less experimental in rock, soul, and R&B as well (in fact, R&B pretty much ceased to exist in its true form—what survived was urban bedroom music that had little in common with what R&B had been). But any musicians who had participated conspicuously in the fusion and funk music of the 70s were on the “outside” in the 80s. The most notable exception was Miles Davis, who continued to go his own way. Even many Davis alumni moved toward more mainstream post-bop jazz projects in the 80s. Herbie Hancock spent a lot of time working with VSOP, a rehashing of the mid-60s, pre-electric Miles quintet, and Chick Corea recorded with an acoustic band again. An artist like Gary Bartz was seen by many young lions as having betrayed jazz during his flirtation with popular dance music and he was effectively cut out of the scene and written out of the history books.

Bartz returned in the late 80s with Precious Energy, a collaboration with Leon Thomas, and a series of recordings for Steeplechase and Candid that found him back in more mainstream territory once again. He also reconnected with Kenny Barron, joining the reformed Sphere along with Ben Riley and Buster Williams. The 90s saw the release of two conceptual albums, Red & Orange Poems and Blues Chronicles: Tales of Life, both on Atlantic (who later dropped him). Blues Chronicles combines mainstream blowing with a bit of rap and hip-hop, demonstrating that Bartz has not left his commitment to joining musical forms together. Recently Bartz formed his own record label, OYO Records, and has released Live At the Jazz Standard, Vol 1: Soulstice.

The arrival of acid jazz and funky jam band music on the scene has renewed interest in some of Bartz’s 70s fusion work, and culturally aware hip-hop groups such as A Tribe Called Quest have sampled these albums quite a bit. For the jazz enthusiast, it is probably his early records as a leader and his work with Ntu Troop that will prove most interesting, and folks interested in hearing some vital, inventive music from an astute musical mind will derive a great deal of pleasure from them. Bartz should be one of the most recognizable figures in post-1960s jazz, but his interest in playing beyond the confines of what saxophonist Courtney Pine has called ‘the jazz room’ effectively derailed his career for a time—proof positive that rewriting jazz history to suit an ulterior agenda is dangerous business.