Artist: Steve Coleman

Steve Coleman (born September 20, 1956is an American saxophonist, composer, bandleader and music theorist.

Coleman grew up in Chiago, and moved to New York in 1978 and worked in big bands such as the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, Slide Hampton's big band, Sam Rivers' Studio Rivbea Orchestra, and briefly in Cecil Taylor's big band. Coleman also worked with David Murray, Doug Hammond, Dave Holland, Michael Brecker and Abbey Lincoln.

Coleman played with a band he put together with trumpeter Graham Haynes. This group would evolve into Steve Coleman and Five Elements, which would serve as the main ensemble for Coleman's activities. In this group, he developed his concept of improvisation within nested looping structures. Coleman collaborated with other young African-American musicians such as Cassandra Wilson and Greg Osby, and they founded the so-called M-Base movement.

Coleman regards the music tradition he is coming from as African Diasporan culture with essential African retentions.. He searched for these roots and their connections of contemporary African-American music. He travelled to Ghana in 1993 and learned about the Dagomba (Dagbon) people traditional drum music, which uses complex polyrhythms to communicate through music (described and recorded by John Miller Chernoff).

He wanted to collaborate with musicians who were involved in traditions which come out of West Africa. One of his main interests was the Yoruba tradition (predominantly out of western Nigeria) which is one of the Ancient African Religions underlying Santería (Cuba and Puerto Rico), Vodou (Haiti) and Candomblé (Bahia, Brazil). In Cuba,

Coleman found the group Afrocuba de Matanzas, who specialized in preserving various styles of rumba, as well as African traditions which are mixed together under the general title of Santería (Abakuá, Arara, Congo, Yoruba).

In 1996 Coleman along with a group of 10 musicians as well as dancers and the group Afrocuba de Matanzas worked together for 12 days, performed at the Havana Jazz Festival, and recorded the album The Sign and the Seal. In 1997 Coleman took a group of musicians from America and Cuba to Senegal to collaborate and participate in musical and cultural exchanges with the musicians of the local Senegalese group Sing Sing Rhythm. He also led his group Five Elements to the south of India in 1998 to participate in a cultural exchange with different musicians in the carnatic music tradition.

In September 2014, Coleman was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for "refreshing traditional templates to create distinctive and innovative work in ... jazz."

Further information about Steve Coleman is found here and here.

This content was excerpted from the Wikipedia article,Steve Coleman - Wikipedia , which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).