Weston, Randy, 1926-2018

Randy Weston was born on April 6, 1926 to Vivian and Frank Weston in Brooklyn, New York. He studied classical piano as a child and was raised in an atmosphere thick with sounds and ideas of modern jazz. Among his childhood friends and neighbors were bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik and drummers Al Harewood and Max Roach; it was at Max Roach's house that Weston would encounter George Russell, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker. His father owned a small restaurant in Brooklyn, which was a hangout for many local artists and performers. A committed Garveyite, the elder Weston instilled in his son a profound consciousness of his African heritage that would shape his life in music.

Following military service in Asia during the Second World War, Weston returned to Brooklyn to run his father’s restaurant, where he became further immersed in the innovative jazz of Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, and, most especially, Thelonious Monk. In 1951, Weston moved to Lenox, Massachusetts, where he began working at the Music Inn, a venue where he would go on to perform and collaborate with scholar Marshall Stearns on presentations on the history of jazz. Weston’s first recordings as a band leader were issued in the mid-1950s, at which point he also initiated a lifelong collaboration with the trombonist and arranger Melba Liston. Liston would go on to arrange most of Weston’s compositions until her death in 1999.

Throughout his early work as a composer and touring musician, Weston was also active as a community organizer, founding organizations such as the Afro-American Musicians Society (AAMS) and being an active participant in the United Nations Jazz Society. Returning to New York in the late 1950s, Weston became increasingly engaged in connecting the civil rights movement in the United States with independence movements across Africa. This passion took musical form on Weston’s innovative four-part suite, Uhuru Afrika (1960), which featured lyrics and linear notes by the poet Langston Hughes. Weston first toured the continent in 1967 under the auspices of the U.S. State Department. He relocated to Morocco, where he eventually opened the African Rhythms Club in Tangier. Weston forged lasting relationships with Gnawa musicians during these years, with whom he would collaborate on recordings like Spirits of Our Ancestors (1991) and Spirit! The Power of Music (1999).

Among his many honors, Weston was named DownBeat Composer of the Year three times and an NEA Jazz Master in 2001. In 2010, he published African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston (Duke University Press) with Willard Jenkins. Weston died at his home in Brooklyn on September 1, 2018.