🔗 Share this article

My conversation with Jack DeJohnette got off to a rocky start. It was the summer of 2000, when DeJohnette was visiting London for a series of concerts with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Labeling him in my initial question as a “drummer” felt appropriate, but DeJohnette resisted being categorized and responded sharply: “I’m a complete musician.” Shortly after, sitting in the Royal Festival Hall observing the Standards Trio, an instance of transcendent magic thrilled me as Jarrett held a long sequence of recurring tones high on the piano and DeJohnette powered the music forwards with a labyrinthian drum solo as melodically exploratory as anything Jarrett had played. Complete musician indeed.

“The concept of spontaneous creation,” DeJohnette explained, “is tied up in the very nature of our existence. We don’t expect our life to evolve without transformation and we never know what’s round the corner – why should music be any different?”

He further explained that each part of his drum kit he viewed as a musical being “in its own right.” He designed and tuned his cymbals to his own specification. Combine the tones of cymbals with the drums and then “your approach becomes melodic on the kit,” he added. The sounds inside DeJohnette’s head could never be contained by the traditional rules of percussion. He was additionally a keyboardist of considerable merit – who issued a solo piano album, Return, in 2016 – and each aspect of his musicianship seemed to be on display continuously, until his passing at the age of 83.

An Unmatched Energy in Artistic Performance

Numerous percussionists adjust their equipment to a custom setup, but DeJohnette’s playing exhibited a life-force that was entirely his own. Listening to his performance on “What I Say” from Miles Davis’s album Live-Evil is to be amazed by apparently superhuman drive as he sustained a powerful funk/rock beat for 20 minutes. DeJohnette, who also played on Davis’s groundbreaking Bitches Brew, had by 1970 emerged as Davis’s preferred percussionist in a collision of brilliant artists. His drums anchored the track firmly and gave Davis, and subsequently saxophonist Wayne Shorter, all the space they needed to experiment, while DeJohnette filled his performance with rattling rhythmic asides – keeping a continual discussion with the other musicians.

Early Innovations and Creative Autonomy

His own 1968 first record, The DeJohnette Complex, quickly established that his was a style intimately connected with a jazz scene rapidly diversifying around him, while he stayed fiercely autonomous. The compositions DeJohnette created for his album were melodically intricate and asserted jazz/rock energy while also occasionally leaning towards free-form improvisation. He featured himself playing a wind instrument, and his rustic tune creations took flight.

The DeJohnette Complex demonstrated that DeJohnette’s aesthetic was truly multifaceted and, following his departure from Davis’s group, he was signed to ECM Records. In 1976 he issued Untitled, a energetic five-piece record, but also Pictures in which he played piano, drums and organ, and collaborated on several pieces with guitarist John Abercrombie, an album that was minimalist and stripped-down in contrast to Untitled.

Iconic Partnerships and Essential Recordings

His 1981 ECM album with saxophonist John Surman, The Amazing Adventures of Simon Simon, emerged as a pivotal point for both musicians, and a much-loved classic too. Surman and DeJohnette played their usual instruments while also adding electronic elements, merging their personal styles inside richly arranged compositions of pastoral tones. A further critical record was Oneness, recorded in 1997, which presented expansive forms with pieces such as “Free Above Sea” and “Priestesses of the Mist,” their titles reflecting the primal energy unleashed by the music. Hearing that work around the time of its release, it recalled an earlier encounter with DeJohnette, when I listened to his band Special Edition play in Leeds during the late 1980s. This performance was in no hurry to stake out its terrain, as ambient, slow-burn forms slowly condensed towards percussive climaxes.

Reflective Thoughts on Music and Life

Conversing with DeJohnette all those years later, these ideas of stress-testing form and scale became clearer. He told me how he enjoyed performing those rhythmic patterns with Davis because “I could sit in grooves and let them saturate me,” but also mentioned his aim to create broader auditory landscapes, always unrestricted and therefore beneficial for the mind. He cited the “predictable limits” of pop music with its recurring motifs. “However, through spontaneous play,” he said, “you’re open to a full range of possibilities. Individuals have the ability for very creative but only seem to tap into their potential during crises. But if people were more conscious of our place within nature, ceased harming the planet and put things back into it, we would have a better world and community.”

No question that DeJohnette viewed his art as modelling those idealist aspirations. “Creativity mirrors the soul of that purification, which is transmitted as vitality – and all artists must tap into that source.”