Dewey Redman and Black Arts West Theatre

We remember Dewey Redman at the Black Arts West Theatre playwright Ed Bullins and I founded at Turk and Fillmore, San Francisco, 1966, along with Ethna Wyatt, Karl Bossiere, Duncan Barber and Hillery Broadous. Into our theatre came a plethora of jazz musicians to accompany our plays, including Dewey Redman, Monte Waters, Donald Rafael Garrett, Earl Davis, BJ, Paul Smith, et al. They took authority of the music department by telling us to go ahead and do our thing, they would accompany us by coming on stage and accenting our words, or going out into the audience or even out the door to address the Fillmore Street crowds, including the bumper to bumper cars passing along Fillmore.

Dewey and bassist Donald Garrett were probably the most free in teaching us what would become known as Ritual Theatre, that smashing of the wall between stage and audience, merging them into the oneness so well known in the Christian ritual. The difference between the church ritual and the Black Arts ritual was that we came to smash tradition, not enforce it. Of course, we must know tradition before we can smash it. So Dewey, Donald and the rest taught us tradition then how to transcend it.

They forced us to abandon our concept of European theatre, dragging us, sometimes screaming and hollering, back and forward to our African dramatic tradition, freeing us once and forever.

Of course, the ultimate transformer of our dramatic consciousness was Sun Ra, the Grand Master of African theatre. Sun Ra taught the necessity of African mythology as the basis of ritual expression, and with his Arkestra demostrated the unity of music, dance, poetry and mixed media.
--Marvin X
Black Arts West Theatre, 2011

Marvin X's forthcoming drama is Mythology of Love, a womanhood/manhood poetic rites of passage, featuring Ptah Mitchell as Eternal Man and Aries Jordan as Eternal Woman.



Dewey Redman, A Biography



Dewey Redman (born Walter Dewey Redman in Fort Worth, Texas, May 17, 1931; d. Brooklyn, New York September 2, 2006) was an American jazz saxophonist, known for performing free jazz as a bandleader, and with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett.

Redman played mainly tenor saxophone, though he occasionally doubled on alto saxophone, played the Chinese suona (which he called a musette) and on rare occasions played the clarinet.

His son is saxophonist Joshua Redman.

After high school, Redman briefly enrolled in the electrical engineering program at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, but became disillusioned with the program and returned home to Texas. In 1953, Redman earned a Bachelors Degree in Industrial Arts from Prairie View Agricultural and Mechanical University. While at Prairie View, he switched from clarinet to alto saxophone, then, eventually, to tenor. Following his bachelor's degree, Redman served two-years in the US Army.

Upon his discharge from the Army, Redman began working on a master’s degree in education at the University of North Texas. While working on his degree, he taught music to fifth graders in Bastrop, Texas, and worked as a freelance saxophonist on nights and weekends around Austin, Texas. In 1957, Redman earned a Masters Degree in Education with a minor in Industrial Arts from the University of North Texas. While at North Texas, he did not enroll in any music classes.

Towards the end of 1959, Redman moved to San Francisco, a musical choice resulting in an early collaboration with Donald Rafael Garrett.

Redman was best known for his collaborations with saxophonist Ornette Coleman, with whom he performed in his Fort Worth high school marching band. He later performed with Coleman from 1968 to 1972, appearing on the recording New York Is Now, among others. He also played in pianist Keith Jarrett's American Quartet (1971-1976), and was a member of the collective Old And New Dreams. The American Quartet's The Survivor's Suite was voted Jazz Album of the Year by Melody Maker in 1978.

He also performed and recorded as an accompanying musician with jazz musicians who performed in varying styles within the post-1950s jazz idiom, including bassist and fellow Coleman-alum Charlie Haden and guitarist Pat Metheny.

With a dozen recordings under his own name Redman established himself as one of the more prolific tenor players of his generation. Though generally associated with free jazz (with an unusual, distinctive technique of sometimes humming into his saxophone as he played), Redman's melodic tenor playing was often reminiscent of the blues and post-bop mainstream. Redman's live shows were as likely to feature standards and ballads as the more atonal improvisations for which he was known.

Redman was the subject of an award-winning documentary film Dewey Time (dir. Daniel Berman, 2001).

On February 19 and 21, 2004, Redman played tenor saxophone as a special guest with Jazz at Lincoln Center, in a concert entitled "The Music of Ornette Coleman."
Redman died of liver failure in Brooklyn, New York on September 2, 2006. He is survived by his wife, Lidija Pedevska-Redman, as well as sons Tarik, and Joshua Redman also a jazz saxophonist. The father and son recorded two albums together.