SAXOPHONIST FARUQ Z BEY HAS PASSED AWAY

alocispepraluger102 · June 2, 2012

it will be little noted, if at all, that faruq z bey, one of our greatest living musicians has passed away.

Detroit jazz and avant scenes lose icon in passing of Faruq Z. Bey

JUNE 2, 2012

BY W. KIM HERON

Faruq Z. Bey, local legend and icon of avant garde music in Detroit, has died after years of emphysema and other ailments. A friend who spoke to Bey regularly last heard from him Thursday and was unable to reach him on Friday. Her concerns lead to other friends entering his residence with police on Saturday and finding that he had died. He was around 70 years old.

Bey was the leader of the group Griot Galaxy, a sprawling group into which dozens of musicians fell in and out between 1972 and the time it stabilized mid-decade and slowly distilled to a classic quintet around 1980. With saxophonists Bey, Tony Holland and David McMurray, drummer Tani Tabbal and bassist Jaribu Shahid, the group donned silver face paint and African garb, dubbing themselves a science fiction band. The name harkened to the African traditional bearers of tradition and history, on one hand, and … the reaches of space and the future, on the other.

While they were clearly rooted in the jazz avant garde – in artists like John Coltrane, Sun Ra and the Art Ensemble of Chicago – the members of Griot Galaxy were extending that tradition in their own voices and in their collective sound. In fact, with their theatric edge and their penchant for hypnotic, layered rhythm, they were an avant garde group for people who didn’t particularly like the avant garde, or maybe even jazz. They were one of a kind. Sorry if that’s a cliché. But they really were.