Juju

Wayne Shorter

album cover

Jazz Composition at Its Most Wrenching

Vincent van Gogh once defined an artist's work this way: "Always seeking without absolutely finding. . . . I am seeking. I am striving. I am in with all my heart." Jazz musicians generally fit that profile; the saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter epitomizes it. Among his special gifts is the ability to write music that comes from a place of deep immersion. His pealing, jagged melodies establish an avenue of inquiry, and then his improvisations draw listeners deeper—into tangles of emotion, mystic unknowables waiting beneath the surface.

The recordings Shorter made for Blue Note Records, beginning with Night Dreamer and Juju, from 1964, are the epic journals of a seeker. To create them, Shorter—who was, at the time, a part of Miles Davis's famed '60s quintet—rejected conventional ideas about composing for a hard-bop jazz group. His forms are more elaborate than what had come before. His rhythms combine broken swing and languid African pulses in a loose, perpetually jagged update of Afro-Cuban rhythm.

Of all the zillions of records with a tenor saxophone at the center, including those made by Shorter's friend John Coltrane (to whom he was frequently compared), this one is among the most wrenching, a song cycle of plaintive cries and beseeching declarations. Like so much great music, it thrives on the balance of opposing forces—in these tunes, which have been studied endlessly by musicians, brainy upheavals are tangled up with pure singing from the heart. Shorter's pursuit is not always tidy, as big ideas are sometimes left hanging, unresolved, along the way. But it is always rousing. And its energy is contagious: Listen to how the rhythm section follows Shorter, getting fully behind his quest. Everyone senses that Shorter is striving toward something metaphysical—and possibly unattainable. Like him, they're immersed in the search itself, not the finding.

Genre: Jazz
Released: 1964, Blue Note
Key Tracks: "Juju," "House of Jade," "Mahjong"
Catalog Choice: Speak No Evil; The All-Seeing Eye
Next Stop: Joe Henderson: Power to the People
After That: McCoy Tyner: The Real McCoy
Book Page: 696