At the age of 100, Marshal Alan is still on a tour. He is promoting New Dawn, his name is his first single album with his name and was honored on Saturday. National Settlement for Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship.
Alan Duke grew up in Louisville, Kentki after hearing the sound of Ellington’s Jazz orchestra. The clarinet was the first tool that Alan learned to play. He learned Sachsophone, serving the army band during World War II.
He said, “I am going in such a way that I am going to be a hero. I am going to do this and when I found the reality of the army’s life, it was different … it was different,” he said.
His sound is unique because he does not just play written raga, he adds random notes at random time how the songs feel him.
“You just have to depend on the spirit of the song,” Alan said.
How Allen played and due to him turned to the late 1950s when he met Harman Polay Bluet, known as Sun Ra. The musician and leader of “Sun Ra Archestra” later welcomed Allen, but not without criticism.
“He said that ‘you look good, a tone and your disc and it looks good, but it is not what I want.” I said, ‘What do you want now?’ He is saying … ‘I want to hear what you don’t know.’
The attraction of Sun Ra with outer space and true freedom can inspire their cosmic mixture of jazz, Afrofuturism and spiritual expression. He encouraged his artists to play heartily and improve when they “felt the soul.”
For years, the group lived together in Philadelphia and practiced continuously.
“Day -night rehearsed,” Alan said. “I had to take my discipline together.”
When Sun Ra died in the early 1990s, Alan became the new leader. For the last 30 years, he has been teaching musicians the art of playing what they do not know.
Jazz music trip
Alan said that Jazz music is as important today as he was starting.
The preparation of a show and the routine of testing his equipment never looks old for Allen, which turned 101 years old, and recently performed in Brooklyn, New York.
“I have been doing this for a very long time,” he said. “70, 80, 90 years.”
This time is spending well that he loves, which is feeling something to people. He said that he has to connect with Jazz, “The feeling of things and not everything.”
For the next generation of musicians, Allen said he “had to earn it.”
“If you want to play music, you have to get it,” he said. “You have to live in a soul. You have to play what you don’t know.”
