Rahsaan Roland Kirk Rediscovered
Two never-before-heard gems by the legendary multi-instrumentalist/composer genius Rahsaan Roland Kirk (who lived in East Orange the last few years of his life) have been restored, remastered, remixed and released. Zev “The Jazz Detective” Feldman—in cooperation with Rahsaan’s widow Dorthaan Kirk—has done it again. His Resonance Records today releases Vibrations In The Village: Live At The Village Gate from 1963 and Seek And Listen: Live At The Penthouse from 1967. Both feature the pioneer at the height of his powers.
Sightless since the age of two, he mastered everything he heard on the radio, developing his “circular breathing” technique which would permit him to continuously blow a variety of woodwinds nonstop, from sax and flute to whistles and such arcane instruments as the stritch and the manzello…all without having to ever pause for breath. Plus, he’d pepper his performance with political rants. Saxophonist James Carter calls Kirk “unique. What he was able to do was unbelievable. He could not only play three horns at once and sound like a saxophone section, he could also alternate between two horns and sound like two different people trading phrases.” The man liked the purity of sound itself, thus, he heard music in car honks and trains. He’d add shattering glass, police sirens and chirping birds to his music.
His biographer John Kruth writes, “Roland Kirk was both a great and greatly misunderstood musician, a brilliant multi-instrumentalist who expressed himself through a homemade sonic tool kit…that included an alto sax to which he added a French Horn bell, creating a monstrous-looking horn that resembled a medieval vacuum cleaner. He also was a hell of a clarinet player.” Rahsaan Roland Kirk died when he suffered his second stroke in 1977 at the age of 42.