Back-to-Back Jacks: Foday of Remembrance

Foday Musa Suso & Jack DeJohnette - World Wide Funk

I didn't really plan it this way. Not at all.

Originally I was like, OK, Jack DeJohnette is as impactful a musician as any single person I could name has been on my life, but 2 1/2 hours of prime, undercirculated music that didn't even exist as a ROIO until I streamed and steam cleaned it for 12 hours is enough, right?

Of course, I had this other show I wanted to work on where JDJ collaborates with the guru of Gambian kora, Foday Musa Suso. But there's so much stuff to do related to these musical passings, I gotta pick my spots. Naturally I can't stand at this terminal 16 hours at a time, with only Edwards' Chocolate Satin Pie to sustain me, and expect to not lapse into a diabetic coma, or at least some form of hypoglycemic shock.

Well, I put that show -- which circulated 20 years ago, in the old SHN lossless format, in a very volume-lacking DAT transfer -- on last night, because honestly the music is so damn great, I was leaning toward taking a shot at it anyway, despite the joint pain.

Once I discovered that Foday Musa Suso -- essentially the Shuggie Otis of Gambia, and well worthy of a day on here any year ending in an Arabic numeral anyway -- had himself passed away at 75 at the end of May this year, I was opening Audacity faster than one of these 117 MPH sinkers these pitchers are throwing on my muted TV screen.

So in honor of these two friends that have unfortunately gone on to The Great Gig In The Sky recently, I stayed up all night messing with this performance, which was well-captured but for the lacking volume and a slightly drummy mix, which I ever-so-slightly rebalanced with the AI stemsplitting tool. There's also some strange and fascinating electronical flourishes in it on and off that I have no idea the origin of -- it might be Jack, but it happens at points where his hands are occupied percussing, so I can't be certain -- but there's looping and blurpy stuff going on for sure, unless someone put PCP in my grapefruit juice. Again.

We eulogized Jack yesterday, so a bit about FMS, who was an authentic African griot and was 400 years descended from the inventor of the kora. He wasn't just a kora master, but proficient at a bunch of different instruments, some that would be considered Western and some distinctly not.

At 27, in 1977, he emigrated to Chicago, and played with just about everyone there at the time. These eventually came to include Jack DeJohnette, himself a native of the Windy City, with whom he forged a decades-long bond of friendship and music.

The name with whom I most associate Foday Musa Suso in my tiny, provincial mind is that of Herbie Hancock, and I think the first time I remember ever hearing anyone play the kora was FMS on the pianist's 1984 electronic masterpiece Sound System.

When you hear what these two giants get up to in this 66 minutes of blissness, you'll understand why I had to rinse this one in the washer and get it blasting.

Foday Musa Suso & Jack DeJohnette

Jazzfestival 2002

Otto Gruber Hall

Saalfelden, Austria

8.23.2002

01 JDJ introduces the concert 

02 Ocean Wave

03 Ancient Techno 

04 Rose Garden

05 World Wide Funk

06 'Gouni

07 Kaira

08 Makola

09 Mountain Love Dance

Total time: 1:05:38

Foday Musa Suso - kora, doussn'gouni & vocals

Jack DeJohnette - drums, percussion & vocals

plus unidentified electronics

soundboard DAT of indeterminate origin

very slightly remux-rebalanced, edited and remastered for unity by EN, October 2025
347 MB FLAC/direct link

I have even more mortality, queued up like the line for an overdosed starlet around the rainy funeral home, in the coming days, but this show was so cool -- and I love JDJ and FMS just that much -- that I felt compelled to pare, flair and share their paired wares from the very first time, 23 years ago, they met on a stage.--J.

2.18.1950 - 5.25.2025                     8.9.1942 - 10.26.2025