2000 · Album
Emancipation Proclamation: A Real Statement of Freedom
Recorded 1999 at Empty Bottle, Chicago · Okka Disk · Musicians: Hamid Drake (percussion), Joe McPhee (saxophones, woodwinds, multi-instruments)
Two Masters Improvising Without a Net
When conditions are right, anything is possible in avant jazz duet recordings.
This is Joe McPhee and Hamid Drake alone in a room, no safety net. McPhee brings decades of work across free jazz, soul jazz, and spiritual music—a restless mind that refuses to settle into one voice. Drake, one of the most intuitive percussionists in improvised music, responds not with time-keeping but with texture, space, and the kind of listening that makes a duet actually work. What makes this different from countless other avant garde meetings is that neither player dominates. McPhee's saxophones and woodwinds don't steamroll; Drake's drums, metals, and various percussion don't just accompany. They're thinking together, which is rarer than it sounds. Recorded live at Chicago's Empty Bottle in 1999, the album captures what happens when two musicians who understand restraint and who respect silence meet without any pre-arranged material. The conversation unfolds naturally—sometimes dense, sometimes spare, never predictable. AllMusic reviewer Thom Jurek heard it as a statement of possibility itself, a reminder that real collaboration means genuine risk. This isn't a display of technique or a ego-matching contest. It's two people who've each spent decades learning when not to play, and here they're using that knowledge to build something neither could make alone.
Who's playing
Hamid Drakedrums
Joe McPheewind instruments
Where next?
More by Hamid Drake
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