1975 · Album
Swift Are the Winds of Life
Recorded September 1975, Studio 77, New York City · Survival Records · Produced by Not listed
Two Musicians, No Net, Pure Sound
A violin and drums duo that sounds complete, never sparse—Jenkins and Ali working at their absolute peak.
In September 1975, Leroy Jenkins and Rashied Ali walked into Studio 77 in New York with no one else. No bass, no piano, no safety net. Jenkins brought his violin and his compositions; Ali brought the drums. What they made together—recorded and released by Survival Records the following year—stands as proof that a duo this bare can sound full.
Jenkins wrote everything here, and the range is real: some pieces come in hot and aggressive, others sit in bluesy territory, some drift toward abstraction. Nothing feels like filler or experiment-for-its-own-sake. The violin doesn't try to do a bass player's job, and Ali doesn't overplay to fill space. They listen to each other, which is the whole thing. AllMusic reviewer Brian Olewnick called it one of the finest examples of Jenkins' playing outside the Revolutionary Ensemble, and one of Ali's greatest recordings apart from Interstellar Space (1967), his duo session with John Coltrane. That's not hyperbole here—the album earns it.
For anyone curious about what Jenkins could do, this is a better starting point than his Ensemble work because the picture is clearer: just violin, just drums, just composition and response. It's short, which is fine. Everything that needed to happen did.
