Don Cherry BOOK Eternal RhythmBy Graeme Ewens

The eternal rhythm is the vital conduit that links music through breath to life itself, where ego vanishes into the river of musical connection and communication. Don Cherry certainly lived music. He did not just live with it, and he did not live only for it but he did live by and through his music. And his music is alive.When he says that music is breath he talks of something much bigger than the blow needed to make the trumpets sound. Cherry was born and died in America but lived his life as a planetary griot, continuously travelling, learning and diving into an ocean of global musical cultures. From his prime instrument, the trumpet, to his beloved ‘ngoni via flutes, piano and melodica Don Cherry’s voice is unique; like the man from which it springs, it is instantly recognisable whatever instrument or angle it is coming from.

The DON CHERRY TAPES laid the foundation of the Cherry Archive which now contains hundreds of recordings, images, artefacts, correspondence and memorabilia celebrating the creativity and preserving the memory of Don and his extended tribal family or clan. The archive started with a series of taped autobiographical interviews and a box of ephemera and mementoes from Don’s own personal belongings.

Now, finally, those transcribed conversations are being published, illuminated by Don’s own artworks and augmented by the author’s tour journals and contemporaneous notes made over three decades of collaboration on what Don called The Project.

A5 printed in mono and colour with 160 pages