2017.12.11 Richard Admiral on Herbie Hancock

Rebroadcast September 21, 2020.

Does the name “Mwandishi” Mean anything to you? How about “Headhunters”? Herbie Hancock is one of our most respected composer/improvisers today but in the Seventies there was a whole other thing going on. Herbie, in his music and in the cool images of him back then, always seemed to be 5 minutes in the future.  And who did he find in that immediate future? Visual artist/musician Richard Admiral was right there waiting for him. If you saw Admiral’s tags “BAMA” or “AMRL” in the train yards of The Bronx, you were closer to Herbie’s music than you knew.  Are we talking about “back in the day’?  No, this was quite a ways before that.