Supporter of the Steelpan Artform
Randy Weston performing at a Highlife Session in April 1963. Mr. Weston’s playing and composing emphasized the African roots of jazz, including in such albums as “Little Niles” and “Uhuru Afrika” (Swahili for “Freedom Africa”).CreditCreditChuck Stewart/Mosiac Records
Randy Weston, an esteemed pianist whose music and scholarship advanced the argument — now broadly accepted — that jazz is, at its core, an African music, died at his home in Brooklyn on Saturday. He was 92.
His death was confirmed by his lawyer, Gail Boyd, who said the exact cause was still being determined.
On his earliest recordings in the mid-1950s, Mr. Weston almost fit the profile of a standard bebop musician: He recorded jazz standards and galloping original tunes in a typical, small-group format. But his sharply cut harmonies and intense, gnarled rhythms conveyed a manifestly Afrocentric sensibility, one that was slightly more barbed and rugged than the popular hard-bop sound of the day.
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