Onaje Allan Gumbs, a pianist-composer whose firm foundation in hard bop supported an expansive career in pop-R&B and smooth jazz, died on Monday at Saint Joseph’s Medical Center in Yonkers, N.Y. He was 70.

His sister-in-law, Linda Bannerman-Martin, said she had been unable to confirm a cause. Gumbs suffered a series of strokes over the last decade, most recently in Dec. 2018.


Gumbs first emerged in the early 1970s as a perceptive and versatile piano accompanist.  It hardly seems a coincidence that his chosen moniker — Onaje, which he found in a book of African names compiled by Amiri Baraka — means “the sensitive one, owner of the feeling.”

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