Ishmael Reed

Biography

Ishmael Scott Reed (born February 22, 1938, Chattanooga, Tennessee) is a poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, and spoken word artist whose creative life has always been deeply entangled with music. His family relocated to Buffalo, New York during the Great Migration, and by age 14 Reed was writing a jazz column for a local Black newspaper, the Empire State Weekly. While at the University of Buffalo he made formative connections with avant-garde musicians Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, and Albert Ayler — figures who profoundly shaped his lifelong experimental sensibility. He moved to New York City in 1962 and immersed himself in the downtown arts scene, where literary and musical worlds overlapped.

Reed's philosophy of art — which he called "Neo-HooDoo" — was itself a musical-spiritual manifesto. Coined in 1970, it declared that "every man is an artist and every artist a priest," drawing on African diaspora spiritual traditions, blues, jazz, and folk forms as resistance against Western monoculture. This aesthetic framework informed both his fiction (most famously Mumbo Jumbo, 1972) and his career as a lyricist and librettist. His longest-running musical collaboration, the Conjure ensemble (conceived by producer Kip Hanrahan), set Reed's texts to music across three albums from 1984 to 2005, featuring musicians including Allen Toussaint, Taj Mahal, Lester Bowie, and Carla Bley. Between 2012 and 2016 he served as the inaugural SF Jazz Poet Laureate, and his poem "When I Die I Will Go to Jazz" is permanently installed on the exterior of the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco.

In his later decades Reed became an active performer and recording artist in his own right. At age 60 he began studying jazz piano formally, inspired by his work with Conjure. He made his debut as a jazz pianist on the 2007 album For All We Know with saxophonist David Murray, and continued recording into his 80s — releasing The Hands of Grace (2022) and Blues Lyrics by Ishmael Reed (2023) with the West Coast Blues Caravan of All Stars. The New York Times has described Reed as "probably the one American writer whose sensibility is closest to jazz."

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Fun Facts

• Began writing a jazz column for a Buffalo Black newspaper at age 14 — a jazz critic before he could drive.
• Played trombone in high school and organized a string quartet with his music teacher to perform Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' at a girls' high school.
• Did not begin studying jazz piano formally until age 60, yet went on to lead his own jazz quintet and release multiple albums as a pianist.
• His poem 'When I Die I Will Go to Jazz' is permanently installed on the exterior wall of the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco, readable by passersby on Linden Alley.

Musical Connections

Mentors/Influences

• Sun Ra - Met in Buffalo while at University of Buffalo; avant-garde influence on Reed's experimental sensibility [Late 1950s]
• Cecil Taylor - Met in Buffalo; shaped Reed's avant-garde and experimental artistic outlook [Late 1950s]
• Albert Ayler - Met in Buffalo; free jazz pioneer who influenced Reed's Neo-HooDoo aesthetic [Late 1950s]

Key Collaborators

• David Murray - Saxophonist and core musical collaborator across multiple decades; co-created For All We Know (2007) and Be My Monster Love (2013) (For All We Know (2007), Be My Monster Love (2013)) [2000s–2010s]
• Allen Toussaint - New Orleans legend who contributed compositions to the Conjure project (Conjure I (1984))
• Taj Mahal - Blues musician featured on the Conjure albums (Conjure I (1984), Conjure II (1988)) [1984–1988]
• Cassandra Wilson - Sang Reed's lyrics on her album Sacred Ground (Sacred Ground (2007))
• Macy Gray - Performed Reed lyrics at Jazz à la Villette, Paris; featured on David Murray's Be My Monster Love (Be My Monster Love (2013)) [2011–2013]
• Gregory Porter - Featured on David Murray's Be My Monster Love performing Reed lyrics (Be My Monster Love (2013))

External Links

• Spotify
• Wikipedia