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You’ll Know When You Get There

Herbie Hancock and the Mwandishi Band

As the 1960s ended, Herbie Hancock embarked on a grand creative experiment. Having just been dismissed from the celebrated Miles Davis Quintet, he set out on the road, playing with his first touring group as a leader until he eventually formed what would become a revolutionary band. Taking the Swahili name Mwandishi, the group would go on to play some of the most innovative music of the 1970s, fusing an assortment of musical genres, American and African cultures, and acoustic and electronic sounds into groundbreaking experiments that helped shape the American popular music that followed. In You’ll Know When You Get There, Bob Gluck offers the first comprehensive study of this influential group, mapping the musical, technological, political, and cultural changes that they not only lived in but also effected.  

 
Beginning with Hancock’s formative years as a sideman in bebop and hard bop ensembles, his work with Miles Davis, and the early recordings under his own name, Gluck uncovers the many ingredients that would come to form the Mwandishi sound. He offers an extensive series of interviews with Hancock and other band members, the producer and engineer who worked with them, and a catalog of well-known musicians who were profoundly influenced by the group. Paying close attention to the Mwandishi band’s repertoire, he analyzes a wide array of recordings—many little known—and examines the group’s instrumentation, their pioneering use of electronics, and their transformation of the studio into a compositional tool.
 
From protofunk rhythms to synthesizers to the reclamation of African identities, Gluck tells the story of a highly peculiar and thrillingly unpredictable band that became a hallmark of American genius.

 


See a website for the book.


288 pages | 10 halftones, 22 line drawings | 6 x 9 | © 2012

Black Studies

Music: General Music

Reviews

“In the forty years that have passed since I saw the Mwandishi band in Kansas City as a teenager, I have heard and even been able to participate in a lot of great music. But nothing I have experienced since has had more of an effect on my life than what those guys brought to the bandstand on those KC nights. To me, that band was the epitome of everything that jazz has ever promised to be. Collectively and individually, they brought together a sound that was so deeply in and of that moment in time that it became thus transcendent and timeless. They inspired me and a generation to aspire to their level of creativity and commitment. Herbie has always been one of my major heroes and still is. He has been great every step of the way from the beginning, but there was something really special with this band and the way it intersected with the culture that was unique and important. This book takes an in depth look at every detail of what made that amazing collection of musicians what it was. With his exhaustive research and detailed interviews, Bob Gluck brings the nature and workings of this amazing and influential ensemble to life.”

Pat Metheny

“In You’ll Know When You Get There, Bob Gluck takes a fascinating look at the development of a musical identity. The book is ostensibly about pianist Herbie Hancock and his sextet’s Mwandishi period—a free-jazz, electronics-heavy evolution of the hard-bop group he formed in 1968—but it really uses Hancock’s story to show how musicians adapt to changing technology, new musical ideas and greater cultural identities. At its core, the book is a study about how an artist accumulates a sound and the experiences that shape his musical views…..Perhaps, with this excellent primer, more listeners will start to unearth the joys found in Mwandishi’s three recordings.”

Jon Ross | DownBeat

“Gluck gives a keen sense of Hancock’s wide-ranging curiosity and eager assimilation of influences, embracing diverse African and Asian musics, the Klangfarbenmelodie of the European avant-garde. . . . and contemporary directions in funk and pop. We get insights into Hancock’s successful attempts to forge a new musical language, as well as his involvement in post-production and his delight in gadgetry. . . . There is a vast amount of information in You’ll Know When You Get There, including interviews with and brief biographies of the band members. While they stress the collective dynamic of the group— ‘we were a family’—their individual achievements read like a who’s who of hard- and post-bop jazz. There are also tributes and reminiscences from eminent successors such as Bobby McFerrin and Pat Metheny. We are given clear explanations of the converging styles and forms and the band’s open but disciplined approach to improvisation. . . . The influence of the Mwandishi Band persists to the present day, beyond jazz, and this book does a good job in explaining how and why.”
 

Lou Glandfeld | Times Literary Supplement

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction

Chapter 1. A Defining Moment: November 1970
Chapter 2. Becoming Herbie Hancock
Chapter 3. The First Sextet
Chapter 4. New Musical Directions
Chapter 5. Moving toward Mwandishi
Chapter 6. Mwandishi: The Recording
Chapter 7. Crossings
Chapter 8. Quadraphonic Sound System: Patrick Gleeson on Tour and Sextant
Chapter 9. Musical Collectivity and Open Forms
Chapter 10. Life on the Road, 1971–73, and the Critical Response
Chapter 11. Endings and Unexpected Recordings
Epilogue. Reminiscences and Legacy

Appendix
Notes
References
Discography
Index

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