First Feeding

Updated on Dec 17, 2024

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Released 1977 Length 39:43 Artist Jemeel Moondoc Genre Jazz		Recorded April 17, 1977 Label Muntu Release date 1977

Studio Bob Blank Studios, New York City Producer Piano Magic & Ensemble Muntu Similar New World Pygmies, The Zookeeper's House, Fire in the Valley, New World Pygmies vol 2, Revolt of the Negro Lawn Joc

First Feeding is the debut album by American jazz saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc with the Ensemble Muntu, which was recorded in 1977 and released on his own Muntu label. The album was reissued in 2009 as part of the three-CD box Muntu Recordings on the Lithuanian NoBusiness label.

Background

Moondoc and Jesse Sharps, a saxophonist from Los Angeles who was a member of Horace Tapscott’s UGMAA, co-founded the Ensemble Muntu in the fall of 1971 at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The name Muntu, a Bantu word usually translated as "man," was inspired by the book Muntu: The New African Culture by Janheinz Jahn. At that time, Muntu was a 12-piece band, composed mostly of students of Cecil Taylor who played in his Black Music Ensemble. For a short time, Muntu was a quintet co-led by Moondoc and trumpeter Arthur Williams.

In the summer of 1973, Moondoc and pianist Mark Hennen, who had also studied with Taylor at Antioch, left Yellow Springs and headed for New York City. In the beginning of the Loft Jazz period, they reconnected with Williams and asked bassist William Parker and drummer Rashied Sinan to join the band. With this lineup, Muntu made its first performance in NYC in December 1973 at Sam Rivers' Studio Rivbea. The quintet’s personnel, with Rashid Bakr replacing Sinan, remained essentially unchanged from the summer of 1974 until the spring of 1978.

Reception

In a review of the Muntu box for AllAboutJazz, John Sharpe says about the album "Together with the cellular keyboard motifs, the simultaneous horn lines of the leader and trumpeter Arthur Williams bear the hallmark of Cecil Taylor's groups at the time (unsurprising given the recent participation of Moondoc et al in Taylor's ensembles at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio), particularly in the discursively voiced elegiac themes with their deliciously ragged feel."