“I could have been a rock’n’roll star” AN AUDIENCE WITH ARCHIE SHEPP

“The producer said, ‘You’ll have to play an encore because it looks like we’re going to have a riot!’”

ARCHIE Shepp’s musical output is defined by a single-minded pursuit of the ‘new thing’, so it’s perhaps not so surprising to discover that, at the age of 82, he’s just released a hip-hop record. pairs his restless sax lines with the taut grooves of a band centred around DJ/drummer Damu The Fudgemunk and the conscious rapping of Shepp’s nephew Jason Moore, aka Raw Poetic. For Shepp it’s an entirely natural move. “I consider myself one of the creators of that style,” he says, not unreasonably. “I infused a number of my works with poetry and I’m glad to see that it’s evolved. [] there were groups like The Last Poets, who were very similar to what’s going on now, poetic expression combined with jazz music. I did a recording with Chuck D of Public Enemy a little while back and I was quite pleased to know how those guys had listened