Deep in the crates of the “happy few” lies one of jazz’s most elusive treasures: Don Cherry’s untitled 1982 encounter with Indian tabla virtuoso Latif Khan, produced by Martin Meissonnier and Pierre Lattès. Never reissued, scarcely documented, this one-off session fuses Cherry’s global hunger with Khan’s syncopated lightning in a blaze of cross-cultural fire that still crackles forty-three years later.
Cherry—already a free-jazz prophet beside Ornette Coleman—had long abandoned borders. By the early ’80s, his trumpet and pocket cornet conversed fluently with gamelans, berimbaus, and doussn’gouni. Here, he meets Delhi gharana rebel Latif Khan, a percussionist who turned accompaniment into architecture, stacking polyrhythms like mosaics. They had never shared a stage, yet the tape rolls and kinship ignites: laughter, tuning forks, a Hammond B3 retuned to just intonation, orchestral timpani coaxed into raga-like drones. Khan’s fingers blur across tablas; Cherry answers with melodies that arc from Mississippi to Mumbai.
No rehearsals. No safety net. Just two open spirits sculpting air into eternity. The result isn’t “world music” novelty—it’s prophecy: melody over harmony, humanity over genre, improvisation as diplomacy. Every original copy is a relic; every listen, a revelation. Hunt the vinyl, guard it fiercely, and let the summer of ’82 live again.
Don Cherry (1936–1995) was born in Oklahoma City to a Choctaw-African American family steeped in music—his father owned the legendary Cherry Blossom Club, where young Don absorbed swing, blues, and bebop. By 1956 he was in Los Angeles, forging free jazz with Ornette Coleman on seminal albums like Something Else!!!! (1958) and The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959). His pocket trumpet became a voice of melodic liberation, unmoored from chord changes. After settling in New York, Cherry co-founded the avant-garde vanguard, collaborating with Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler. But borders bored him. By the late ’60s he was studying in Morocco, jamming in Sweden with Turkish musicians, and releasing Organic Music Society (1972)—a blueprint for world fusion. Instruments multiplied: doussn’gouni, berimbau, gamelan, Tibetan bells. His 1970s loft scene birthed the “world music” wave, though Cherry’s version was never trendy—it was spiritual, political, rooted in community and curiosity. Father to Neneh and Eagle-Eye, he raised artists as open as he was. At his death in 1995, he left a discography of over 100 albums and a legacy as jazz’s first true citizen of the world.
Ustad Ahmed Latif Khan (1950–1990) hailed from the Delhi gharana, a centuries-old lineage of classical percussionists. Trained from age five by his uncle Ustad Ahmedjan Thirakwa—legendary tabla maestro to Ravi Shankar and Vilayat Khan—Latif modernized tradition without betraying it. Where accompanists once stayed in shadows, he stepped into light, wielding irregular talas, lightning-fast kaidas, and syncopations that danced on the edge of chaos. By the 1970s he was touring Europe, recording with jazz and fusion artists, and teaching at the Sangeet Research Academy in Kolkata. His ear was photographic; his hands, a storm. Colleagues recall him tuning entire ensembles by ear—pianos, organs, even timpani—to microtonal precision. In Paris for the 1982 session, he arrived jet-lagged, warmed his fingers in minutes, and matched Cherry’s every leap with tabla thunder that felt both ancient and futuristic. Tragically, Khan died young in 1990, leaving a slim but incandescent recorded legacy.
Martin Meissonnier, the session’s co-producer, was a French visionary bridging punk, funk, and global grooves. He engineered Fela Kuti’s Army Arrangement, produced King Sunny Adé’s international breakthrough, and later helmed soundtracks for Wim Wenders. Pierre Lattès, his partner, ran the influential Celluloid Records, home to avant-garde icons like Bill Laswell and Material. Together they gave Cherry and Khan a blank canvas—and a studio full of toys.
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