Rashied Ali and the Infinite Pulse

Somewhere between the mainstream and the outer limits of free jazz, the drummer turned chaos into communion.

I can’t remember the first time I heard the drummer Rashied Ali, but I can’t remember not hearing him, either. On his work with John Coltrane, Ali’s percussion sounds liberated — each thump rethinking how gravity works within the avant-garde. To that end, on Coltrane’s Interstellar Space — recorded in 1967 and released in 1974 — Ali’s frenetic rhythm kept pace with the saxophonist’s furious wailing, his play worthy of equal billing alongside the cornerstone bandleader.

Perpetually off-axis and headed in different directions at once, Ali’s drumming was all spirit, dancing and jabbing around horn lines, splashing through open air with controlled intensity. On Interstellar Space, in particular, I can hear Ali and Coltrane broadening their respective horizons, trying to land someplace new while staying within range of each other. That sense of expansion, of never wanting to stay in one place too long, carried Ali through the rest of his career. He died in 2009 at the age of 76.

Born Robert Patterson in Philadelphia in 1933, he came up in the city’s rich jazz scene, studying under Philly Joe Jones in small clubs and barrooms that prioritized substance over flash. Under Jones, Ali learned how to catch the pocket and break it open, perfecting the multifaceted swing that would define him later. In the mid-‘60s, Ali moved to New York and immersed himself in the avant-garde community, alongside players like Archie Shepp, Don Cherry and Pharoah Sanders. He connected with Coltrane at a time when the saxophonist was pushing beyond modal structures and song form, toward pure intangible expression that bucked tradition. Ali’s propulsive drumming — a sound equally raw, patient and volatile — matched perfectly with this era. So when he joined Coltrane’s group in 1965, for the recording of Meditations alongside Sanders on saxophone, Elvin Jones on drums, Jimmy Garrison on bass and McCoy Tyner on piano, he helped launch one of the most radical phases in modern jazz.

“When I really got enough experience to try and play with him,” Ali once said, “he was down in Philadelphia and I asked him a couple of times if I could sit in with him, but he said, ‘Not right now.’ I came to New York and then I got a chance to sit and play with him in New York and the rest is history.”

After Coltrane died of liver cancer in 1967, Ali started working with his widow, Alice, a landmark jazz musician as well. Where John’s sound prioritized aggressive transcendence, Alice’s carried a slower form of ascension. Albums like Journey in Satchidananda and Universal Consciousness offered gentle treks through the divine, and Ali — his sound anchored and subdued — provided a celestial pulse. Where her harp rippled through the compositions, Ali’s precise drumming underpinned her strings. His playing with Alice was never about dominance; rather, it was about moderation, a means to bolster her invocations.

In 1973, Ali co-founded Survival Records with the saxophonist Frank Lowe as a way to preserve new music that couldn’t find label homes elsewhere. Alongside Lowe, Ali released Duo Exchange that same year as a roaring, intimate record that distilled the idea of liberation down to two bodies shifting air. It seemed the mainstream didn’t want this music because it was too untethered, Black and radical, so Ali created his own ecosystem for art like this to exist.

To that end, also in ‘73, he opened Ali’s Alley, a loft club at 77 Greene Street, as a hub for like-minded players who refused to compromise. There, he took on the roles of elder and conspirator, someone who understood that sustaining freedom required invention and ownership. That context echoes through the Survival catalog, including the albums Sidewalks in Motion and Swift Are the Winds of Life, which were reissued earlier this year. Each offers a different portal into Ali’s sensibility, and his deep and equal administration of peace and tension. With its bluesy cadence, Sidewalks actually feels like a city in lockstep, breathable yet complex, shrouded in overcast skies. Conversely, Swift — recorded with the violinist Leroy Jenkins — pivots between pressure and release: unbridled and rife with intensity.

Ali’s music always pointed toward community and continuity. Through the ‘70s, he used the label to document collaborations with peers and protégés alike: musicians who also refused to bend toward the market for visibility’s sake. Survival released only a few titles before pausing in the ‘80s, but each one offered a lesson in self-determination. The label’s rebirth keeps his voice alive in the digital era, allowing new ears to experience Ali’s iconoclasm.

Revisiting Ali, I’m taken by how current he sounds, and how I can hear the cross-sections of electronic music in the stems, the way the producer Madlib and the drummer Makaya McCraven bend time signatures, splicing improvisation and arrangement. Ali did that decades earlier on live stages, encouraging generations — and younger drummers like Tyshawn Sorey, Kassa Overall and Marcus Gilmore — to carry this vocabulary forward.

Ali’s legacy is one of insistence — of Black music’s ability to contain multitudes, and on freedom as practice. I’ve long admired his ability to operate in mainstream jazz while maintaining the underground’s bold ethos. In an industry that nudges creators toward one way of making music and selling records, there’s something to be said about Ali staying true to his intent while carving space to play with a vast array of performers: the Coltranes, Gary Bartz and Tisziji Muñoz, among others.

Ali constructed his own rhythm, found solace in the irregular, and melody in the noise. In the best way, his approach prioritized control belonging to the creator, and the vitality of intuition as a guide. His music reminds me that art this free never really ages, and that the best work tends to resonate mentally and physically. The glide in his snare, the brush against cymbals, the fills: they ask you to move differently, to breathe with the band, to lose your balance and find it again. It’s all nimble, unpredictable action, fierce and delicate, an endless dialogue with the drum then, now and always.