ESSAYS
This section includes essays on various jazz subjects, written by a number of writers. Contributions are welcome. Writers interested in contributing are welcome to contact the editor by filling out the form in the CONTACT tab. Photographs to illustrate those essays are welcome. Readers can click on the INDEX button for a list of articles in this folder.
Wayne Shorter
STEPHEN BYTH AND WAYNE SHORTER
by Ian Muldoon
September 15, 2026
I’ve always had an uneasiness about spiritual woo woo, including the elaborate rituals and costumes of the Catholic Church. I have vivid memories of spiritual fashions of the 1970s and 1980s with guys from Granville, Sydney, suddenly shaving their heads, taking up orange robes, humming to themselves, burning josh sticks and talking about Sufism. Still, these activities may have been better for those involved than Encounter groups which were on about revealing our true selves and were “science” based but amateur based and very woo woo. African American Wayne Shorter (1933 - 2023) grew up in a racist society, lived through WW11, the Civil Rights movement, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and whilst members of his cohort like Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Chet Baker tried to lose themselves in heroin, others like Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock took up Nichiren Buddhism and other Eastern religiosities or spiritual beliefs which encouraged chanting and meditation…