The Ballad or the Bullet

Released 1987

Excerpted from Brian Auerbach's liner notes, February, 1987

On the sunny side of the San Francisco Bay in Oakland lives Jon Jang, gifted pianist, composer and bandleader. Jang, a graduate of the conservatory at Oberlin, has a finely tuned ear for improvisation and a deep interest in progressive politics and culture. He is steadily building a vision of artist as cultural worker, committed to expressing his ideas and feelings in a context that balances his political ideals with cultural identification, a strong left hand and a swinging band...
"The Ballad or the Bullet?" is dedicated to two American cultural heroes Thelonious Monk and Malcolm X and is Jon Jang's third recording. It is an important effort, being his first fully realized recording with his fifteen month old working group THE 4 IN ONE QUARTET with Francis Wong on tenor saxophone and flute and two of the Bay Area's hardest working rhythm masters James Lewis on bass and Eddie Moore on drums.

I have had the opportunity to hear this band since its beginnings and constantly marvel at its growth. True to the standard of Jazz, the 4 IN ONE QUARTET has developed through its intense working relationship, an explosive sound that has attracted a broad following that seems to get larger with every performance. Their material is tight and the improvisations, both individually and collectively, reach for brilliance.

I asked Jon to describe the evolution of this recording. "What is important about this album is the focus of having a regular group. There are a couple of pieces that are from an older period. 'El Pueblo Unido', which came out of the programs that I've been involved in and introduced to me by Lewis Jordan during work with his Music at Large Liberation Orchestra, comes from a different period. 'Prayer for Melvin Truss' (composed by Francis Wong), 'Hymn to Happy Lim' and 'The Ballad or the Bullet?' is more recent and tied to the quartet. The approach of the musicians with this group is that we try to get inside each piece as opposed to categorizing the players and the music in a narrow way.

Jon Jang is part of a growing movement of Asian American musicians and artists who are committed to balancing their personal expression with the representation of positive imagery from and about their culture. This small but growing group of individuals seeks to inherit the traditions of their culture while striving to innovate, reflecting the new generation through unified action as opposed to uniform presentation. The amalgam that is similar to woven fabric. Even as each strand has its own identity, it is the inter-relationship, the synergy, that is most striking and useful...

Brian Auerbach, February 1987

Personnel: Jon Jang and the 4 IN ONE QUARTET: Jon Jang, piano, James Lewis, bass; Eddie Moore, drums, gong and the saw; Francis Wong, tenor saxophone and flute; with special guest artists Alejandra Diaz, vocals on "El Pueblo Unido..."; Fred Ho co-composer, baritone and soprano saxophones on :"Year to Slay the Paper Dragon!"