Mwata Bowden (born October 11, 1947 in

Memphis Memphis most commonly refers to: * Memphis, Egypt, a former capital of ancient Egypt * Memphis, Tennessee, a major American city Memphis may also refer to: Places United States * Memphis, Alabama * Memphis, Florida * Memphis, Indiana * Memp ...

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

) is an American

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

reeds player associated with the

Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is a nonprofit organization, founded in 1965 in Chicago by pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, pianist Jodie Christian, drummer Steve McCall, and composer Phil Cohran. The AACM is devot ...

and an instructor in improvisational Jazz at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. He is part of a group known as

8 bold souls 8 Bold Souls is an American jazz ensemble, led by reedist Edward Wilkerson. The group was founded in 1985 by Wilkerson, also associated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. They began at Chicago Filmmakers, a performance ...

but also frequently engages in collaborations with

Tatsu Aoki (born September 19, 1957) is a multi-instrumentalist trained in traditional Japanese music (ie: taiko and shamisen), educator and experimental filmmaker. In his career as Chicago's Jazz and creative improvisor, he is mostly known as a long-standi ...

, and helped establish the Miyumi Project which was a blend of music with different ethnic backgrounds, highlighting contributions from

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

taiko are a broad range of Japanese percussion instruments. In Japanese, the term refers to any kind of drum, but outside Japan, it is used specifically to refer to any of the various Japanese drums called and to the form of ensemble drumming m ...

'' drumming in the framework of jazz music. As part of his regular repertoire, Mr. Bowden plays a range of

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pr ...

s and

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

s (including the E-flat clarinet,

B-flat clarinet A soprano clarinet is a clarinet that is higher in register than the basset horn or alto clarinet. The unmodified word ''clarinet'' usually refers to the B clarinet, which is by far the most common type. The term ''soprano'' also applies to the ...

bass clarinet The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays notes an octave bel ...

contra-alto clarinet The contra-alto clarinet, E♭ contrabass clarinet, is a large clarinet pitched a perfect fifth below the B♭ bass clarinet. It is a transposing instrument in E♭ sounding an octave and a major sixth below its written pitch, between the b ...

, and

contrabass clarinet The contrabass clarinet (also pedal clarinet, after the pedals of pipe organs) and contra-alto clarinet are the two largest members of the clarinet family that are in common usage. Modern contrabass clarinets are transposing instruments pitc ...

), as well as

flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

, ''zamada'', and

didgeridoo The didgeridoo (; also spelt didjeridu, among other variants) is a wind instrument, played with vibrating lips to produce a continuous drone while using a special breathing technique called circular breathing. The didgeridoo was developed by ...

. He teaches young aspiring musicians in the Chicago area. Mwata has a son who performs "Disco Poetry" under the name Khari B.

External links

Mwata Bowden page
at AACM site
Mwata Bowden page
at University of Chicago Music Department site {{DEFAULTSORT:Bowden, Mwata Didgeridoo players 1947 births Living people Bass clarinetists Musicians from Chicago African-American jazz musicians American jazz saxophonists American male saxophonists 21st-century American saxophonists Jazz musicians from Illinois 21st-century clarinetists 21st-century American male musicians American male jazz musicians 21st-century African-American musicians 20th-century African-American people