The greatest living Islamic artist?

Who is the greatest living Islamic artist?

It’s not the kind of question I would normally expect to be asked. 

But it came  today - on the phone and quite unexpectedly - and my best answer was McCoy Tyner, the art-changing pianist for John Coltrane in the early 60’s just before I first came, very strangely came, to jazz.

I knew Tyner was a Muslim then because an older school friend had told me – and not in a good way. I was more or less sure he was still alive. My mind was blank about anyone else. The singer formerly known as Cat Stevens is assuredly a lesser creature.

No idea who I’m taking about? Well get on to Spottify or wherever your music comes from and listen to the slab left-handed battle with Coltrane on My Favourite Things, once a standard in the sense that it was always heard but now a standard in the sense only that it has passed by. See if you agree.

 I’ve no idea what McCoy Tyner’s religious beliefs are now – or even, at all precisely, what they were then. Perhaps I was - and am - quite wrong.

But My Favourite things was – and is – a miracle of music – and the beliefs of its pianist were the first time, for me, that the relation between religion and art was ever questioned as anything but wholly good.

 

Comments

[Khademul Islam]

Artist? Or greatest Muslim pianist? Or more accurately, greatest Muslim jazz pianist?

To say that Tyner was the greatest Muslims artist is to absurdly diminish the scale, achievements and history of Muslim artists. This is a rare display of blinkered writing by Sir Stothard.

[Rickson]

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[Rickson]

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