Milford Graves: A Mind-Body Deal (Inventory Press, 2022)

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Milford Graves: A Mind-Body Deal
Edited by Anthony Elms, Celeste DiNucci, and Mark Christman

Introduction by Mark Christman. Contributors include Blake Bradford, Rhea Combs, John Corbett, Joel T. Fry, Melvin Gibbs, Hugh Glover, Milford Graves, Jean-Daniel Lafontant, Moor Mother, Fred Moten, Jake Nussbaum, William Parker, Jenn Pelly, Min Tanaka, Carlo Ventura, and others.

7 5/8 x 10 1/2 inches, 256 pages, softcover
978-1-941753-37-8

Design by IN-FO.CO
Co-Published by Inventory Press
and Ars Nova Workshop


Milford Graves was a revelatory force in music beginning in the mid-1960s, transforming the role of the drums in jazz by using them not just as a timekeeper but as a dynamic and influential improviser. Instrumental in the Free Jazz movement, he created groundbreaking work with Albert Ayler, the New York Art Quartet, Min Tanaka, and John Zorn, and led the way in artistic self-production. But his kaleidoscopic genius was not bound by music, leading him to develop an oeuvre unprecedented in its breadth: from healing arts to botany, cardiac research to martial arts.

This fully illustrated catalogue includes documentation from the exhibition A Mind-Body Deal, including hand-painted album covers and posters, multi-media sculptures, photographs, costumes, recording ephemera, and artifacts from his scientific studies. This first-ever overview of Graves as polymath gathers his intricate, multifaceted work and explores the practices and predilections of this extraordinary “jazz mind.”