Yusef Lateef

Yusef Abdul Lateef (born William Emanuel Huddleston; October 9, 1920 – December 23, 2013) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer and prominent figure among the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in America, following his conversion to Islam in 1950.

Although Lateef's main instruments were the tenor saxophone and flute, he also played oboe and bassoon, both rare in jazz, and also used a number of non-western instruments such as the bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, xun, arghul and koto. He is known for having been an innovator in the blending of jazz with "Eastern" music. Peter Keepnews, in his New York Times obituary of Lateef, wrote that the musician "played world music before world music had a name."

Lateef wrote and published a number of books including two novellas entitled A Night in the Garden of Love and Another Avenue, the short story collections Spheres and Rain Shapes, also his autobiography, The Gentle Giant, written in collaboration with Herb Boyd. Along with his record label YAL Records, Lateef owned Fana Music, a music publishing company. Lateef published his own work through Fana, which includes Yusef Lateef's Flute Book of the Blues and many of his own orchestral compositions.

Latif

Latif (Laṭīf لطيف, also anglicized as Lateef) is one of the names of God in Islam, meaning "Gentle". Also used as a male name, as short form of Abdul Latif, meaning "Servant of the Gentle". Its female form is Latifa.

Lateef

Latif

Joseph in Islam

Yūsuf ibn Yaʿqūb ibn Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm (Arabic: يوسف‎; estimated to have lived in the 16th century BCE ) is an Islamic prophet found in the Qurʾān, the scripture of Islam, and corresponds to Joseph (son of Jacob), a character from the Jewish religious scripture, the Tanakh, and the Christian Bible. It is one of the common names in the Middle East and among Muslim nations. Of all of Jacob's children, Joseph was the one given the gift of prophecy. Although the narratives of other prophets are mentioned in various suras, the complete narrative of Joseph is given only in one sura, Yusuf, making it unique. It is said to be the most detailed narrative in the Qur'an and bears more details than the Biblical counterpart.

Yusuf is believed to have been the eleventh son of Jacob (Yaʿqūb), and, according to many scholars, was his favorite. According to Ibn Kathir, “Jacob had twelve sons who were the eponymous ancestors of the tribes of the Israelites. The most noble, the most exalted, the greatest of them was Joseph." The story begins with Joseph revealing a dream to his father, which Jacob recognizes as a vision. In addition to the role of God in his life, the story of Yusuf and Zulaikha (Potiphar's wife of the Old Testament) became a popular subject in Persian literature, where it became considerably elaborated over the centuries.

Ahmad Jamal

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Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones, July 2, 1930) is an American jazz pianist, composer, group leader, and educator. For five decades, he has been one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz.

Biography

Early life

Jamal was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began playing piano at the age of three, when his uncle Lawrence challenged him to duplicate what he was doing on the piano. Jamal began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he describes as greatly influencing him. His Pittsburgh roots have remained an important part of his identity ("Pittsburgh meant everything to me and it still does," he said in 2001) and it was there that he was immersed in the influence of jazz artists such as Earl Hines, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner. Jamal also studied with pianist James Miller and began playing piano professionally at the age of fourteen, at which point he was recognized as a "coming great" by the pianist Art Tatum. When asked about his practice habits by a The New York Times critic, Jamal commented that, "I used to practice and practice with the door open, hoping someone would come by and discover me. I was never the practitioner in the sense of twelve hours a day, but I always thought about music. I think about music all the time."

Love's Theme

"Love's Theme" is an instrumental piece recorded by Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra and released in 1973 as an A-Side single. It is one of the few instrumental and purely orchestral singles to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States, which it did in early 1974. Billboard ranked it as the No. 3 song for 1974. The piece was included on two albums: 1973's Under the Influence of... Love Unlimited (by the vocal group Love Unlimited) and 1974's Rhapsody in White by Love Unlimited Orchestra.

The recording, with a large string orchestra, wah-wah guitar, and big rhythm, is considered by author Peter Shapiro to be an influence to the disco sound, which would explode in popularity the following year. The song was also popular on the Adult Contemporary chart in the U.S., where the song spent two weeks at #1. It was also used by ABC Sports for many years as the opening theme music for its golf coverage. New York television station WPIX used it as the closing music for its then-Action News franchise during the mid-1970s. In Canada, the single saw similar success, reaching #1 on the RPM 100 National Singles Chart on March 2, 1974.