- Date Of Birth: August 20, 1941
- Date Of Death: February 12, 2021
- Occupation: Jazz drummer and percussionist
- City: Jamaica
- State: Queens, New York
Milford Graves (August 20, 1941 – February 12, 2021) was an American jazz drummer, percussionist, Professor Emeritus of Music, researcher/inventor, visual artist/sculptor, gardener/herbalist, and martial artist. Graves was noteworthy for his early avant-garde contributions in the 1960s with Paul Bley, Albert Ayler, and the New York Art Quartet, and is considered to be a free jazz pioneer, liberating percussion from its timekeeping role. The composer and saxophonist John Zorn referred to Graves as “basically a 20th-century shaman.”
Graves was diagnosed with amyloid cardiomyopathy in 2018, and was informed he had half a year more to live. He died on February 12, 2021. He was 79, and suffered from congestive heart failure prior to his death. – Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License from Wikipedia.
