Collin Walcott


Collin Walcott was a North American musician known for working in jazz and world music.
He studied violin and tympani in his youth, and was a percussion student at Indiana University. Walcott became interested in traditional Indian music, studying sitar under Ravi Shankar and tabla under Alla Rakha. According to critic Scott Yanow of Allmusic, Walcott was "one of the first sitar players to play jazz." He came to prominence in the early 1970s due to work with Tony Scott, Miles Davis and the Paul Winter Consort. Several members of the Paul Winter ensemble, including Walcott, split off to form the group Oregon.
Walcott was killed in an automobile accident in East Germany during a 1984 Oregon concert tour. He was replaced by Trilok Gurtu.
Author David James Duncan wrote retrospectively in 1996 about an Oregon concert he attended in Cascade Head in his piece "My One Conversation with Collin Walcott". Duncan described Walcott as sitting "buddha-style" on stage, surrounded by instruments. Along with an electronic drum kit "to his north", Walcott "had five different tablas to his south, a sitar to his east and a bewildering semicircle of rattles, chimes, clackers, bells, whistles, finger-drums, triangles and unnameable noisemakers to his west. He was the first Western 'jazz' percussionist I'd ever seen sit flat on the floor like an East Indian."

Discography

As leader