This article refers to a Detroit record label. For the Norwegian label, see Tribe Records (Norway).

Tribe Records was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 record label

Record label

In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

 active during the 1970s

1970s

File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...

 whose artists included Doug Hammond

Doug Hammond

Doug Hammond is a free funk/avant-garde jazz drummer, professor, composer, poet and producer from Tampa, Florida, U.S.A...

, Marcus Belgrave

Marcus Belgrave

Marcus Belgrave is a jazz trumpet player from Detroit, born in Chester, Pennsylvania. He has recorded with a variety of famous musicians, bandleaders, and record labels since the 1950s. Notable among them are: Ray Charles, Charles Mingus, Gunther Schuller, Motown Records, Tribe Records, Blue Note...

, Phil Ranelin

Phil Ranelin

Phil Ranelin is an American jazz and experimental music trombonist.Ranelin was born in Indianapolis, and lived in New York before moving to Detroit in the 1960s...

 and Wendell Harrison

Wendell Harrison

Wendell Harrison is an American jazz clarinetist and tenor saxophonist.- Career :Harrison began playing clarinet at age seven, and switched to tenor saxophone in high school. He studied under Barry Harris before moving to New York City in 1960...

.

History

Detroit's Tribe Records was a political, social, and aesthetic collective of local musicians whose collective identity was a staggering array of aesthetic ones - especially in music. The group headed by Wendell Harrison and Phil Ranelin also held in its ranks Marcus Belgrave and the late Harold McKinney, with countless others, such as bassist Ron Brooks, trumpeter Charles Moore, drummer Doug Hammond, and others joining in for sessions and concerts. Tribe was the only label in history to have had musicians who played with everyone from Charles Parker and Mingus and Sun Ra to Marvin Gaye and the Supremes. Besides the record company, Tribe held a publishing house for a magazine and a production company under its roof. The most striking impression of Tribe is its musical diversity: here were a group of jazz musicians whose own approaches to music were very different from one another, who folded everything into the soup: soul, bebop, hard- and post-bop, modal, funk, groove jazz, vocals, avant-garde improvisations, and so on.

From David Durham's half-minute, string freakout "Space #2," to the early funky groove-oriented jazz-funk of Ranelin's "Vibes From the Tribe" and "Sounds From the Village" to the strange, baroque vanguard of Hammond's vocal "Moves" to the deep, slippery, greasy fatness of the Tribe's "Benificent," which combined Coltrane-like modal improvisation with Latin percussion and Detroit funk in a sticky soup of pure sonic pleasure. Belgrave's landmark nine-minute epic "Space Odyssey" combines the use of electronic experimentation with amplified piano and big-band arrangements - ŕ la his stint with Mingus during the "Pre-Bird" era - and is still a piece ahead of its time in terms of both jazz arrangement and composition despite its aural limitations due to the shortcomings of the gear used at the time of the recording. The set officially ends with Wendell Harrison's "Tons and Tons of B.S.," featuring a small big band with a percussion section playing counterpoint to the four-horn front line. The groove is strictly Latin with Harrison lending a melodic sensibility from both the hard bop and early modal schools of Miles Davis, with a Coltrane and an R&B vibe! All the sounds are mixed, all given due weight in the tune, making for a piece as provocative and harmonically advanced as anything that came out of the '70s - in fact, more than most. The reason was the vision: Tribe was all-inclusive, wanting to leave no music outside of its walls. Hence the kitchen-sink approach - that had been tried by everybody from Archie Shepp (Attica Blues) to Ornette Coleman (Skies of America) to Miles with mixed results. Tribe may have only existed for five years, but during that time it changed the musical universe - even if nobody knew it. — Thom Jurek

Discography

Albums

• 1973: The Tribe Presents Wendell Harrison
  Wendell Harrison
  Wendell Harrison is an American jazz clarinetist and tenor saxophonist.- Career :Harrison began playing clarinet at age seven, and switched to tenor saxophone in high school. He studied under Barry Harris before moving to New York City in 1960...
  
   & Phillip Ranelin - Message From The Tribe
• 1973: Wendell Harrison - An Evening With The Devil
• 1974: Marcus Belgrave
  Marcus Belgrave
  Marcus Belgrave is a jazz trumpet player from Detroit, born in Chester, Pennsylvania. He has recorded with a variety of famous musicians, bandleaders, and record labels since the 1950s. Notable among them are: Ray Charles, Charles Mingus, Gunther Schuller, Motown Records, Tribe Records, Blue Note...
  
   - Gemini II
• 1974: Harold McKinney - Voices And Rhythms Of The Creative Profile
• 1974: Phil Ranelin
  Phil Ranelin
  Phil Ranelin is an American jazz and experimental music trombonist.Ranelin was born in Indianapolis, and lived in New York before moving to Detroit in the 1960s...
  
   - The Time Is Now!
• 1975: Doug Hammond & David Durrah - Reflections In The Sea Of Nurnen
• 1975: Phil Ranelin - Vibes From The Tribe
• 1976: The Mixed Bag - Mixed Bag's First Album

Singles

• 1973 Wendell Harrison And The Tribe Farewell To Welfare Part 1 & 2 7”
• 1975 Doug Hammond
  Doug Hammond
  Doug Hammond is a free funk/avant-garde jazz drummer, professor, composer, poet and producer from Tampa, Florida, U.S.A...
  
  & David Durrah Venus Fly Trap 7”