Biography
The offspring of trumpeter-composer Cal Massey, whose stature was legendary yet sparsely chronicled, Zane Massey was immersed in music from childhood. Philadelphia marked his birthplace, after which his family relocated to Brooklyn while he was still young. Following his father’s example, he performed in Cal Massey’s ensemble at an early age and formed his own Latin jazz outfit, the Young Blood Jazz Men. By his teens he had already turned professional, and during the 1970s he appeared on recordings with Carlos Garnett. In the early 1980s he joined Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society, where nightly performances of free funk broadened his approach; he also worked alongside Sun Ra and Jemeel Moondoc. Massey next concentrated on subway-station performances with fellow street musicians and founded MUNY (Music Under New York), a large ensemble drawn entirely from those performers. Eventually he assembled a steady group of musicians who regularly played Grand Central Station, leading to an impromptu discovery by a promoter aboard a train. The band, known as The Foundation, was promptly scheduled for an Italian tour and cut a CD for the Bart label. Massey has also issued two albums under his own name on Delmark, beginning with his 1992 debut, and contributed to Roy Campbell’s Delmark recording. A powerful tenor saxophonist, he maintains a jazz foundation while remaining receptive to the currents of hip hop, reggae, and dance music.
Albums
