Doug Hammond is an extraordinary jazz musician, composer, poet and writer who began recording on the legendary Detroit-based label Tribe in the early 1970s. He has worked with musicians including Earl Hooker, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Sammy Price, Donald Byrd, Wolfgang Dauner, Ornette Coleman, Steve Coleman, Nina Simone, Betty Carter, Marion Williams, Paquito D’Rivera, Arnett Cobb, James Blood Ulmer, Arthur Blythe and many more.
Since 1989, however, he has been mainly based in Linz, Austria, at Bruckner University, teaching drums, composition, and ensemble. In 2008, he retired, but he still lives between Linz and Detroit, collaborating with musicians on both continents.
Hammond, who is primarily a vocalist and drummer, percussionist, is best known as an early member of Tribe, founded in 1971 by jazz musicians as a band, a recording label and a magazine, all called collectively “Tribe.” The founders were saxophonist Wendell Harrison, and trombonist Phil Ranelin, but then soon joined by Marcus Belgrave, Harold McKinney and
Doug Hammond. In its music and publication, the collective had a political consciousness with an African-American and African pride aesthetic that was at the time revolutionary -anti-war, community-oriented, and staunchly independent.
