Swift Are the Winds of Life

Swift Are the Winds of Life is an album by drummer Rashied Ali and violinist / composer Leroy Jenkins. It was recorded in September 1975 at Studio 77 in New York City, and was released by Survival Records in 1976. The album was reissued by Knit Classics in 2000.

Regarding the circumstances surrounding the recording, Ali recalled: "It just happened. Le was working with the Revolutionary Ensemble and I was working with my band, and we never played together, and so we decided to get together. We came into the club when it was closed, I turned on the tape recorder and we just started playing. We put it down on tape not even thinking that it was gonna turn out the way that it turned out, and that was the first and the last time we played."

In the album liner notes, Stanley Crouch commented: "The duet has a unique and significant place in Jazz... what the duet has always shown off is the call-and-response as well as the counterpoint so basic to the Jazz ensemble of any size and has made clear the degree of completeness two improvising musicians can achieve. But in the music that has developed within the last two decades, the duet serves another purpose, and that purpose is the same as it served in the days of the collectively improvising New Orleans ensemble: clearing the air."