A Reflection on Black Music Month With ‘Moonchild’

The newly released film chronicles the life and music of Triangle jazz icon Brother Yusuf Salim

Pictured center, a young Yusuf Salim, seated at a piano, flanked by two musicians in Baltimore.
A young Yusuf Salim, seated at the piano, is flanked by two musicians in Baltimore. Photo courtesy of Kenny Dalsheimer

Tim Tyson, scholar in residence at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, recalls when he met the late Triangle jazz icon Yusuf Salim – known universally as Brother Yusuf.

In 1980, Tyson was the head chef at a short-lived jazz club in Chapel Hill.

“I was in the kitchen one day when Brother Yusuf came in to eat,” Tyson said. “When he finished, he came back into the kitchen and asked if I had made the soup. When I said I had, he threw his arm around my shoulder and said, “Brother, you put a lot of love into that soup.”

Tyson shared that story in late April in the lobby of the Hayti Heritage Center, where he scored a last-minute ticket for the sold-out Durham premiere of “Moonchild,” the documentary about the life and music of Salim.

Salim was a pianist and composer who developed his chops in his hometown on Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Avenue, where he played with the jazz lions Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Gary Bartz and Sonny Stitt.

“I’m an accompanist. I’m not a soloist because that’s not my nature,” a young Brother Yusuf says early in the film. “I like to be the carpet that you walk on. I’m like a receptor. The music is in the air, and I’m not just hearing it. I’m feeling it too.”

A film about Brother Yusuf and his approach to the art form is an apt way to honor June’s Black Music Month, particularly for the Bull City.

“Within the film the main thread that pushed the story forward was the passing down of music and culture through jazz. As a result, (Yusuf) was instrumental in building the jazz culture within the Triangle area.”

Rafael Samanez, film editor and co-director

“The film's objective was to tell the story of one of many unsung heroes who prioritize community and activism within their work,” said Rafael Samanez, the film’s editor and co-director with Durham filmmaker, producer and Duke alum Kenny Dalsheimer, in an interview. “Within the film the main thread that pushed the story forward was the passing down of music and culture through jazz. As a result, (Yusuf) was instrumental in building the jazz culture within the Triangle area.”

The film has been decades in the making. Dalsheimer shot the first scenes in 2005 in Raleigh nearly 20 years after Salim's visit to Morrocco, where the pianist visited with his close friends, the late drummer Hassan Ibn Daud and the late Kenneth Muhammad, a guitarist turned Islamic minister. Muhammad established North Carolina’s first mosque on West Chapel Hill Street, which eventually became the Ar-Razzaq Islamic Center.

The project was paused in the ensuing years, as Salim’s health declined and Muhammad died. It was revived in 2021.

Dalsheimer said when he first got into filmmaking he wanted to “tell Yusuf’s story. “His musical and cultural vibe is one of the cultural threads that makes Durham, Durham [or] as he would say, ‘hip.’"

Durham: “Hip enough to be city, small enough to be human”

Salim was born Joseph Oliver Blair on July 10, 1930. He moved to Durham in 1974 at the behest of Muhammad. He described Durham as “city enough to be hip, and country enough to be human.”

It wasn’t long before Brother Yusuf’s musical presence caught the attention of producers at WUNC-TV, who started “Yusuf and Friends,” a series that would spotlight the work of jazz musicians who all had some connection to North Carolina.

Man playing the piano at an outdoor concert
Brother Yusuf performing at an outdoor festival in Durham.

“Moonchild” chronicles Brother Yusuf’s formative years as a musician playing at jazz spots on Baltimore’s 16th Avenue, and his subsequent move to Durham. The film also unflinchingly examined his decades-long heroin addiction.

“He was a person of deep conviction and faith,” one of the vocalists he mentored, Lois Deloatch says in the film. “He elevated [his faith] to where it was about meeting heart-to-heart, and human-to-human. Letting the music be the bridge.”

A mentor to a cadre of jazz artists

Deloatch was among a cadre of jazz vocalists Brother Yusuf mentored in Durham. Others were Eve Cornelius, Frankie Alexander, Adia Ledbetter, and Grammy-nominated Nneena Freelon. “I’m the recipient of his thinking it not robbery to share all he knew when I was just a fledging singer,” Freelon says in the film. “I knew three songs at that point. Three.”

Other artists Yusuf mentored included: North Carolina Central University’s now-retired jazz studies director, Ira Wiggins; his great friend, the late Freeman Ledbetter, along with NCCU alum, Chip Crawford; and tenor saxophonist Brian Horton, an NCCU alum who died in 2022 shortly after he was named as the program’s new jazz director. Horton had collaborated on the documentary.

In the film Horton referred to the part of Yusuf’s biography that noted he had worked with legendary vocalists Arthur Prysock, Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis, Jr.

“I mean,” Horton said with a chuckle. “Let’s call it a wrap with that.”

“Moonchild” was supported by Duke Arts, the Duke Islamic Studies Center, the Duke Arts Building Bridges Initiative, with funding from the Doris Duke Foundation. To learn more about the film visit brotheryusuffilm.com.