Eric Dolphy’s and Yusef Lateef’s Synthetic Formations

This article focuses on a "synthetic scale" reproduced in Yusef Lateef's Repository of Scales and Melodic Patterns and attributed to Eric Dolphy.Linking music theory, jazz studies, and Black performance theory, I deploy archival research and meta-theoretical analysis to discuss the various music-theoretical, creative, social, and political resonances of this entry.The article positions Dolphy's scale and Lateef's engagement with it as a testament to the communal "Black study" of 1960s jazz, implicates music theory in contemporaneous issues regarding racial politics, and explores how music theory informs creative practice in these musicians' work.