"African Flower" or "Little African Flower" (Petite Fleur Africaine) is a composition by jazz pianist and composer
Negro Arts Festival in Dakar. He can be heard playing it at The English Concert in 1970.[2] He recorded it with Max Roach and Charles Mingus as "La Fleurette Africaine". Writer Peter Lavezzoli calls it "a masterpiece of simplicity and grandeur.[2]
According to Janna Tull Steed, the composition was the result of Ellington's "imaginary vision of a beautiful flower blooming "only for God" in the heart".[3] "African Flower" is composed in the key of E-flat minor, and consists of cascading sequences, with an E-flat minor 7, A-flat minor 7, G-flat minor 7, E-flat-minor 7, B-flat minor 7 flat 5 progression. It is the very first entry in Volume One of the Real Book, the original fakebook which appeared in the 1970s but has been brought up to date and made legal.[4]Scott Saul says of the recording with Mingus and Roach: "Mingus spirals down the bass clef to create a stirring contrapuntal line that evenly balances the stateliness of Ellington's theme."[5]
