Fred Houn, The Afro-Asian Music Ensemble

Tomorrow Is Now! is the first album by baritone saxophonist Fred Houn and his Afro-Asian Music Ensemble, recorded in New York in April 1985 and released that year by Soul Note. Houn was born in Palo Alto in 1957 to parents who had emigrated from China. He founded the ensemble in 1982, and in 1988 he legally changed his name to Fred Ho, the name on his later operas, suites and books. The record is openly political. Its long opening suite is dedicated to the League of Revolutionary Struggle, U.S.A., another piece is dedicated to Japanese American workers, and the liner notes are by Amiri Baraka.

The sessions took place on April 5, 8 and 9, 1985 at Nola Studios, with Tony May engineering and Houn producing. Houn's baritone sits in a reed section with Sam Furnace on alto, Al Givens on tenor and soprano and Sayyd Abdul Al-Khabyyr on tenor and flute, while Jon Jang and Richard Clements share the piano, Carleen Robinson sings and Kiyoto Fujiwara and Taru Alexander make up the rhythm section. The title suite takes almost sixteen minutes of side one and moves through six sections, from What It Was And Is and T.C.B. (Taking Care Of Business) to A Blk Woman Speaks, set to words by Sonia Sanchez, and History Crying For A Change. Side two opens with Blues To The Freedom Fighters, continues with Ganbaro!, at seven and a half minutes the longest piece outside the suite, and ends with We'll Make Tomorrow (Kayo's Song). In the same years Houn was also playing in other people's large bands, as a sideman in the Charlie Persip Superband from 1982 and in Archie Shepp's Attica Blues Big Band in 1985 and 1986.

This is the Soul Note CD 121117-2, which Discogs lists as a reissue of the album first released in 1985, with the six-part suite and the four shorter pieces of the original LP.