If you Google the jazz pianist and composer Yusuf Salim, one of the first results is a grainy 1979 clip from a program called Arts in Durham. The interviewer begins with a question: “Why Durham, North Carolina?”
“That’s a beautiful question. I didn’t choose Durham. Durham chose me,” says the wiry Salim, known broadly as Brother Yusuf. His answer wasn’t merely a sentimental or rhetorical flourish: Salim’s 1974 move from Baltimore to the Bull City was a dramatic catalyst that ushered in a new chapter of his life, one filled with music, spirituality, and friendship.e
That interview is preserved through DigitalNC’s North Carolina Sites and Sounds Collection and, until now, has been one of the scant few pieces of ephemera you can find online regarding Salim, who died in 2008…