Milford Graves (1941–2021) was an American drummer and percussionist from Jamaica, Queens, New York, who began his career in the early 1960s as a figure in free jazz and the New York avant-garde. He developed an idiosyncratic approach to rhythm that integrated polyrhythms, non-Western rhythmic concepts, extended percussion techniques and research into physiology and sound, later extending his practice into multidisciplinary performance, teaching and experimental sound work.
