His musical vision first surfaced in the six ascetic solo "multi-improvisations" of Creative Music 1 (december 1971). By employing other sound-producing devices besides the trumpet, he created eerie soundscapes in the seven-minute Improvisations No 4 for found percussion and the 12-minute Creative Music 1 for trumpet, flugelhorn and "mobile sounds". The 13-minute aFmie-Poem DancE 3 on flugelhorn and the eight-minute Ogotommeli - Dogon Sage on gamelan percussion mapped vast open spaces of music philosophy. Not one note was wasted: Leo Smith was unique among creative musicians in that he aimed for the essential and the quintessential, rarely sounding rhetorical like Braxton or ornate like Abrams. He seemed to value silence more than sound itself.

That philosophy was better channeled into the two lengthy pieces of Reflectativity (1974) for a trio with Anthony Davis on piano and Wes Brown on bass: Reflectativity and T Wmukl D. Smith's contempt for redundance translated into loose ensemble counterpoint and a general sense of intimacy.

Smith formed New Dalta Ahkri with pianist Anthony Davis, saxophonist Oliver Lake, bassist Wes Brown and drummer Paul Maddox. The sophisticated sound of Song of Humanity (august 1976), permeated by Eastern spirituality, was best represented by two Davis compositions, Lexicon and Of Blues and Dreams, but also by Smith's own Peacocks, Gazelles, Dogwood Trees & Six Silver Coins.

A peak of Smith's lyrical imagination was the six-movement Mass on the World (may 1978), an extended piece blending improvisation and composition, performed by Smith (on trumpet, flugelhorn, flute), reed player Dwight Andrews and vibraphonist Bobby Naughton. The same trio penned the elegant, romantic 22-minute prayer Divine Love on Divine Love (september 1978), while Charlie Haden was added on bass for the 15-minute Spirituals. Smith, Andrews and Naughton were accompanied by bassist Wes Brown and drummer Pheeroan AKlaff for the 19-minute Images and the surreal Spirit Catcher on Spirit Catcher (may 1979), while The Burning of Stones (inspired by West African and Japanese music) matched Smith's trumpet with three harps for one of his most pensive chamber pieces. Smith had elaborated a theory of "rhythm units" based on Charlie Patton's blues that helped him calibrate the relationship between sound and silence, elementary sounds and compound sounds. The same trio with Wes Brown on bass was documented on the live Go in Numbers (january 1980), with the lengthy improvisations of Go in Numbers and Illumination - The Nguzo Saba Changes. Smith's sound was becoming precious and languid, besides pan-ethnic, almost the opposite of the standard within the Chicago school he came from. The different sound was due to a different philosophy, to a vision of jazz as a religious form of art with the power to uplift frustrated people and as a political form of art with the mission to liberate enslaved people.

On the other hand, Ahkreanvention (1979) was basically "Creative Music 2", as it returned to the same solo format of his debut album. Smith alternated on many instruments during the five-movement suite Love Is a Rare Beauty and Life Sequence 1. And Smith contributed the longest track, Return To My Native Land II, to The Sky Cries The Blues (january 1981) by the 17-piece Creative Musicians Improvisers Orchestra (with Oliver Lake and Marty Ehrlich on reeds).

Smith's underlying concerns for humanity became more explicit in the 1980s, while the music opened up to all sorts of non-jazz influences. Smith (on trumpet, fluegelhorn, flute and thumb piano) was joined by a bassist and a drummer for the live Touch the Earth Break the Shells (january 1981), with Touch the Earth and Rastafari in the Universe. Human Rights (march 1985) fused jazz with African, reggae and rock music, while incorporating instruments as diverse as koto, synthesizer and guitar, and maintaining the format of free jazz (the side-long improvisation Humanismo Justa/ Trutmonda Muziko, recorded in 1982 with Tadao Sawai on koto, Peter Kowald on bass, and Guenter Sommer on drums). Procession Of The Great Ancestry (february 1983), featuring Naughton and Kahil El Zabar on percussion among others (electric guitar, bass, tenor sax), found him singing and pay homage to great trumpeters of the past: Procession of the Great Ancestry for Miles Davis, The Third World Grainery of Pure Earth for Roy Eldridge, Celestial Sparks in the Sanctuary of Redemption for Dizzy Gillespie. Smith (now renamed "Wadada", after becoming a Rastafarian, as fashionable at the time) basically parted ways with the austere, European-inspired research of Chicago's creative musicians. The notable exception was Rastafari (june 1983), a free-jazz session for chamber ensemble (trumpet, soprano saxophone, violin, bass, vibraphone).

After a decade of neglect, Smith returned with Cosmos Has Spirit (april 1992), live duets (mainly the 32-minute title-track) between Smith (on bamboo flute, karimba and trumpet) and percussionist Yoshisaburo Toyozumi, and especially Kulture Jazz (october 1992), a solo album on which Smith took care of trumpet, flugelhorn, bamboo flute, koto, mbira, harmonica, percussion, and, last but not least, vocals. This album introduced a tune-oriented approach, both respectful of the jazz tradition and sentimental in revisiting his personal life.

Chamber and ethnic compositions surfaced on Tao-Njia (may 1996): Another Wave More Waves, the multi-part requiem for Don Cherry, Double Thunderbolt, and especially Tao-Nija. Light Upon Light (july 1999) added two compositions for ensemble, Moths Flames and the Giant Sequoia Redwood Trees and Nur, Hetep Serenity Tranquility for solo viola, MultiAmerica for trumpet, voice and found sounds (none of them essential). These classical-oriented works exuded spirituality via the careful layout of the timbres of ethnic instruments, in a way not too dissimilar from new-age music.

Smith also composed Odwira (1995) for twelve multi-ensemble-units, and Heart Reflections (1996).

The quest for a music of shadows continued with Prataksis (april 1997), a trio with reed player Vinny Golia and bassist Bertram Turetzky, and reached the zenith with Golden Hearts Remembrance (january 1997), his most intense, intimate blend of ethnic folk, blues and jazz. Performed by the sextet N'da Kulture (David Philipson on bansuri and tambura, William Roper on bass and tuba, Glenn Horiuchi on piano and shamisen, Sonship Theus on percussion, Harumi Makino on voice), the hypnotic 13-minute Golden Hearts Remembrance A Nur Bakhshad and the romantic 12-minute Emmeya the eerie soundscapes of the 12-minute Lotus Garden, the ten-minute Tawhid and the 15-minute Condor.

The Golden Quartet (2000), featuring drummer Jack DeJohnette, pianist Anthony Davis and bassist Malachi Favors, was instead one of his more conventional albums of jazz music (Celestial Sky And All The Magic), and the quartet's follow-up, Year of the Elephant (april 2002), increased the impression of a Miles Davis clone (Al Madinah, Miles Star in 3 parts).

Smith proved to be one of the most sensational soloists of his generation on Red Sulphur Sky (2001), that contained the lively suites (not just abstract solos) of The Medicine Wheel and AFMIE - Purity and Poverty for solo trumpet or flugelhorn.

Smith also updated his art to the digital age with Luminous Axis (august 2002), an ambitious set of chamber works for trumpet (or flugelhorn), live electronics (including laptop musician Ikue Mori) and percussion, notably Caravans Of Winter And Summer for trumpet and four laptops. Snakish (recorded in 2003 and 2004) Was a less successful implementation of the same idea (guitar, percussion, electronics, voice, computer).

Chamber works of the period, collected on Lake Biwa (november 2004), included: Lake Biwa - A Fullmoon Purewater Gold, Sanai's Enclosed Garden of the Truth, Diamondback Serpent in a House Full of Water and Still Rising, Africana World. None was worthy of its predecessors.

Collaborations of this period ranged from the duets with Anthony Braxton of Organic Resonance (april 2003) and Saturn Conjunct the Grand Canyon in a Sweet Embrace (april 2003) to Dreams and Secrets (august 2000), a meeting of Leo Smith's N'da Kulture and Zimbabwean vocalist Thomas Mapfumo's group, to a series of Miles Davis tributes with guitarist Henry Kaiser to a duet with John Coxon on harmonica and guitars (december 2005).

The live pieces of Tabligh (november 2005), notably the 25-minute title-track, presented a new line-up of the Golden Quartet: Vijay Iyer (keyboards), John Lindberg (bass) and Ronald Shannon Jackson (drums).

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