CD Reviews

Various artists | Spiritual Jazz: Esoteric, Modal, and Deep Jazz from the Underground, 1968-1977

Jazzman (2009)

By GUSTAVO TURNER | April 21, 2009

4.0 Stars

Apple-pie Mormon missionaries the Millers travel through Iran to spread the gospel of Joseph Smith among Muslims and Zoroastrians, and their kid discovers the glorious sound of the santur, the ancient Persian string instrument that can soundtrack both prayer and the unsimulated sex scene between Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg in Performance.

Fast-forward to 1968 Salt Like City, where Lloyd Miller releases a daft-looking LP called Oriental Jazz on a tiny label. Fast-forward again to the current era of archæological crate digging and behold the santur jazz fusion gem that is "Gol-e Gandam," lovingly culled from that rare LP and set among other jewels of what the liner notes describe as "micro-scenes and local collectives, and a proliferation of tiny labels and hand-distributed records."

Think of Spiritual Jazz as the equivalent of what the Numero Group are doing for obscure soul, but aimed at the musical heirs of John Coltrane and Sun Ra, jazz seekers with one eye on the spirit and another pointed toward Africa and Asia. The compilers find common ground in such disparate acts as teenage prodigy P. E. Hewitt's "Bada Que Bash" (Latin dance music from the Afrofuturists' Saturn), Senegalese percussionist Mor Thiam (recorded in Missouri! with Lester Bowie on trumpet!), and the Cairo Jazz Band — an unlikely collaboration of local musicians, German diplomats into weird jazz, and the Egyptian Army.

Topics: CD Reviews , Music, Culture and Lifestyle, Religion, More

| More

See more deals

view all

[ 05/23 ] The Wilbury Group presents The Threepenny Opera, by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill @ Trinity Theater at the Southside Cultural Center

[ 05/23 ] "The Ashes Series," photographs by Wafaa Bilal @ David Winton Bell Gallery

[ 05/23 ] "Rhode Island School of Design Graduate Thesis Exhibition 2013" @ Rhode Island Convention Center

ARTICLES BY GUSTAVO TURNER

IAN KING | PANIC GRASS AND FEVER FEW | March 16, 2010
Just a few weeks after we reviewed the belated release of African Head Charge's latest, another, more recent gem from the always rewarding sonic laboratory of Adrian Sherwood arrives.

JOE CUBA | EL ALCALDE DEL BARRIO | March 09, 2010
Fania kicks off 2010 with what is sure to end up being one of the year's most important archival releases of Latin music.

ALEJANDRO FRANOV | DIGITARIA | March 03, 2010
Alejandro Franov is an Argentine multi-instrumentalist who's been involved in the more serious, and often experimental, side of the Buenos Aires music scene since he was a teen in the late 1980s.

THE SOULJAZZ ORCHESTRA | RISING SUN | February 23, 2010
We're living in the middle of a veritable renaissance of "Spiritual Jazz."

AFRICAN HEAD CHARGE | VISION OF PSYCHEDELIC AFRICA | February 09, 2010
UK dub guru Adrian Sherwood and adventurous percussionist Bonjo I have been releasing their sonic experiments as African Head Charge since the early 1980s.