The news that the Mack Avenue Music Group has acquired the rights to the legendary musician-run label Strata-East is followed by a special Record Shop Day vinyl release of the Pharoah Sanders‘ 1969 recording for the company, ‘Izipho Zam’, translated from Zulu as My Gifts.
It’s the fruit of a thrilling session at TownSound Studios in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey with a 13-piece band featuring a Who’s Who of New Thing names including Sonny Fortune on alto, Howard Johnson on tuba, Lonnie Liston Smith on piano, Sonny Sharrock on guitar, with bassists Cecil McBee and Sirone (Norris Jones), plus Leon Thomas on vocals and Billy Hart and Majeed Shabazz on drums, together with three further percussionists.
There’s only three numbers, with Pharoah favourite ‘Prince of Peace’ followed on Side A by the mighty freak-out of ‘Balance’ while Side B is taken up by the 28 minute title track. The latter is an absolutely storming percussive groove that, after building from bells, whistles, bass glissandi and Leon Thomas’s trademark yodels, just goes on and on.
A heavy backbeat forms the ground for a series of features, with Sharrock’s funky guitar riff and Thomas’ ululating wails leading into Sanders’ and Fortune’s introduction of the actual theme and chorus. Then, instead of developing the theme further, we daringly go back to another percussive feature, starting almost from scratch, which in turn gives way to Sharrock’s restated riff, the few measures of the musical material stretching seemingly to infinity, before Sanders and Fortune re-enter. And we’re still not done, not even nearly.
There’s a balafon solo against the drums, taking the groove almost as far as it can go, before a full-on feedback-drenched false climax that once again refuses to fade away, instead cueing the horns and Lonne’s Liston’s piano for a few more choruses. And that’s before the screaming, split-harmonic overblowing , penultimate horn chorus, which in keeping with the original pastoral vibe, then comes back again as a beautiful arabesque melody, the two sax voices intertwining as if chasing each other’s tails or shadows as the divine light begins to fade. And if you think that’s purple prose, check poet Harmony Holiday’s sleeve-notes.
It’s a wonderfully joyful yet militant musical message that seems to link the radical black consciousness of the era with a pan-cultural, Afrocentric spirit that is entirely winning. The role of Sonny Sharrock – who thickens his sound with a mandolin-like technique – is key to the overall effect but the fundamental meanings of ‘Izipho Zam’ the track, and by extension the album as a whole, go far beyond that.
This is music, that – as can be seen in the contemporary writings of Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones as was) – challenges the entire hegemony of the western tradition, rejecting the primacy of melody over rhythm, foreground over background, individual over group/soloist or leader over the ensemble. And once you’ve realised that, the entire history of jazz can be listened to anew. From now on, everybody is out front. And maybe they always were.
