The Mack Avenue organisation’s acquisition of the rights to the legendary artists’ label Strata-East has already resulted in some fabulous recordings becoming available once again, on high quality vinyl as well as via digital files, compact disc and streaming. Even a cursory listen to a stream of the digital-only compilation ‘Strata-East: The Legacy Begins’ – over three hours long with barely a dip in the remarkably high standards throughout – should be enough to convince anyone of the quality of the Brooklyn-based label’s catalogue, let alone its historical importance as one of the very few black owned and run musician collectives to arise in the U.S.A as part of the consciousness-raising movements of the era. The recent release of a superb double album live recording, ‘Live At Slugs” Volume 1&2’, by Music Inc, the quartet formed by the Strata-East co-founders, trumpeter Charles Tolliver and pianist Stanley Cowell, recorded at the East Village club in 1970 with Cecil McBee on bass and drummer Jimmy Hopps, shows off both the clarity and the intensity of the originators’ own music, as composers as well as performers. Furious up-tempo numbers never lose sight of the groove, while deep, soulful ballads are as sensitive as one could wish for.
But even so, nothing quite prepares you for Stanley Cowell’s ‘Ancestral Streams’, a 1973 studio recording of solo piano, credited to Musa (from Cowell’s Muslim name, Musa Kalamula). It’s hard to know where to begin, because ‘Ancestral Steams’ is a masterpiece, not only of solo piano (“I place this as one of the top five solo piano albums of all time”, says Jason Moran, no mean pianist himself), but of Cowell’s own distinguished yet surely undervalued career. As Nate Chinen’s helpful and erudite sleeve-note explains, the album was recorded only two years after Keith Jarrett’s ECM solo debut, ‘Facing You’ . Although Chinen is too polite to say it directly, ‘Ancestral Streams’ is a far superior performance all round; he also reminds us that Cowell, who died in 2020 aged 79, had already recorded for ECM as part of a trio with Stanley Clarke and Jimmy Hopps on the album ‘Illusion Suite’.
Yet what is perhaps most impressive about ‘Ancestral Streams’ is its synthesis of all kinds of qualities, and how perfectly designed a musical product it so confidently is, with an attention to detail that is no less rare today than it could have been for a label with a limited budget and uncertain audience way back in 1973. It also has hinterland: Cowell composed all the pieces himself, and the titles are accompanied by the dates he wrote them, in many cases for previous recordings, including the aforementioned ‘Illusion Suite’, and for Max Roach and Clifford Jordan, plus the now relatively famous ’Travelin’ Man’, from his own ‘Blues for the Viet Cong’ album, sampled by the Pharcyde in 1992 (J Dilla and Pete Rock are other Cowell-samplers). The result of this carefully curated digest of tunes helps to give depth and a back-story to the album: Cowell was 32 when he recorded it, and at the very height, you might say, of his powers. ‘Ancestral Streams’ also synthesised his own extravagant talents. As a genius-pianist in the lineage of Art Tatum (a friend of his family, who were motel owners in Toledo, Ohio, which was Tatum’s hometown, too) Cowell had the chops to revel in the endless space that solo performance provided, but – and this seems key to his importance to me, and to that of the Strata-East aesthetic itself – he also loved a good groove.
The opening track, ‘Abscretions’, written in 1970 and previously recorded with Tolliver and also separately by saxophonist Buddy Terry, is a knockout gospel-funk number that couples the rhythmic bounce of, say, Allen Toussaint, with its heavy-rolling measures modulated by modernist key-changes that suggest McCoy Tyner. Its followed by another stupendous winner, the dreamy ballad ‘Equipoise’, which first appeared on Roach’s ‘Members Don’t Git Weary’ on which both Cowell and Tolliver appeared. It’s this wondrous strain of limpid lyricism that once again brings Jarrett to mind, and perhaps, in the shade. Side B’s opener ‘Maimoun’ couples this beautiful lightness of spirit with a heavy left-hand ostinato that blend into the most delicious ambient groove. Subsequent tracks include some Tatum meets Cecil Taylor-style all-over-the-keyboard flourishes in ’Departure No 1’ and ‘Departure No 2’, and the absolute highlight of ’Travelin’ Man’ where Cowell duets with himself on kalimba thumb-piano and Fender Rhodes. It’s so good you want to swoon. Another ballad, ’Sweet Song’, concludes the vinyl album but the digital versions have four bonus tracks including an alternate take of ’Travelin’ Man’. All in all, you probably need Stanley Cowell’s ‘Ancestral Streams’.
