Recommend Me Some Good Afro Jazz Albums, Plz

People need to post more here! Here's a couple of finds recently (I haven't listened carefully to all of these yet):

Khan Jamal Creative Arts Ensemble - Drum Dance to the Motherland
Khan Jamal Quintet - Balafon Dance (only some tracks)
Chico Freeman - Kings of Mali
The Ensemble Al-Salaam - The Sojourner

And there's also this mix of spiritual jazz, some of which is relevant: https://archive.org/details/BlackClassicalSpiritualJazz19552012

^^^possibly the greatest compilation ever imo

wow that looks great

I just discovered that there's a second volume! https://archive.org/details/Astrosonics-Doctrine-Spiritual-Jazz-Volume-2

It's unfortunately split up into separate files.

Oh, and with regard to the first volume, the tracklist is posted below in the comments without any time markers. Long ago, I recorded a few time markers for things I recognized (I'd likely recognize more now). But here's what I had, in case it helps to identify other stuff (key: "hour:minutes"):

Elvin Jones Love Supreme (~0:38-0:44 minutes in)
Roy Brooks and the Artistic Truth Black Survival (~4:29)
John Coltrane Om (4:51)
Pharoah Sanders: Red, Black & Green (~6:12)
John Coltrane: A Love Supreme, Pt. 1 Acknowledgment (6:34-6:35)
Pharaoh Sanders Prince of Peace (8:58-9:05)

yeah over 24 hours of music, over half of which I can't identify since matching up the track listings provided is m/l impossible

but it's insanely great, I dip into it all the time

xp

I forgot to mention this blog that I discovered: http://adarkershadeofjazzinn.blogspot.ca/

It has that Khan Jamal Balafon Dance album.

Drummer Eric Harland is leading a really hot band for two nights at the Jazz Standard next week - Walter Smith III on tenor sax, Taylor Eigsti on piano, Harish Raghavan on bass. (Both Smith and Raghavan also play in Ambrose Akinmusire's band.) I'm hoping to catch one of their sets.

Oh, I should update about seeing Ambrose Akinmusire: fantastic! It was all stuff from the live album. The only weakness really is the piano player, which also struck me with the live album. He certainly fits well at times, but his soloing and accompaniment often didn't seem to gel or just seemed a little like he's fresh out of music school. Everyone else was great. Akinmusire is a really sensitive player, for lack of a better description.

ive enjoyed a lot of what i've heard from akinmusire

Oh, I meant to post that in the Rolling Jazz thread, as it doesn't really fit in here!

Yeah, my post is also in the wrong thread.

good link regardless!

I can't believe I didn't think of this one until just now, but Cannonball Adderley's Accent On Africa is perhaps a bit campy, but still totally great.

Also, surely Sun Ra has something relevant to this.

hmmm

what is interesting about sun ra is the extent to which he is influenced by exotica and the esoteric societies of WWI era birmingham, i.e. a fake or imagined africa

tbf there is a lot of stuff on this thread whose connection to africa is more thematic than musical

for example: art ensemble, pharaoh sanders, khan jamal etc

i don't think erratic free jazz drumming on african drums is sufficient to establish afro jazz credentials

and i totally don't understand how coltrane fits into this, ditto sunny murray, cannonball, elvin, etc aside from song titles

i say this not to be some sort of gatekeeper for Afro jazz but just to point out that it means something specific (to me anyway) and applying it willy bully does a bit of a disservice to a group like oneness of juju or idris ackamoors pyramids who feature legit African rhythms and chants

haha Willy bully should be Willy nilly

Louis Moholo and Dudu Pukwana are mentioned above, but the whole universe of music that came out of The Blue Notes and their coterie is amazing. The Blue Notes recordings themselves are basically mid-60s Afro bop, and they're great, but after they moved to England they all did so many different things: Brotherhood of Breath, Spear, Assagai, Harry Miller's Isipingo and the totally essential "Blue Notess for Mongezi." Just a remarkable constellation of players, exploring a wide range of stuff and bringing South African influences into all kinds of settings.

(I am no kind of Afro jazz specialist, but I got into Brotherhood of Breath some years back and started pulling on that string and it led to all of this other stuff I couldn't believe I'd never heard of.)

i guess i am just echoing shakey's point up thread about aeoc here but i felt like it should be made again

I've never really quite thought of the category "Afro Jazz" before, so I've been questioning myself a lot when going through different material. And I've even done some retrospective questioning about some of what I suggested about, e.g., Khan Jamal. I've also listened to the Chico Freeman album I recommended above, and it's a very tenuous connection at best.So I appreciate the late great's questioning about these issues.

Obviously, there's a lot of overlap with "spiritual jazz", and likewise (as the late great notes) some African percussion doesn't really seem all that helpful a guideline. So I'm less sure if "Afro Jazz" is a useful category if we expand it beyond what is literally African.

But maybe there are some artists & albums that are not from Africa but that are much seriously indebted to African music than, for example, Khan Jamal or Chico Freeman. So maybe some paradigm cases of that sort could be helpful. But there's in fact not too many mentioned on this thread that I can really see as being "Afro Jazz" without being literally from Africa. The nearest case I can tell would be The Pyramids record mentioned above.

Oops, I missed the late great's suggestions of good paradigms: Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids, as well as Oneness Of Juju. I'll have to check those out.

Pataphysician are you a new poster or just new username? Digging yr posts regardless, also reliably good posts from tlg.

I'm a longtime lurker, then a sporadic poster until recently. I'm thinking about writing up some impressions of albums in this vein that I've listened to (e.g., some of the Khan Jamal stuff), as well as doing so for other albums on the rolling jazz thread (e.g., Ed Kelly & Pharoah Sanders's album, as well as some Mal Waldron I've been listening to)

Also, no one here has mentioned Gétatchèw Mèkurya, but I'm guessing that's a familiar name (as well as not being quite in the vein of the original request).

tbf there is a lot of stuff on this thread whose connection to africa is more thematic than musical

I think this is totally legit and interesting point, which is why I walked back my AEOC recs

curious what Mordy's liked/listened to so far

haha maybe I should've read the rest of the late great's posts first *high five*

(which is not to say that AEOC aren't great cuz they are just maybe not what Mordy was talking about)

the pyramids i knew but hadn't listened to in a while - they're great tho. similarly the sons of kemet album was def worth revisiting.

re new stuff - i really liked the art blakey & the jazz messengers - drum suite. i had slept on the Soweto Vol. 3 album but that has some good stuff on it (i thought it was a bit uneven but prob to be expected from comp type stuff). the salah ragab was great.

oneness of juju was totally unknown to me and that's another great find.

That reminds me: Oneness of Juju is also on the compilation Africafunk: The Original Sound Of 1970s Funky Africa, which is definitely worth seeking out!

Just mentioning that Nigerian Afrobeat legend and master drummer Tony Allen has a rather nice "A Tribute To Art Blakey + the Jazz Messengers" EP out on Blue Note.

there's a new sons of kemet single and apparently an album on the way

has anyone here heard The Comet is Coming? pretty cool stuff i think ppl itt would like.

it's afro jazz time of year again. i made a playlist last year filled w/ lots of great recommendations from this thread among other stuff that might be of interest to ilmers:

https://open.spotify.com/user/mordys/playlist/2EdiBdI9IexZ06fLFAtP7F?si=jb9KXo9HRlamXfkx75T6BQ

got the latest Sons of Kemet album ("You're Queen is a Reptile") and instantly made me think of this thread, lots of African rhythms/percussion

yeah it's a good one

One of my favourite albums of the year.

it's Your Queen smdh

I like this recent reissue, Mulatu Astatke & His Ethiopian Quintet ‎– Afro-Latin Soul Vols 1 & 2---going back to '66, and a few tracks seem redundant or undercooked, but unmistakably he's already in bloom, playing vibes, keys, percussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCxFDt4xSXA

This is a brilliant album...

https://soundsoftheuniverse.com/product/yakhal-inkomo

if you dig Sons of Kemet, then the Shabaka and the Ancestors album from a couple of years ago is key.

One of the members of Shabaka and the Ancestors, keyboardist Nduduzo Makhathini, has several albums out as a leader. His music is spiritual Afro-jazz that kind of combines Coltrane circa '64 with Pharoah Sanders circa '71-'72; lots of modal grooves, some vocal ensembles, etc. They're hard to find as physical objects or even paid downloads, but they're all on Spotify (at least in the US).

someone should've recommended dizzy's Afro here cause it's fantastic

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a7/Afro_%28album%29.jpg

haven't heard this whole thing, but the samples are nice:
https://yuseflateef.bandcamp.com/album/hikima-creativity

(maybe bc it's more afro-cuban than straight forward afro jazz?)

so many of the new london jazz ppl belong itt too

love the new theon cross album. and the new comet is coming. and the new ezra collective. and the new cykada.

Yeah, the new Ezra Collective has a cover of Fela's "Shakara" with Kokoroko on it - it's great.

2016's The Rough Guide To Ethiopian Jazz took a couple of spins, but soon became and remains one of my fave albums of this century. Subject for further study" Mongo Santamaria's Afro-Cuban Jazz, a familiar tag at the time, esp. late 50s-early 60s, when he was employing Chick Corea, and the live "Afro Blue" I heard again the other night on the radio seems a likely gateway for the nascent Allman Brothers Band, despite lack of guitars (also I think one of their early Florida-Alabama club circuit associates told me that). He seems pretty commercial, but a distinctive stylist ( "Afro Blue" was my gateway to Trane, via T.'s version). The back-and-forth of African, Latin, El Norte jazz and adjacent genres can have very varied results, but has always been engaging (oh yeah we haven't mentioned the Jazz Epistles here yet right)

Another fave: Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou, of Dahomey, esp.Echos Hypnotiques, Vol. 2. although I haven't heard them all.
Seems like Denardo Coleman (or somebody else who should know) said somewhere that there is a lot (or some) more Ornette w Master Musicians of Jajouka than what we got on Dancing In Your Head. He's only on one track here, but whole thing looks appealing: https://www.allaboutjazz.com/the-road-to-jajouka-ornette-coleman-the-master-musicians-of-jajouka-howe-records-review-by-chris-may.php

Lots of good suggestions earlier in the thread. Two albums I love that I don't think have shown up yet are Makaya Ntshoko's "Makaya & the Tsotsis" (very much in the spiritual jazz vein) and, if you can find it, Pat Matshikiza and Kippie Moeketsi's "Tshona" (I think this would appeal to all fans of Abdullah Ibrahim or of South African jazz in general, but it's got a really unique sound to it).

If you like the Makaya Ntshoko album, he's also the drummer on Hugh Masekela's "Home Is Where the Music Is," better known than a lot of the stuff in this thread so far but definitely worth checking out if you haven't already.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWas-Aug5bo

Ghanaian saxophonist Gyedu-Blay Ambolley is doing highlife versions of jazz tunes on his album Hi-Life Jazz, which comes out October 7. Here's his version of "Round Midnite" (how it's spelled on the album):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w4fh11mv6E

xpost Right after the one I posted on RJ, budo jeru added:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XwKYYFvcDo

xpost Ambolley too! We're cooking this afternoon.

Saw some thread on Twitter about modern South African jazz but I can’t find it now. Any recommendations?

Nduduzo Makhathini
Keleketla!

Oh thanks!

That in the spirit of ntu album was mention on that thread

two other recent favs

Ayanda Sikade - Umakhulu
Linda Sikhakhane - Isambulo

if you don't get a response from unperson on this thread, try asking your question on the rolling jazz thread

oh and

https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/rainbow-revisited

Really loving this record

https://honestjons.com/shop/artist/The_Malombo_Jazz_Makers/release/Down_Luckys_Way

Nduduzo Makhathini is fantastic, as others have said — in addition to his latest one, In the Spirit of Ntu, check out Ikhambi (the first thing I heard by him) and Listening to the Ground.

Tenor saxophonist Linda Sikhakhane (a dude) is really good, too; his albums Two Sides, One Mirror and Isambulo are traditional (if Coltrane-in-1964 is a tradition) but worth your time.

I also like saxophonist Sisonke Xonti; wrote about him here.

I interviewed drummer Ayanda Sikade for Bandcamp last year; that was a thrill. He's a super nice guy.

Trumpeter Ndabo Zulu's Queen Nandi: The African Symphony is really good, too; I wrote about that here.

https://mindmaintenance.bandcamp.com/album/mind-maintenance

This Josh Abrams & Chad Taylor record is a nice one from a few years ago

unless i'm mistaken, neither of them are south african?

They are not. I guess I was just recommending “other stuff that is heavily influenced by African sounds”

gotcha. this would be the thread for that ;)