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Rating: The last 4 years have seen the revival of jazz, as a genre no longer just for aficionados, but as music with a broader audience. Something hardly predictable, among other things. The trigger event, probably, was the worldwide success reached in 2015 by the young saxophonist Kamasi Washington, who in a colossal triple album titled “The Epic” blended 50 years of jazz with ease and perhaps a bit too much encyclopedic ambition, if you allow me the neologism. Well, if Washington's work was a bit guilty of mannerism, the same cannot be said of one of the best albums of 2018, “Your Queen Is A Reptile” by the Sons Of Kemet and partly also this “An Angel Fell”.
Certainly less heterodox as jazz by Ackamoor, compared to that of the Sons Of Kemet, whether due to his age (he was born in 1951 and has been playing since the early '70s), or due to different musical experiences (Ackamoor toured Africa throughout the '70s, then returned to California); but not for this less powerful record, both politically (exemplary in this sense is “Soliloquy for Michael Brown” young black man killed in 2014 by Missouri police, with a restless sax angrily shouting over a base of congas) and purely musically.
Flashes of choral and spatial songs akin to Sun Ra especially in the title track, a lot of Africa, in the Malian guitars and the afrobeat of the beautiful opener “Tinoge” which alone is worth listening to the album. The sax (often accompanied by a spontaneous but spot-on violin) now travels melodically (“Papyrus”) now more wild chasing an acidic guitar (“Message to my People”) or playing all out in the ecological anthem “Warrior Dance”. To conclude, perhaps the most bewildering track, “Land Of Ra”, which sets up an unlikely jazz on a dub base, a clash between Augustus Pablo, Mulatu Astatke, and Pharaoh Sanders.
Music as good for the mind as it is invigorating for the body.
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