James Blood Ulmer
Are You Glad to Be in America?

THE REVIEW

Are you crazy about funk? Or are you passionate enthusiasts of free jazz? Do you want to immerse yourself in an hour of savory blues? Whatever your tastes, this record might be just what you're looking for.

Like many black musicians of his generation, guitarist James "Blood" Ulmer hails from a cultural background deeply steeped in blues, leading him to free jazz and the "harmolodic" conception of music advocated by Ornette Coleman. Indeed, Ulmer was the first guitarist to join Ornette's electric bands (who once referred to him as "a natural harmolodic player") influencing his compositional style and the placement of the electric guitar in the celebrated group "Prime Time."

If there was any need for further proof establishing the connection between the avant-garde and the music of the forefathers, here you have it... Ulmer very skillfully mixes the complexity (and at times the abstraction) of the harmolodic jargon with the immediacy and visceral truthfulness of the blues, crafting with this "Are You Glad to be in America?" a work that leaves no escape and no reprieve... Black music to the core: tons of blues and funk poured into a boiling and magmatic sound, driven to a frenzy by the relentless rhythm section (Calvin Weston and Ronald Shannon Jackson on drums, Amin Ali on electric bass) and Ulmer's sharp phrasing, which continues to buzz in your head like a mad insect. On top, the saxophones of David Murray and Oliver Lake scatter dissonant arabesques. You barely relax in the two tracks sung by the guitarist's rusty voice, but soon it's a new whirlwind of fiendish solos, rhythmic trance, and instrumental overlaps with an orgiastic flair, which saturate the entire audible spectrum.

An excellent album, combining sophistication and rawness, cultured and popular: all conjugated in the caustic and uncompromising style of an angry black man, who tells you things as they are to your face. After all, as Ulmer himself states: "Jazz is the teacher... But Funk is the preacher".