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Enjoy the music. Previous post has info on the blog. Oh and don't forget to leave me some comments. I'd love to hear what you think; suggestions, etc.

2009 Shares, Requests, Recommendations

In Ile Oxumaré's first year I posted regular lists of what I was looking for. To my amazement, most of what I asked for was shared by generous readers. This year I'd like to do this a little differently. I'll list the things I'm still on the hunt for, but I'm opening this post up for random reader shares and requests. Here's some guidelines:
* For shares please try to keep them in the general scope of what you'd find on this blog: rare groove jazz/kozmigroov/spiritual jazz/eclectic & unusual jazzy-funky-progressive music.
* Do not steal other blogs' rips, though feel free to link to other blogs. If your rip is not original, that's okay, just say so. There's a lot of music out there from SoulSeek etc. that has long passed out of any one uploader's hands.
* Avoid posting material that is readily commercially available or recently reissued on CD. First, because the musicians we admire have the right to make money off their work, and second, to keep this blog out of trouble.
* Feel free to make and answer requests.
* I moderate comments. If you don't want yours published, just say so.
* I will consider, with permission, particularly special contributed items for full featured guest posts on the blog.
I'll keep this one post up for as long as practicable. Happy listening.
Aché-o.

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Recommendation: Babatunde Lea's "Umbo Weti: A Tribute to Leon Thomas"

It's hard to believe that Leon Thomas has been gone for ten years. But to celebrate his life and work, percussionist Babatunde Lea (who played with Leon and with Pharoah Sanders back in the day) has just released a brilliant 2-CD set on the Motema label called Babatunde Lea's Umbo Weti: A Tribute to Leon Thomas."

It's a live recording from a concert series at the legendary Yoshi's, and the set list is a veritable greatest hits of Leon's favorites: Prince of Peace, Umbo Weti, The Creator Has a Master Plan, Colors, Sun Song, Song for My Father, Cousin Mary, Boom Boom, and more. The musicians include Lea on drums and percussion, Patrice Rushen (!) on piano, singer Dwight Trible channelling Leon Thomas on vocals, Ernie Watts on sax and Gary Brown on bass. The musicians sound great; it's an amazing tribute that really captures something about Leon's music.

There's an interview clip on the label's website that's well worth watching. You can also get the set from Dustygroove.

No download link...you're gonna have to go out and buy this one.

Diana Brown & Barrie K. Sharpe: The Black, The White, The Yellow and the Brown (And Don't Forget The Red Man), 1992

ffrr/Acid Jazz CD (UK), 1992

1. Masterplan (ropeman mix)
2. Colours (Black, White, Yellow, Brown, Red)
3. Eating Me Alive (Part 1)
4. No Turning
5. Hear My Prayer
6. Don't Cross the Tracks
7. Love or Nothing (Onceller Mix)
8. Tell It Like It Is
9. Sunworshipppers (Part 1 & Part 2)
10. Free

bonus:
The Masterplan CD Single (ffrr CD, UK 1990)
1. The Master Plan (7-inch)
2. Yes It's You (from 1987)
3. The Master Plan (ext. version)

Album credits: Diana Brown, lead voc; Barrie K. Sharpe, voc, perc
Robin Goodfellow, bs, keys, gtr; Sir Michael Talbot, org, fender rhodes, synth; Colin Robinson, gtr; Bryan Powell, Tracey Ackerman, Deborah Ann Dyer, Kathleen Pearson Thomas, Mint Juleps, Linda Muriel, bg voc; Steve White, drums; Crispin Taylor, drums; James Taylor, fender rhodes, hammond organ; Crispin Robinson, perc; others incl horns

"No chains around your neck
But are you really free
When there's brothers and sisters
Still suffering from mindless brutality
Our bellies our full
But our hearts are still hungry."
--from original liner notes

Here's another slice of youthful acid jazz nostalgia from early 1990s Britain. Let me say off the bat that if you're only here for far-out freaky jazz you should probably skip this one. This is, loosely, an ambitious anti-racist concept album of funky grooves that really suggested at the time, to my American ears, that something profound had just happened across the ocean and that the music of the next British invasion would no longer be limited to white guys playing rock and roll.

Combining samples and live playing, the album has a naivete and exuberance that is at times infectious and at other times, frankly, a little ponderous and overblown. It tags acid jazz, northern soul, hip-hop, and shuffle-beat clubby pop music, built around the theme of racial unity and justice. Some of the songs are really catchy and hook-filled, some a little rote and uninspired. There's a somewhat annoying conceit of Mr. Sharpe, I presume, moaning between songs along with poetic recitations that're one of those concept-album devices they probably should have thought better of.

But I love this kinda stuff. I'm not sure if it was the end of the era of Reagan and Thatcher or what, but club music and acid jazz was suddenly, in the beginning of the 1990s, full of all these optimistic "we shall overcome" peace and justice message songs. That they were also filled with jazzy reference points was also unbelievably cool to me at the time. I heard the "Master Plan" single on one of those ffrr records compilations back in the day. While its title is a bit of sideways reference to the great "The Creator Has a Masterplan," unlike the very similar group from the same period Galliano, Brown & Sharpe don't actually work in any actual jazz covers to their album. The album itself seems to have been a bit of an afterthought to that single itself, coming out a couple years after "Master Plan" had been a hit. I've included as a bonus here the CD single of that song, whose 7-minute version is the definitely hit-worthy version. Also from that CD single is what must have been one of their first songs, "Yes It's You," recorded in 1987 and successfully channelling a Motown/1960s soul vibe. The tune "Don't Cross Tracks" contains a lyric that's cracks me up every time I play this record: "hot pants means trouble."

I don't recall this album going very far: there was no American release, and putting out an album two years after your hit single is probably not a great marketing technique. It doesn't stand out as a major landmark of acid jazz--it's a little unfocused for that--but it's definitely worth revisiting now. It was certainly among the groundbreaking albums for the nu-soul/jazz groove scene that remains vibrant today. Anybody know what happened to Brown and Sharpe? "Positive thinking!"

link in comments

All Souls / All Saints

mojuba olodumare
mojuba olorun
mojuba gbogbo egungun embelese olodumare

rashied ali | sirone | michael jackson | isaac hayes | norman whitfield | googie coppola | blossom dearie | freddie hubbard | mercedes sosa | ali akbar khan | miriam makeba | odetta | viola wills | yma sumac | johnny griffin | gerry niewood | les paul | john martyn | joe beck | hiram bullock

alice coltrane turiyasangitananda | john coltrane | leon thomas | miles davis | joe henderson | marvin gaye | curtis mayfield | nina simone | albert ayler | antonio carlos jobim | sivuca | chief bey | james brown | esther philips | roy brooks | barry white | patrick cowley | sylvester | luther vandross | jon lucien | cal tjader | gabor szabo | gary mcfarland | donny hathaway | cannonball adderley | noel pointer | don cherry | dorothy ashby | duke pearson | dusty springfield | eddie jefferson | lee morgan | ella fitzgerald | sarah vaughan | anga | celia cruz | tito puente | frank zappa | hampton hawes | harold vick | shirley scott | victor jara | john blair | johnny hartman | tammi terrell | aaliyah | laura nyro | paul jabara | judy garland | lorez alexandria | lou rawls | machito | mahalia jackson | cass elliot | marek grechuta | zbigniew seifert | michel colombier | tuca | neal creque | nick drake | nico | oliver nelson | phyllis hyman | ray barretto | ronnie dyson | philippe wynn | eddie kendricks | minnie riperton | charles stepney | sharon redd | stan getz | tony williams | stanley turrentine | sun ra | june tyson | syreeta | van mccoy | webster lewis | weldon irvine | faith pillow |

ibaye modupue | in memoriam and thanks

you're gone, but somehow we can still hear your voices.
feel free to add names I've forgotten in the comments.

Readershares: Jeanne Lee, Bobbi Humphrey, Dave Liebman, Wendell Harrison

Shared rarities from Ile Oxumare readers:


Jeanne Lee, Conspiracy, 1975
One of Jeanne Lee's super rare solo albums this was shared by reader Heiku back in March of 2008. I don't know a lot about this record except to say that it's an awesome blend of Lee's poetic vocalizing that preserves the intimacy and drama of her delivery while being less musically austere than other recordings of hers. I assume that among her musical backers here are her partner Gunter Hampel but I don't remember where I read about this album when I first asked about it and haven't the time to research it now. Anyway, thanks again to Heiku; re-upped link in comments.


Bobbi Humphrey, Live At Montreux, 1973
Probably the rarest of Humphrey's Blue Note LPs and the last, I think, before she hooked up with the Mizells, this is funky but more recognizably straight-ahead than her later works. Some killer rhodes behind the flute. I believe this also came from Heiku though was not his own rip, early last year. If you wanted to hear extended covers of songs by Alphonse Mouzon, Stanley Turretine and Bill Withers, this is for you. Re-upped link in comments.


Dave Liebman, Sweet Hands, 1975
From reader Wildgrebe back in February came this awesome slice of atmospheric sometimes funky post-Miles jazz-raga fusion. Miles' percussionist Badal Roy is here, again with some terrific rhodes playing by Richie Beirach. Link in comments.


Wendell Harrison, Dreams of a Love Supreme, 1980
The most recently shared, from flwrpt., a rare slice of Tribe records' quirky founder Wendell Harrison. It's indy jazz from Detroit, and if you think that means glossy commercial funk, quiet-storm soul or abstract spiritual avant gardeness, the answer is yes. Link in comments.

I've been swamped in my personal life with work and other things, so as to keep the record spinning here are four choice bits shared by readers in past "Requests & Shares" threads. A couple of these are re-ups so if you haven't been following Ile Oxumare from the beginning you may have missed some gems. Read through all the Want Lists posts here for some more treats. If you find something that needs re-upping (and it hasn't since appeared in legit reissue or on somebody else's blog), I will try and accommodate. Also feel free to make a request or a share in the most recent post.

Please be sure to thank our sharers. Back soon with an original post.

Have A Blissful Day (Donation Required): 1970s Cult Music, An Ilé Oxumaré Compilation

Exclusive digital mix, Ile Oxumare, 2009

1 Devadip Carlos Santana featuring Urmila Santana - I Am Free (Excerpt from the Soul Bird, by Sri Chinmoy) (from Oneness: Silver Dreams - Golden Reality, 1979)
2 Alice Coltrane, Om Supreme (from Eternity, 1975)
3 J.O.B. Orquestra, Govinda (from Open the Doors to Your Heart, 1978)
4 Ananta, Vrindavan (from Wheel of Time, 1978)
5 Shanti, Lord I'm Comin Round (from Shanti, 1971)
6 Quintessence, Cosmic Surfer (from Self, 1971)
7 Odyssey, Battened Ships (from Odyssey, 1972)
8 Rasa, Within the Sound (from Everything You See Is Me, 1978)
9 Seawind, Free (from Light the Light, 1979)
10 Devadip Carlos Santana, Free as the Morning Sun (from Oneness: Silver Dreams - Golden Reality, 1979)
11 People's Temple Choir, Walk a Mile in My Shoes (from He's Able, 1973)
12 Karma, Karma (from Celebration, 1976)
13 J.O.B. Orquestra, Don't Want That Illusion (from Open the Doors to Your Heart, 1978)
14 Don Cherry, Universal Mother (from Hear & Now, 1977)
15 Santana featuring Leon Thomas, Love Devotion & Surrender (from Welcome, 1973)
16 Shanti, We Want to Be Free (from Shanti, 1971)
17 Charles Earland and Odyssey featuring Gabor Szabo, The Great Pyramid (from The Great Pyramid, 1976)
18 Rasa, When Will the Day Come (from Everything You See Is Me, 1978)

bonus track:
19 George Harrison and the London Radha-Krishna Temple, Hare Krishna Mantra (from Chant and Be Happy! 1969)

Perhaps because it's when I came of age, I have long been fascinated by the decade of the 1970s. Long reviled in the popular imagination, it seems to be the decade that cultural historians would like to erase. It's laughable how, for instance, the reviewers over at the All-Music Guide will tend to leave the 1970s output by many jazz musicians off their discography, and when an individual album from that time is covered, unless it happens to be a collection of standards harkening back to the classic era, it tends to get written off as "not so-and-so's best album." Disco music has come to symbolize the seventies in a sort of warped way: portrayed as the effete frivolity of coke-snorting polyester-clad airheads, its reality as a kind of ecstatic mass egalitarian communion for a new generation of proud black and gay urbanites is overlooked. The corruption of Nixon and the weakness of Ford and Carter are remembered, not the progressive community and consciousness-building organizations that flourished until repression, hard times, or eventual exhaustion laid them low. And the 1970s is most definitely remembered as the era of the religious cult, which brings us to the compilation at hand.

In those days before the megachurches of Christian fundamentalism, spirituality in America was in a vast state of flux. As the younger generation came to reject the political and cultural establishment in the 1960s, so it rejected the religious establishment. Everybody knows how the Beatles flirted with eastern religion: newly expanded higher consciousness inspired the newly aware to explore spiritual paths that would have been unimaginable to whitebread America a few years before. Astrology and numerology became mainstream; "eastern" concepts like auras and karma and reincarnation became widely accepted.

Nature abhors a vacuum. Into this wide-open spiritual openness stepped preachers and teachers and gurus and holymen, and a host of evangelical organizations, many of which eventually being accused of manipulation and mind-control. On the eastern front, gurus like Swami Satchidananda and Sri Chinmoy gained a huge number of adherents, Sri Chinmoy in particular influencing many in the music world. The Hare Krishnas, eventually the International Society for Krishna Consciousness lead by Swami Prabhupada, became ubiquitous. There were Christian-derived societies like the politically conservative Unification Church of Rev. Sun Young Moon (the so-called "Moonies") or the ill-fated left-wing People's Temple of Rev. Jim Jones; there were the Jesus Freaks and Jesus People. There was the cult of Scientology for sci-fi geeks; there were Egyptian revivalists promising health through colon cleansing; there were African cultural nationalists redefining black cultural identity. There was Transcendental Meditation; there was Nichiren Buddhism and its prosperity chanting. There was the beginnings of New Age philosophy with theories of healing and medicine outside traditional "Western" pharmacology. All these new ideas competed for the attentions of young people, especially those adrift in confusing cultural times.

The dark side of all this is undeniable. When I was in junior high school my best friend John went off on a picnic with a group--maybe they were Moonies--who offered him an afternoon of food and fraternization. We didn't see him again for six months. When he returned he wouldn't talk about what happened, but he was changed and brooding. The religious cults had a predatory aspect, requiring their devotees to change their behaviors and their lifestyles. In some cases this turned devotees into beggars, like the Hare Krishnas haunting the airports giving out "free" books and then demanding a donation. Other cults turned into tragedies, like the hundreds of poor people who moved to Guyana to build a new world with the People's Temple who ended in an orgy of mass suicide and murder.

But it wasn't all mind control: in those innocent days nobody followed an alternate spiritual path or joined a cult for negative reasons, they did so out of hope, out of the desire to be spiritually uplifted and fulfilled; out of the desire to find like-minded people with whom to share, to celebrate, to build, to learn, to teach. Which brings us to the music.

The music of this world of spiritual exploration in the 1970s is actually pretty awesome. It can be spiritually meditative or joyously upbeat. It crosses musical genres ranging from jazz to rock to folk to disco to funk. It's got a blissful positivity that I find inspiring: "free" is probably the word sung most by this diverse collection of spiritual optimists.

Several of the artists represented here might actually be considered representatives of "cults:" Ananta, Rasa and J.O.B. Orquestra were all adherents of ISKCON and their records were sold directly by Hare Krishnas. The People's Temple Choir song is from an album recorded several years before their emigration to Guyana. The bonus track recorded by George Harrison's London Ashram will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen Hare Krishna devotees chanting on the street. Some of the lyrics here are fascinating: JOB's "Dont Want That Illusion" is the most peculiar (anti) love song I've ever heard.

Other artists represented here were personal adherents of evangelical eastern religions: Turiyasangitananda Alice Coltrane, herself a swamini, or teacher, was a devotee of Swami Satchidananda (this is, by the way, one of her few recordings on fender-rhodes electric piano). Devadip Carlos Santana and Narada Michael Walden, the producer of the Don Cherry track here (himself a Buddhist), were devotees of Sri Chinmoy.

The remainder of the artists here are examples of how widespread the ideas preached by the cults became. I wasn't able to find evidence that members of Odyssey, Shanti, Seawind, Karma, etc. were actually involved in specific groups, but the content of these songs makes it clear these are all fellow travellers to this world. Perhaps the most strange of these is the track from the "mighty burner" Charles Earland which will change your opinion of him forever.

"Cult" is a word with terrible connotations. As someone who is himself a practitioner of a religion outside the mainstream, I choose to identify here with the people who are singing about their love of God, their hope for a better world, their joy at life, their mastery of the spiritual realms; and pull from these songs inspiration rather than doubt, and joy at revelation rather than fear of manipulation. Better this open celebration of life and spirit than the harsh dictates of many of today's right-wing fundamentalists. In a world of fanatical suicide bombers, communal and sectarian violence, churches mobilizing to deny rights to gays and immigrants, and self-righteous hypocrites preaching hellfire, the spirit of this "cult" music is refreshingly forward-looking and life-affirming.

I'm not gonna shave my head, renounce the world, and start chanting for money on the corner, but with music like this I'm sure gonna celebrate life a little more.

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