SONGS OF FREEDOM
EIGHT ESSENTIAL BLACK LIBERATION JAZZ TRACKS
In the late 1960s, as Black Americans fought for equal rights, music started to reflect their calls to action. Nina Simone wondered what real freedom felt like, and James Brown encouraged black people to proudly proclaim their race. While black music has always been a refuge, these songs expressed a new way of thinking, combating racism with unflinching pride.
Jazz musicians including Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra and John Coltrane also sought transcendence with their art, and through shrieking horns and deconstructed rhythms, they set forth a new wave of energy music. It was called free jazz, a loose, improvised blend less tied to structure, and its creation has been credited to Coleman, who started playing these frenetic arrangements on a white plastic saxophone in 1959. The music, and its focus, evolved over the next decade: Sun Ra believed that black people would never find peace on Earth and should live on other planets. Coltrane, through his saxophone, blew shrill notes to summon higher powers.
Some jazz purists weren’t thrilled with this “new thing”. Still, the music persisted. Through Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and others, free jazz started tapping into black consciousness, and songs like Journey In Satchidananda and The Creator Has A Master Plan helped listeners escape the despair of everyday life.
In 2015, when America was in peril once again — unarmed black people were being killed by the police at an alarming rate, and the country’s ideological divides grew wider in the run-up to the presidential election — the music responded in kind. In December 2014, R&B singer D’Angelo released Black Messiah, his most political album to date, and the following March, Kendrick Lamar put out To Pimp A
Butterfly, an avant-rap album that embraced free jazz. Two months later, saxophonist Kamasi Washington, a major contributor on Butterfly, released his own bold statement — a three-hour jazz album called The Epic — which, through its collection of big band, funk, spiritual music, gospel fusion and R&B, was meant to heal a new generation of black people fighting against overt oppression. Suddenly, jazz was cool again, and acts like Shabaka & the Ancestors and Irreversible Entanglements continue pushing forward.
To understand where black liberation jazz may head next, it’s helpful to listen to where it’s been. Here are 8 essential songs from the late 1960s and 70s when the subgenre was just being established — a list that highlights tracks that were considered underground.
Sonny Sharrock, Black Woman (1969)
The title track of guitarist Sonny Sharrock’s debut album was meant to convey the paralysing stress felt by black women every day in this country. For much of the song, Sharrock’s wife — experimental vocalist Linda Sharrock — emits primal screams, as the intensity of Sonny’s rapid guitar chords grows more riotous. The track might be jarring, but it effectively captures the pain of being treated as subhuman.
Hal Singer, Malcolm X (1971)
Malcolm X is a standout from tenor saxophonist Hal Singer’s album
Blues And News, which was released only in France. Singer is from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was two when the Tulsa massacre took place in his Greenwood community. Malcolm X pays homage to the civil rights leader through stacked drums, staggered piano chords and Singer’s billowing saxophone solo in a meditative mix of jazz and soul — a rightful nod to the historical figure.
Mtume Umoja Ensemble, Baba Hengates (1972)
Long before James Mtume was known for the hit song Juicy Fruit in 1983, he led a jazz ensemble in the early 70s and released Alkebu-Lan: Land Of The
Blacks on Strata-East Records. The album, Mtume declared on the opening
Invocation, was a “humble offering to the unity of the entire black nation”. The bandleader also denounced the term “jazz” — rather, he said, the album was black music, pure and unfiltered.
Pharoah Sanders, Izipho Zam (1973)
The concluding track of Sanders’
Izipho Zam (My Gifts) is a sprawling 28-minute collage of West African percussion, meditative chants and Sanders’ screeching saxophone. Around the 15-minute mark, the arrangement settles into a hypnotic drum break that still sounds incredibly fresh and modern, 47 years after its release.
The Descendants of Mike and Phoebe, Coltrane (1974)
It’s easy to think a song titled Coltrane would be about John, but the composition feels more like an ode to Alice, the saxophonist’s spiritually centred wife. Composed by Bill Lee (Spike Lee’s father), the arrangement takes cues from Alice’s Journey In Satchidananda as a mystical jazz opus with strong transcendental power.
World’s Experience Orchestra, The Prayer (1975)
The spiritual jazz ensemble World’s Experience Orchestra recorded its album Beginning Of A New Birth in the basement of a Boston church, and its concluding song is a 14-minute suite of meditative chants and choral moans. On the surface, it plays like a gospel song, but it was meant to soothe a nation of black people doing their best to persevere. The Prayer was remarkably tranquil, a needed respite from societal strife.
Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson, The Liberation Song (Red, Black And Green)
(1975)
Gil Scott-Heron threw the gauntlet in the early 70s when, on his most famous song, The Revolution Will Not
Be Televised, he warned listeners of a pending uprising — at some point in time. There’d be no running from it, he said, “the revolution will be live”. His anthemic The Liberation Song (Red, Black And Green) with Brian Jackson also rings true now. “I see the blackness of my people,” sang vocalist Victor Brown. “You know they’re calling for freedom everywhere.”
Brother Ah, Transcendental March (Creation Song) (1975)
It’s a song about awakening and staring down fear, even as the unknown lurks around the corner. “I am not afraid,” a poet repeats with conviction. “I am not afraid.” Brother Ah’s second album was more straightforward than his 1972 debut, Sound Awareness, yet its convergence of African folk, traditional jazz and Indian rhythms was still quite ambitious. And while Transcendental March was the album’s most accessible song, it was still very much Brother Ah (who died in May): contemplative, otherworldly and enlightening.