The Black Unity Trio

★★★★ Al – Fatihah SALAAM/GOTTA GROOVE. LP

Only album by short-lived avant-garde jazz trio from industrial Cleveland.

Named after the first chapter of the Koran, the cover – a blurred image of three unsmiling polo-necked black men – projects a forbidding image of political defiance and religious anonymity. Yet this sole independent 1969 release might be one of the most fierily beautiful and welcoming epistles of cosmic free jazz ever recorded. All three players – saxophonist/double bassist Yusuf Mumin, cellist Abdul Wadud, drummer Hasan Shahid – had deep roots in the Cleveland music scene with families who knew Albert Ayler and Sun Ra, and all had their heads turned by witnessing John Coltrane live in 1966. This official reissue, cut from the original master tape, sounds astonishing, a swirling combination of hard rock drumming, eddying Arabic melodies, cool meditative cello interludes and total sonic attack. The group ended in 1970 following Shahid’s arrest as a conscientious objector.

It’s astonishing to think where they could have gone next.

Andrew Male