The Awakening

The Awakening’s debut album Hear, Sense and Feel is a landmark spiritual jazz statement that captures the restless, creative energy of early‑1970s Chicago and the vanguard of the Black Jazz Records catalog. Recorded in 1972 at Streeterville Studios and newly available again after years as a coveted collector’s item, the album finds the group balancing deep groove, free improvisation, and Afrocentric consciousness in a way that feels timeless and urgently contemporary. 

Hear, Sense and Feel was the ninth release on Black Jazz Records and the first full‑length statement from The Awakening, a Chicago ensemble whose members straddled the city’s AACM avant‑garde and its thriving soul‑jazz scene. Across seven compositions, the group moves fluidly between modal jazz, spiritual jazz, fusion, and jazz‑funk, creating music that is optimistic, cerebral, and unabashedly soulful. 

Recorded by producer and label co‑owner Gene Russell at Streeterville Studios in Chicago, the album brings the warmth and immediacy of an in‑the‑room performance, with every instrument captured in vivid detail. Originally issued in 1972 and long out of print, the record has since achieved near‑mythic status among collectors, often trading for hundreds of dollars when original pressings surface.