Herbie Hancock

LP version. Mwandishi is the 1971 Warner Bros. album that gave its name to the sextet Herbie Hancock led between the soul-jazz of Fat Albert Rotunda and the funk of Head Hunters. Each member took a Swahili name, Hancock's own meaning composer. The band turned toward long, open forms, electric textures and collective improvisation, far from the tight tunes of his Blue Note years. Three long pieces fill the two sides, and the sound owes much to the electric Miles Davis bands Hancock had played in at the end of the sixties. It is the first record by one of the most daring groups in early seventies jazz.

The sextet was Buster Williams (Mchezaji) on bass, Billy Hart (Jabali) on drums and Eddie Henderson (Mganga) on trumpet and flugelhorn. Bennie Maupin (Mwile) played bass clarinet and alto flute, Julian Priester (Pepo Mtoto) the trombones, and Hancock the Fender Rhodes. David Rubinson produced and Fred Catero engineered at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco. Leon Ndugu Chancler, Santana's percussionist José Areas and guitarist Ronnie Montrose were added on the opening track. Ostinato (Suite for Angela), dedicated to Angela Davis, rides a bass figure in 15/8 for thirteen minutes. Over it the horns and the Rhodes pile up layers of echo and delay. You'll Know When You Get There is a slow, floating ballad, its voicings for flute, bass clarinet and brass drenched in reverb and Echoplex delay. Priester's side-long Wandering Spirit Song goes furthest out. It moves from written themes into passages of free group playing, and then gathers itself again around the theme. Critical standing has grown with time: AllMusic rates the album five stars, and The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings gives it three out of four. The same band went on to record Crossings for Warner Bros. and Sextant for Columbia, pushing these ideas further with synthesizers.

This is the Music On Vinyl edition (MOVLP2188, under licence from Warner), released in 2019 as a single 180 gram LP.