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Seventeen years. That's how long it took the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra to make their first record. Founded in 1961 by Horace Tapscott as the Underground Musicians Association, the orchestra had weathered the Watts uprising, the ferment of the Black Arts Movement, a decade-long residency at the Immanuel United Church of Christ - all without committing a single note to vinyl. Not for lack of industry interest, but by choice: Tapscott wanted to build a community, not a recording career.
It was T…
For nearly two decades, Horace Tapscott and his Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra made music without making records. They played in parks, on street corners, at fundraisers, churches, community centers - anywhere the people needed them. While the rest of the jazz world chased contracts and critics, Tapscott was building something else entirely: an ark for the Black arts in the heart of Los Angeles.
The story of The Call is inseparable from this larger project. When long-time jazz devotee Tom Albach f…
There's a particular light in the music of Los Angeles's spiritual jazz community of the late 1970s - something warm, searching, unpretentious. Adele Sebastian's sole album as a leader catches that light perfectly. Recorded in 1981 and released on the legendary Nimbus West imprint, Desert Fairy Princess stands among the finest documents of West Coast creative music from the period.
Sebastian was born in Riverside, California in 1956 into a musical family - her mother played piano with the Albert…
Big tip! This is it! Chicago spiritual jazz master Kahil El'Zabar delivers one of the most powerful live recordings in recent memory! Captured over two unforgettable nights at "mu" in London - July 15th & 16th, 2024 - this is music as ancient ritual, as communion, as healing force. El'Zabar created new material specifically for these performances, alongside reimagined arrangements of classics like Wayne Shorter's "Footprints", Gershwin's "Summertime", and Duke Ellington & Juan Tizol's "Caravan".…
Nat Birchall, saxophonist and composer, one of the most authentic voices in contemporary spiritual jazz, presents Path of Enlightenment, a sonic journey through rarely explored scales and modes, from Ethiopia to Byzantium, from ancient Egypt to South Africa.
For this new recording, Birchall deliberately chose the quartet format - tenor sax, piano, double bass and drums - seeking a cohesion and intimacy that allows the music to breathe and tell its story. Joining him are his trusted collaborators…
Our latest Holy Grail reissue is this private press spiritual jazz gem out of California from Rickey Kelly and his vibes & marimba. Features Diane Reeves (vocals) & Adele Sebastian (flute)!
With 20 years passing since his first foray into recorded jazz, Nat Birchall now ranks as one of the premier saxophonists of his generation. With several highly acclaimed albums in the locker, he now returns with his most ambitious project yet: a tribute to the legend that is Yusef Lateef titled, The Storyteller - A Musical Tribute to Yusef Lateef.
Nat Birchall on the project: "When Jazzman Gerald first mentioned to me the idea of doing an album as a tribute to the jazz giant Dr Yusef A. Lateef,…
*2026 repress* "One of the most important records ever made, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme was his pinnacle studio outing, that at once compiled all of the innovations from his past, spoke to the current of deep spirituality that liberated him from addictions to drugs and alcohol, and glimpsed at the future innovations of his final two and a half years. Recorded over two days in December 1964, Trane's classic quartet-- Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and Jimmy Garrison -- stepped into the studio and …
"An album that puts jazz at the center. Emanuele Cisi records his first release for Mono Jazz (Right Tempo) returning to those elements from which everything begins and in which everything is fulfilled. With melody and swing, a deep sense of blues—not just as a style but as a fundamental state of music—and spirituality, the improvisation here becomes a space where the pieces reveal themselves as springboards for self-expression.
Rushin’ is not merely a collection of references and tributes, alth…
At first glance, the idea that McCoy Tyner and the Grateful Dead might share musical DNA seems like a stretch. One built frameworks to support Coltrane’s spiritual flights—rewriting the jazz harmony playbook while turning chords into flexible architecture. The others were a San Francisco circus of psychedelic chaos and Americana grooves, an improvising rock band whose mythology often overshadowed their musicianship. On the surface, Tyner and the Dead appear to come from different galaxies. But l…
From the same producer who brought you Brahja, Kadef, EEG Coherence, Watermelancholia and Nebulizer, Infinity Zero offers yet another journey through shimmering soundscapes, soulful expression and rhythmical trance. “Modern jazz multi-instrumentalist, Devin Brahja Waldman, is an underrated force to be reckoned with, within the international alternative jazz scene. Brahja (the band) is an exemplary collective of musicians, all who fall in-line with modern jazz philosophy and have reflected it wit…
One of the best kept secrets in contemporary British Jazz, Leeds based collective Work Money Death returns to ATA Records with a towering gesture of free improvisation. Born from the loss of guitarist Chris Earl Dawkins, A Portal to Here draws on a deep well of Spiritual Jazz to soar toward new heights of sonic transcendence. Music as testament, tribute, healing and remembrance.
Talk Show is a new duo collaboration featuring Steph Richards on trumpets and resonating surfaces and Qasim Naqvi on drums, almglocken bells and modular synthesizer. Having worked together on other projects for almost two decades, Miss America, to be released by We Jazz Records on 21st November, marks their first, pure duo collaboration – a space to engage with a sonic language they’ve been cultivating together for years. The album was recorded live, with Qasim crafting real-time electronics and…
Sixty years after Horace Tapscott founded the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra in Los Angeles, the flame burns bright in Berlin. Efuru is the first album by the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arktet, led by saxophonist and composer Fuasi Abdul-Khaliq - former assistant conductor, arranger and longtime member of Tapscott's legendary UGMAA collective. This is not nostalgia. This is continuation. This is the real deal.
Recorded live at the Schlot Jazz Club in Berlin on May 20, 2024, Efuru brings together the larg…
Portland trio offering a distinctive contribution to the lineage of Great Black Music. All is Sound - now reissued - positions itself at the intersection of several African-American musical traditions: the meditative modality of Alice Coltrane's ashram recordings, the cosmic expansiveness of Sun Ra's quieter moments, and the devotional intensity that Pharoah Sanders brought to his late-period work.
The Cosmic Tones Research Trio comprises alto saxophonist and composer Roman Norfleet, cellist and…
Limited edition 180g vinyl. Stoughton tip-on gatefold jacket. Restored artwork + previously unseen family photos. In 1993, when Chicago's Adler Planetarium commissioned Kelan Phil Cohran to score their "African Skies" program, they tapped into a mind that moved effortlessly between galaxies and neighborhoods, between ancestral rhythm and modern invention. Three decades later, Listening Position presents the first official reissue of this cosmic masterpiece - a recording that stands as both a spi…
The term “private” is used quite liberally in the promotion of rare groove compilations these days. The team at Tramp Records tends to be rather defensive when it comes to such terms. Although, and this should not be misunderstood as arrogance, label boss Tobias Kirmayer & his crew have been doing nothing else for 22 years, strictly speaking. Every compilation series from the Upper Bavarian label, be it the “Movements,” “Feeling Nice,” “Praise Poems,” or “Can You Feel It” series, specializes in …
Manizeh's debut album "Mahku" is a bold entry into the world of contemporary spiritual jazz. Co-produced by Leiter labelmate ganavya—who recently released the celebrated "Daughter of a Temple" and "Nilam"—and Leiter co-founder Felix Grimm, the album was recorded in early 2025 at the label’s renowned Funkhaus Studio in Berlin.
"Mahku" comprises eight chants, including a striking reimagining of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” sung by Manizeh’s daughter, Mahku Rimer. The album’s title, meaning “eclips…
*2025 repress* Universal Consciousness is the fifth solo album by Alice Coltrane, released in 1971 on Impulse! Records. Universal Consciousness builds nicely on albums that came before it. It grows out of the unbridled celebration of her late husband's life on A Monastic Trio and the soulful wanderings of her most well-known record, Journey in Satchadananda.In The Wire's "100 Records That Set the World on Fire," David Toop writes, "[Universal Consciousness] clearly connects to other dyspeptic ja…