Khan Jamal’s Creative Arts Ensemble - Drum Dance To The Motherland

In what is an exceptionally busy and typically high-ceilinged few weeks for Aguirre, this reissue of vibraphonist Khan Jamal's private press grail from 1973 stands alone and aloft. Recorded in the basement of a Philadelphia coffeehouse at the end of the previous year by engineer Mario Falana, and  featuring Jamal's vibraphone, marimba and clarinet contributions alongside those of four jazz-oriented players, it's tempting to draw direct comparisons with Sun Ra, that other famous denizen of The City of Brotherly Love (that is if he was even of this Earth), and the context of free jazz that was rife at that time. Drum Dance to the Motherland broadly exists within that taxonomy, but was also stretching out into different terrain. How do you escape the parameters of the parameter-less? Jamal did so by seemingly freeing the group from any concessions to jazz orthodoxy at all, leaning heavily into free music spirituality, dub-informed mutations and guitar harmonics. I'm reluctant to declare this entirely unique for 1973 - aside from Ra, there's some kinship with Don Cherry's Relativity Suite from the same year and Alice Coltrane's Transfiguration or Atomic Peace (which predates this by a few years), and likely several others i'm yet to hear or recall - but i can't escape how relevant Drum Dance sounds to current concerns, operating at the intersection of traditions and left-turning into new possibles with an instinctual ease. You could convince me this came from tomorrow if only the future didn't feel so hopeless, for this is music truly born of beauty, hope, and vision. In which case, let us retreat to the promised land of yesterday once again...