Pharoah Sanders - Jewels Of Thought

Pharoah Sanders was (yet another) pupil of Coltrane. I guess him and Eric Dolphy are the most known pupils but they both developed their own style and philosophy. Sanders decided to further the ideas of fusing jazz with its African roots and he does this marvelously well.

His music is somewhere between the border of post bop and free jazz but never crossing on either side too much. During his Impulse! period he released a series of albums highly inspired by Africa and spiritualism. Most of the tracks on those albums are20+ minute long sessions filled with all kinds of different African drums and instruments with Sander soloing like a motherfucker on top of it. His ferocity is unmatched on these albums and the Coltrane approach is highly felt and enjoyed.

Jewels Of Thought is the second album from these series and I consider this to be equally good as his most famous album, Karma, is. Just like on Karma we can enjoy the pleasant (but somewhat disturbing) yodeling of Leon Thomas. It's some kind of African chanting, I didn't dig deep to find out what it really is but it sounds like yodeling and it's awesome. This sort of singing gives this album a very pleasant feeling and serves as a bridge between the soloist parts.

All in all this is really great and highly enjoyable even for non jazz fans.

Download.

P.S. I missed the year while tagging. It's 1969 and not 1970.