Drum Dance to the Motherland

VINYL FORMAT. A special treat for the vinyl hounds! The long-awaited first vinyl reissue of The Khan Jamal Creative Arts Ensemble's almost-impossible-to-find, 300 copies only, 1972 Drum Dance to the Motherland. Newly remastered and sounding great, this is a unique, uncategorizable expression of Afrocentric America - freely-improvised (but not necessarily "free jazz"), pulsing, moving, restless, yet restful. Recording live in the group's hometown of Philadelphia and originally released on the now-defunct Dogtown Records, the players masterfully combine all the currents of Afro-American music - jazz, R&B, blues, funk and more - in a manner not imitative of, but somehow informed by, the spiritually Afro-astral work of Sun Ra. Drums, percussion, bass, guitar, clarinets and the balaphon-influenced marimba and vibes of bandleader Khan Jamal are all wondrously-integrated and propelled into other dimensions by the heavy, dub-like use of live echo and reverb by "sixth member" sound engineer Mario Falana (dancer/actress Lola Falana's brother!). Trippy! There is an abundance of fine playing in these grooves: tasty guitar, propulsive bass lines, layers of percussion, wailing clarinets, Jamal's vibes and marimba, all periodically carried farther out on waves of echo, and farther in via cavernous reverb.