MCCOY TYNER — Asante (review)

MCCOY TYNER — Asante album cover Album · 1974 · Post Bop Buy this album from MMA partners
5/5 ·
Rexorcist
I've been on and off of studying the works of McCoy Tyner, largerly because a lot of jazz fans didn't seem to talk about him when I first checked him out. This is all despite the fact that I gave The Real McCoy a 100 at the time. I might change that on a revisit, but since I'm on a spiritual jazz kick, I have a good reason to check out more of his works. In this time I've also gotten through Sama Layuca and Extensions, and now I'm on what might be his most outright spiritual and beautiful-sounding album I've heard so far: Asante.

The opener Malika in a way represents what I love about spiritual jazz. Not only does it treat the piano like a harp in a choir, but it's good at mingling jazz with that sound. On top of that, we get some simple, quiet tribal atmospheres, losing us in a desert where we can dream up any myth we want. The title track is more focused on a cool vibe with the spiritual segments working more as a heavy backdrop for the cooler jazz atmosphere, but when our lady singer kicks in, she carries the power of the choir with her, as if she's greeting you into Heaven, not because you're dead but because you're a guest. This song only lasts an unfortunate six minutes but the effect is still strong, almost like Tyner's own variant of Pharoah Sanders' Colors, except it's a close to a side and not a whole album.

Side B kicks off with Goin' Home, which has a couple African instruments providing percussion but carries a jazzy sound giving the song a welcome identity of its own that never breaks the calm of the album's vibes. Now this song focuses on repetition a bit more than side A, and a couple times this gets drawn out for about 20 seconds before things get changed up. But when they change, we get something kinda wild. But I would still call it the worst tack on the album. The final track, Fulfillment, also focuses more on the jazz influence rather than the spiritual, but connects with the first half well with a heavy use of piano riffs which are constantly unpredictable and catchy. It really brings the vibes of the previous 3 tracks together.

This is another surprisingly hefty and healthy jazz album by one of the lesser-talked about but still relevant artists for jazz fans. Albums like Asante prove that Tyner was just as capable as many of the greats and I'm glad he decided to go spiritual during the 70's. Easily an album I'll come back to.
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