ARCHIE SHEPP — Live At The Panafrican Festival (review)

ARCHIE SHEPP — Live At The Panafrican Festival album cover Live album · 1971 · Avant-Garde Jazz Buy this album from MMA partners
2.5/5 ·
snobb
Archie Shepp's debut on French BYG label - the beginning of series of interesting recordings - is quite unusual work. Recorded live with all-stars team (it's enough to mention Grachan Moncur III on trombone and bassist Alan Silva among others)it contains just two long African ritual rhythms-based compositions. Fortunately this music has not much in common with fashionable ethno-fusion invented few decades later to increase sales of fake African ritual masks to naive tourists. Native Touareg and Algerian musicians participated in recordings (both compositions are recorded during First Pan-African Cultural Festival in North Africa)gave true desert vibes to music recorded.

I believe on the wave of almost cult interest to African music/culture in time of release this album sounded as fashionable and possibly almost revolutionary. But from time distance of more than four decades listener wouldn't be pleased by bootleg level sound/mix quality,unfocused compositions concentrated on repetitive African rhythms with noisy brass sound over tribe pulsation and hardly understandable (because of noisy drumming on the front of the sound mix) poetry. Being a valuable historical evidence of its time this album is far not so attractive in musical sense. Later re-release on CD (together with another album,coming from 1969 - Blasé)didn't demonstrate improve in sound mix/quality.

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