Popular jazz may not be the topic where you have seen Pharoah Sanders' name, he made music in other "spheres": the spheres of Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, and others.
Thembi is an album with many colours and desires to show things from this world, things which are hidden or things simply from nature - expressing them in its pure reality and sometimes in a wild, almost animalistic way. As we can read on the inner cover:
This album is dedicated to, and named after, Thembi Sanders. Thembi is an abbreviation of Nomathemba, which is an African Xhosa name, meaning hope, faith and love. Thembi is all hope, faith and love to Pharoah Sanders.
The album starts with the soft-sounding, pulsating Astral traveling, a piece by Lonnie Liston Smith (he also has an album titled Astral traveling, but now in this blog you can read a review about the album Renaissance). As Sanders's melody comes in, we can feel its ancient meaning, and some kind of piece in it. Its ambient, echoing atmosphere suddenly breaks when the second track opens: Red, black & green. Now it's something which is hard to write about. The completely free, vivid and harassed starting can be felt as the forces of the universe may struggle with each other, or all of the little movements of it become quickly loud. These hoarse brass sounds and huge drums later change: the chaos declines and something evolves out from it. It comes from behind it, under it or just one little melody gets the main role: the world shows some sort of system, piece and harmony. The music becomes a flowing journey amongst all of the emotions in the universe, amongst three colours which maybe describe everything: red, black & green. This song in music has an important meaning for me. As we go on, we mee the lighter Thembi with its cool rhythm and Sanders' fine melody again. But the album still keeps more secrets: Love, a bass solo by Cecil McBee, which is also a notable point on this album. The melody is slightly painful and lamenting, but rather woolgathering - I love when in a jazz song the other musicians get silent and one gets the main role and play a solo: then he uses his instrument in other way and shows its other abilities, makes experiments with it. Cecil McBee makes interesting slides and sometimes he let the bass' strings twang. At the end he changes to bow and the music leads through the last two tracks which make a nice frame on this album, it starts with a similar melody to Astral traveling. As we reach the end, everything becomes really vivid and animalistic, we can hear noises similar to nature's own noises which increase the character of this special atmosphere.
Thembi (live):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgBVWx_1TKs
Astral traveling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmL1da8VhiE
Red, black & green (part):
PRO/CREATION (for Pharoah Sanders)
Music, as language,
looking in to the world
with the spirit of a people
identifies itself more precisely
than label. And is there, always,
coming from every place
Pharoah has been - Africa, Asia,
& our long memory in America.
He, traveler in sound/spirit,
is direction firm, strong, firmly
connected to root. Expression
past any word. Energies of sound,
old as ear of any god known or not,
now redistributed here to move us
with Love, Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer.
Continuities, yes,
the song, memorial and now.
It is from here
Pharoah takes our ear
breaking the silences of our spirit & walls.
Remember slave bells?
And desire? Red, black & Green;
THEMBI, the woman, home.
(by Keorapetse Kgositsile from the original liner notes)
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