Karma (Pharoah Sanders album)
| Karma | ||||
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| Studio album by Pharoah Sanders | ||||
| Released | 1969 | |||
| Recorded | February 14 & 19, 1969 at RCA Studios, New York City | |||
| Genre | Avant-garde jazz, spiritual jazz | |||
| Length | 37:30 | |||
| Label | Impulse! Records | |||
| Pharoah Sanders chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
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| Rolling Stone | (favorable) |
Karma is a 1969 jazz recording by the American tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders.
The social and political upheavals of the 1960s have been cited as a major factor in the emergence of a new stylistic trend in jazz, with a very different emphasis to previous subgenres such as swing, be-bop and hard bop. Many of the artists involved in the making of this new music, variously called "energy music", "the new thing", "free jazz", and "spiritual jazz", released records on Bob Thiele's Impulse! Records label. As Ashley Kahn shows, several musicians, often those who had either played with or been influenced by John Coltrane, such as his widow Alice Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, and Leon Thomas, began exploring new thematic and musical ideas, often associated with non-western religious and musical traditions. The new "spiritual jazz" became a vehicle for exploring new musical and non-musical concepts, as well as for extended self-expression, laying bare "a mirror into the self", as Nat Hentoff put it in his liner notes to John Coltrane's 1966 recording Meditations, on which Sanders was also featured.
Coltrane had begun the trend with his incorporation of elements of Indian and African music: as early as 1961, he recorded the song "India" at the Village Vanguard with Ahmed Abdoul-Malik on tampura, and, in 1965, he recorded "Kulu se Mama" with narration in Entobes by Juno Lewis. The influence of African music was seen as a link to the heritage of the many black musicians involved in jazz, and with some, such as Archie Shepp, it became associated with a defiant expression of black identity, in the fight for freedom and equal rights. Characteristics of the music that was produced included an intense rhythmic focus, the use of exotic instrumentation, and extended, often dissonant, improvisation leading to states of ecstasy or transcendence (which, in some cases, such as that of John Coltrane's late music, was linked to the use of hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD). Though the ideological strain was much more obvious in Shepp's music than Sanders', the musical influence was just as pronounced: virtually all of his recordings as a leader from this late 1960s/early 1970s period contain some kind of African percussion, and other non-western features such as Leon Thomas' distinctive yodelling, apparently learnt from African pygmies. In addition, his song titles, like Coltrane's, often have religious significance: for instance, a tune recorded as "Prince of Peace" on Izipho Zam and "Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah" on Jewels of Thought (both 1969).
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