Blue Notes for Mongezi

What is the actual sound of grief, of processing that tumult of emotions in real time? Is it only anguish and sadness, or is it more complex than that? South Africa’s most profound jazz export, the Blue Notes, document that anguished process with this 1976 double album. Their longtime bandmate, trumpeter Mongezi Feza, had passed away from untreated pneumonia at a London hospital at the age of 30, and the nerves are raw throughout. Barely nine days after receiving the news, saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, pianist Chris McGregor, bassist Johnny Dyani, and drummer Louis Moholo convened and worked through such conflicted feelings, making for one of the most remarkable documents in improvised music. There’s no plan, no roadmap, just men conveying unbridled grief, agony, fury, despair, joy, and by the end, a sense of exhaustion and catharsis.