Deaf Dumb Blind (Summun Bukmun Umyun) album cover
Deaf Dumb Blind (Summun Bukmun Umyun)

Pharoah Sanders

1970
Impulse!

Pharoah Sanders’ follow-up to the unexpected counterculture hit Karma was this album of dense, polyrhythmic Afro-jazz improvisation featuring some amazing musicians: Woody Shaw on trumpet, Gary Bartz on alto sax, Lonnie Liston Smith on piano, Cecil McBee on bass, Clifford Jarvis on drums, and Anthony Wiles and Nat Bettis on percussion. (Most of the other players contributed percussion, too.) Its two side-long pieces, “Summun Bukmun Umyun” and “Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord,” feel endless, but in a good way. Solos rise up, then vanish again, like fish leaping out of a river; congas and shakers and bells and African thumb pianos jangle and rattle and hiss and ping, and Smith’s piano shimmers like sunlight on a lake.

Phil Freeman

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