Deaf Dumb Blind (Summun Bukmun Umyun) cover

Deaf Dumb Blind (Summun Bukmun Umyun)

Released

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

Recommended by

Suggestions
Jazz Codes cover

Jazz Codes

Moor Mother
Heritage Of The Invisible II cover

Heritage Of The Invisible II

Aquiles Navarro, Tcheser Holmes
Compulsion cover

Compulsion

Andrew Hill
We Are Not The First cover

We Are Not The First

Hieroglyphic Being, J.I.T.U. Ahn-Sahm-Buhl
Stones cover

Stones

Mats Gustafsson, Colin Stetson
Emergency Exit cover

Emergency Exit

Throttle Elevator Music
Highlife cover

Highlife

Sonny Sharrock
Body and Soul cover

Body and Soul

David Murray Quartet