Follow GRRAWR on Instagram to get a weekly record review every Wednesday in your IG feed.Don Cherry, Om Shanti Om (Black Sweat, 2020)
I don’t like this thing that happens to me whenever I get close to anything jazz-related, where my mind just goes “You can’t get it, you’re too ignorant”. I mean, I’m just trying to enjoy my music and put my feelings into words, you dick. What is it that I’m supposed to know? Some might argue I’m grossly under-qualified to run a music-related Instagram account, and to these people I say: what are you doing with your life that you go around pontificating about qualifications on Instagram?
Now, in this particular case I’m dealing with a very cool document: a live recording of Don Cherry with a version of his Organic Music Society on Italian TV in 1976 (Italy was unexpectedly on board with free and spiritual jazz in the 70s). On this very hi-quality recording, Cherry and the band (wife Moki Cherry on tanpura, Gian Piero Pramaggiore on guitar and flute, Nana Vasconcelos on percussions and berimbau) go all-in with a very fried, psychedelic, meditative hippie approach.
The eight mostly improvised pieces freely mash up Eastern and Western influences: ritual chants, afro-latin drumming, folky acoustic guitar, and Cherry’s pocket trumpet goes from screaming fire music to soothing, melancholic Latin American melodies. Some of the compositions sound dusty and feel like a night spent in the desert listening to ghosts and spirits. Others are green and luxurious like the Amazon forest.
It guess it could be a cool record to meditate to, but I don’t know because I don’t do that. You can certainly use it to travel to a parallel dimension where all kinds of people live together in peace. “Koye” and “Dissolution”, on side B, are brilliant clusterfucks, alephs of sound—which I guess was the whole mission of the Organic Music Society. This record represents a cool opportunity to witness it happen live, intimately and spontaneously.
Click here to listen to Om Shanti Om on Bandcamp.
Follow GRRAWR on Instagram to get a weekly record review every Wednesday in your IG feed.
