Search - Khan Jamal :: Peace Warrior

Great to have this ground-breaking disc back in print

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 08/17/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Originally issued on the Stash label in 1989, this disc defined for me an emerging new jazz ezzthetic: hip, in-your-face, counter-cultural, but strangely apolitical. Certainly not the brash, Charlie Haden LMO approach, with its gratuitous anti-establishment, left-wing-pandering MO.



Rather, what we have here is the heart-cry of a Philadelphia (city of brotherly love?!)-based black man, a man who most certainly has felt the subtle oppression of just-beneath-the-surface racism, but who has emerged with a glorious vision of freedom and integrity intact. Quite an accomplishment, and not to be discounted.



Featuring the fabulous and criminally underrecorded Monette Sudler on guitar, this music floats and stings, branding listeners with way smart soundscapes that were to become the seed ground for such things as Matt Shipp's Blue Label.



Reissuers Random Chance were wise to choose the gently anthemic tune "Peaceful Warrior" as the title for their re-release; it certainly is a high point on a set lacking any weak tracks.



Sounding even more essential nearly two decades later, this disc establishes Khan Jamal as one of the pioneers of Nu Jazz.



Highly recommended."