MUSIC MONDAY: “A Love Supreme” – The Best of Sacred Jazz (LISTEN)

by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Twitter: @marlonw IG: stlmarlonwest Spotify: marlonwest)

It’s Music Monday! In celebration of Easter and #JazzAppreciationMonth, here is a collection of Sacred Jazz.

When jazz emerged in the first half of the 20th century as music of liberation, entertainment and modernism, it provoked a backlash among cultural and religious-establishment figures.

Many of them went so far as to call it “the music of the devil.” By the middle 1950s, jazz had found its way into the church, sometimes employed in the ritualistic proceedings of liturgies and other traditional ceremonies, or presented in other thematic ways in overt religious homage.

Religion, in some respects, was there from the jump. Many African-American musicians grew up attending and performing in church services, and the imprint of that experience can be found in albums ranging from John Coltrane‘s landmark 1965 LP A Love Supreme to Miles Davis‘ Kind Of Blue.

It was inspired in part, in the words of Davis, “some other kind of sound I remembered from being back in Arkansas, when we were walking home from church and playing these bad gospels.”

This collection features Mahalia Jackson and Rosetta Tharpe contributions to gospel and sacred jazz, along with pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams, known for her Jazz Masses in the 1950s.

Duke Ellington, Kamasi Washington, Pharaoh Sanders, The Free Nationals and many others are on hand too.

Do enjoy.  As always, stay safe, sane, and kind.