Dusting off Armenian, Greek, Arabic, Kurdish, Assyrian, Persian, Caucasian roots — and ‘a stillness that has not been darkened at all, and has the degree of density that leaves the Gurdjieffian silence immaculate.’

A Brooklyn-1973 brew of Compas — carnivalesque Haitian party music — and other Carib styles, mixed with funk, soul, psych. Treated guitars, ain’t-no-stoppin’ percussion.

Chocolate Mena leading three lineups — featuring Joe Henderson, Jerome Richardson, Alfredo Armenteros, and co — through Lalo Schifrin and Duke Pearson arrangements of core Latin and Jazz classics.

RH came through with Les McCann and Gerald Wilson. Prestige tried him out with Gene Ammons and Joe Pass, before this trio debut as leader, in 1965.
Top-notch, archetypal soul jazz — the opener states the case, the closer sums up — hard-swinging, blues-saturated, lots of chords, propulsive bass, open and gritty.
Nicely Latinized version of Song For My Father.

A suite of revolutionary anarchist songs from the Spanish Civil War — featuring Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd, Gato Barbieri, Dewey Redman and guitarist Sam Brown — plus Ornette’s War Orphans, three works by Carla Bley (who arranges brilliantly), and two by the great bassist himself, in tributes to Che Guevara and protests against the Vietnam War, on his tumultuous, bracing, expansive first outing as leader, in 1970.

The title — ‘coming together’ in Sanskrit, sometimes ‘the meeting-point of three rivers’ — alludes to the mixture here of jazz, contemporary composition and diverse world folk traditions.

With bassist Mats Eilertsen and saxophonist Tore Brunborg — and introducing the seductive, bluesy voice of Kristin Asbjornsen on Tord’s settings of the poetry of W.H. Auden.

Songs and ceremonies of the Yoruba, Dahomean, and Kongo-Angolan religions, performed by Marcus Portillo Dominguez, Candido Martinez and others, recorded in Cuba in the late 1950s by Lydia Cabrera.

Lavishly presents previously-unreleased and new material from Sonic Youth, Sun City Girls, Bardo Pond, Comets on Fire, Eternal Tapestry, Steve Gunn, Mouthus, D. Charles Speer and Wooden Wand.

Powerful new trio versions of Peacock classics, interspersed with recent compositions — including work by pianist Marc Copland and drummer Joey Baron — and a reading of Scott La Faro’s Gloria’s Step.
GP — bassist on Spiritual Unity — was eighty this year.