Description
Relocating to Paris he made a number of highly influential albums, such as Blas, that broached the essential themes of freedom and racial equality, and tapped into the bedrock of African-American music. Gospel and blues were a major part of the work, which also had a strong avant-garde sensibility. The band featured stellar vocalist Jeanne Lee and members of Art Ensemble Of Chicago. These trailblazing artists who combined jazz, poetry and radical politics made a definitive musical statement.
Blas crosses the sacred-profane divide and liberally traveling through time and space, to create as much pre-jazz as free jazz, the tag given to Shepp for which he had much ambivalence. His artistic outlook was always broad, taking him from a graceful reprise of Duke Ellingtons Sophisticated Lady to the upbeat bustle of Touareg, a rhythmic tour de force for the Shepp-Jones-Favors trio that reflects the great inspiration Shepp drew from his appearance at the historic Pan-African festival in Algiers in July, 1969, shortly before he went into the studio to record Blas.
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