Description
Label Review.
1969 rare deep spiritual jazz album. Soul Jazz Records.
Our Overview.
Lloyd McNeill the professor, painter and world-renowned jazz-flutist formed an “enlightened quartet” around 1970 that was in tune with the political climate of the time and reflected the sonic components which were influencing Alice Coltrane, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and electric Miles Davis. Essentially classical music, dance, gospel, funk, soul, and blues. Similar to the contemporary ways that hip-hop, house, disco, boogie and techno keep merging and morphing into new forms. Charting new algorithms.
His multi-disciplinary creative life led to encounters and friendships with Nina Simone, Picasso, Eric Dolphy, Nana Vasconceles and other legendary cultural figures. McNeill grew up through the era of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and his life and work is a reflection of those ideals. ‘Asha’ was the debut album by the Lloyd McNeill Quartet released on his own private-press record label, echoing the Civil Rights and African-American themes of the era - black economic empowerment and self-sufficiency – as well as a beautiful spirituality to the music. In the mid-1960s he moved to France where he became friends with Picasso, working with a number of émigré-jazz musicians whilst living in Paris.
In the late 1960s he taught jazz and painting workshops at the New Thing Art and Architecture Center in Washington. In the 1970s he travelled throughout Brazil and West Africa studying music and taught music anthropology in the US.
This album is released as a limited-edition 1000-copies worldwide LP (including download code), and limited-edition 1000-copies worldwide CD edition and also as a digital album on Soul Jazz Records. This album is released in conjunction with the album Lloyd McNeill – Washington Suite (1970) which was released last month also on Soul Jazz Records.