Infinite Spirit Music - Live Without Fear (Remastered) (1980/2019) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

"I recorded 'Live Without Fear' on May 31 1979 with some of my friends. We drove up into Evanston from Chicago in 3 cars on a day that smelled good and spoke all day sunshine… to 'Live Without Fear' means to live in material reality with faith… Peace on you!" - Soji Ade' 2018

With a price of well over $1000 on the few occasions the original LP has hit the market, 'Live Without Fear' is a beautiful album of humble purity and peaceful spiritual jazz vibes that lives up to the hype. With the blessing of creator Soji Ade and colleague Kahil El Zabar, we're delighted to be able to finally share their music with you, 40 years since it was recorded. As so often with private pressings, few copies were pressed and those that were suffered from little or no distribution. However, with our new remaster and with added liner notes from Chicago music archivist Steven Emmerman, their message of love and spiritual unity can now be revealed and appreciated worldwide.

Britain's Jazzman Records has form when it comes to spiritual jazz. Its series Spiritual Jazz: Modal, Esoteric and Deep Jazz, now one release away from its tenth volume, has made accessible again some of the most worthwhile but near-lost African American music of the 1970s. The label also supports modern day British musicians. Stand out home-grown releases during 2018 were Nat Birchall's Cosmic Language and Nick Woodmansey's Emanative's Earth.

Jazzman rarely puts a foot wrong (the ninth volume of Spiritual Jazz, a perplexingly off-target trawl through Blue Note's mid-1960s hard bop catalogue, was a one-off glitch). With Chicago-based Infinite Spirit Music's Live Without Fear, the label has once more hit the motherload. Originally self-released on keyboard player Soji Adebayo's Ancient Afrika label in 1979, the album is a deep-strata delight positioned on the porous Afrofuturist border between spiritual and political concerns.

The album kicks off with two four-minute, chant and percussion-based invocations. Track three, "Bright Tune," is the first of three extended pieces featuring Adebayo's trippy electric keyboards, a percussion trio led by Kahil El'Zabar, and reed player Henry Huff, whose palette ranges between gritty tenor saxophone and ethereal oboe. Approximately speaking, the group sounds like a stripped down Sun Ra Arkestra crossed with the group John Coltrane assembled for Kulu Sé Mama (Impulse, 1966) and the one Shamek Farrah led on First Impressions (Strata-East, 1974).

Of the seven musicians heard on Live Without Fear, only Adebayo and El'Zabar are still active. The others have either passed or retired. El'Zabar has recorded prolifically, with David Murray, Wadada Leo Smith, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, and was for a while chair of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Adebayo has kept a lower profile, focusing on community-based music-and-dance events.

Tracklist:
01. Children's Song
02. Ritual
03. Father Spirit, Mother Love
04. Bright Tune
05. Rasta
06. Soul Flower
07. Live Without Fear


Thanks to the Original customer!