Brother Ah - 1975 - Move Ever Onward

Brother Ah

1975

Move Ever Onward

01. Nature's Children (6:04)

02. Transfiguration (9:37)

03. Enthusiasm (4:48)

04. Spirits In The Night (6:38)

05. Transcendental March (Creation Song) (3:31)

06. Boundless Rhythm (5:05)

07. Celestial Strings (8:28)

08. Sweet Illumination/Chile Woman (9:25)

- Brother Ah / Conductor, drums, flute, french horn, sitar, nature sounds

- Eugene Cooper / Bass (2)

- Pat Patrick / Clarinet, saxophone [Tenor], woodwind [Shawn]

- John Belcher / Congas, drums

- Mbutu* / Congas, drums, tabla

- Omowale / Drums, african drum

- Steve Solder / Drums, oboe

- Ras Karby / Drums, kiti kup

- Olu / Electric piano, piano (3)

- Lance Dozier / Flute, pan flute

- Kufu Ptah / Gong, percussion, shakuhachi, space beam

- Ayida Tengemana / Guitar, vocals (5)

- Obowale / Guitar, percussion

- Dara / Kora, percussion (4), vocals (1)

- Barbara Mc Cloud / Koto

- Branice Inemugo Williams / Koto

- Carolyn Davis / Koto

- Elssi Atiba / Koto

- Harold Lucious / Koto

- Kamau / Performer (soloist) (3)

- Kassin / Performer (2)

- Khadijah / Performer

- Kwesi Gilbert Northern/ Performer (3), vocals (4)

- Alfred Wade, Jr. / Tambourine

- Aiisha / Vocals (2, 8)

In 1975, spiritual jazz pioneer Brother Ah (aka Robert Northern) ventured into a more worldly sound on his second album, incorporating robust African and Asian influences. Its eight eclectic tracks feature vocals from artists Dara, Aiisha, Kwesi Gilbert Northern and Ayida Tengemana, along with cacaphonous percussion, flute and stringed instrument flourishes.

In contrast to the more aggressive records in jazz’s protest-album history-think Archie Shepp’s Fire Music and Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra-are the lovey-dovey discs that more often than not offered Eastern-informed wisdom and always offered the missive “make love, not war.” Two lost LPs of that ilk by French hornist Brother Ah, aka Robert Northern, have recently been reissued on the Ikef label. (Ah is best known for appearing on John Coltrane’s Africa/Brass, a handful of Sun Ra discs and sundry other avant-garde recordings of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.)

Move Ever Onward, Ah’s peaceful joint from 1975, rests his message of love on a bed of East-meets-West instrumentation. Between the swami-stained guitar duet in “Enthusiasm” and the pizzicato mystery of “Celestial Strings,” you can almost smell the incense burning. Making peace with the atrocities presented by vocalist Aiisha is a task for a master mediator, however. Though she can hit those elusive notes in between the notes, she lacks the charm of say, a June Tyson, and if it weren’t for the mellowed and restrained saxophone solo by Pat Patrick that follows her wailings on “Transfiguration,” the track would be repeatedly subjected to my remote controlled wrath. Kwesi Gilbert Northern’s smoothster crooning on “Spirits in the Night,” on the other hand, charms and creates a mood like a Philly-sound slow-jam: soulful tranquility. Onward’s instrumentals continue to entrance 17 years after they were laid down, but the vocal tracks, with their fanciful encouragements of peace and love, have merely translated to kitsch in the 21st Century, bestowing Onward with alternate powers of inducing either nostalgia or nausea.