Lon Moshe Southern Freedom Arkestra - 1977 - Love Is Where the Spirit Lies

Lon Moshe Southern Freedom Arkestra 

1977

Love Is Where the Spirit Lies

01. Prayer For Saude 3:07

02. Love Is Where The Spirit Lies 14:53

03. The Hutch 4:27

04. Doin' The Carvin' For Thabo 5:37

05. Survival Raga #9 8:56

06. Low Ghost 6:10

07. Ballad For Bobby Hutcherson 6:54

Recorded June 3, 1976 and September 14, 1977 at Arrest Recording Studio, Washington, DC.

6-String Bass [Fender] – Tommy Spencer

Bass – Calvin Craddock, Freddie Williams (tracks: 6 ,7)

Drums – Hugh Peterson (tracks: 6, 7), Reggie Brisbane, Jr.

Flugelhorn, Trumpet, Shekere – Marvin Daniels

Guitar – "Ras Mel" Melvin Glover, Jr.

Percussion, Congas, Bells – Ndikho Xaba

Piano – Atiba Rudy Tyson (tracks: 6, 7), Nathaniel "Nat" Lee, Timothy A. Hall

Vibraphone, Marimba – Lon Moshe

Vibraphone – Ben Wilson

Vocals – Robin Bolling

Vocals, Arranged By – Eka-Ete Jackie Lewis

Words By [Poetry], Violin – Ngoma Hill

Originally released on Black Fire in 1977 (BF19804)

On my first encounter with Lon Moshe & The Southern Freedom Arkestra, I was immediately drawn to the group’s 1977 album title, Love Is Where the Spirit Lies. The difficult task of dealing with a fringe, complex, and sought-after album feels like encountering a big tree with old roots and wanting to explain how the tree got so big. I was quite curious about the people behind this title, as well as the histories. traditions and philosophies that produced them.

Strut Records has really done a much-needed public service with this first-ever international reissue that digs deep into Black Fire’s catalog. This collection features a beautiful and affirming reservoir of spiritualists, teachers, musicians and revolutionaries, including Lon Moshe. The vibraphonist was described by friend and bandmate Plunky Branch as an avant-gardist who loved Tribe, Strata-East, and Sun Ra. Moshe’s unorthodox high energy, creativity, and theatre are some of his most befitting descriptions in this work.

This album’s visual principles are localized, largely stemming from the contributions of musicians within the Black Fire stable. It is a product of Moshe’s genius as well as the people who are present in its making. Moshe was described as someone who loved how music functioned in the community, recognizing its utility in organizing class interests. He believed in music’s material capacity to communicate issues, ideology, and criticisms of imperial logic. The album’s aesthetic practice of centering narrative also features, for example, the declarative words of poet Ngoma Ya Uhuru in “Prayer for Saude,” the album’s opening track: “We face East to the creator, our old-time religions lost in centuries past.” Uhuru’s verse shows a reading of place in the world, and an acknowledgment of cosmologies that existed before Western influence. The timelessness of this album isn’t simply the invoked spirituality, nor is it the groove, funk, and beautiful tone of the music — it is the album’s politics, and how Love is Where the Spirit Lies clearly stands for the deliberate, defiant, and confident soul of Black southerners everywhere.

Even the band’s name shows intent, as Lon Moshe & The Southern Freedom Arkestra reminds me of the South African exiled group, Joe Malinga & the Southern African Force. In Moshe’s case, Plunky explained how this album sprouts out of the sorrows and angering injustices that face the U.S. South. It carries this region’s tradition of resistance and blends in the rhythms, politics, and spiritual practices of South African native Ndiko Xaba, who plays percussion, conga, and bells on this album.

“Survival Raga #9” has a directness of lyricism — “we must be movement struggling against death” — that reflects the energy of Juju Raga artist house, a space dedicated to music education and community. The track embodies motion, moving through and against anti-black racism, insisting that “we must be life.” It pushes against the material world constructed by white supremacy and defies its mandatory, carved-out dominance. In these words, Amiri Baraka’s articulation of art as the weapon in the struggle of ideas finds another lifeline. Moshe — having grown up in Southern Illinois, the South of Chicago, one of the epicenters of racial injustice in the United States of America — and his contemporaries must, therefore, respond to their experiences through sound, improvisation, and the surrealist association of like-minded people who commit to knowledge and self-determination. To some extent in Love is Where the Spirit Lies, we see that Black existentialism can be a sonic practice.

Much of this album’s conceptual approach strives for collectivity through arrangement and reference. This is clear in the album’s eponymous track led by Eka-Eta Jackie Lewis’ soulful ethereal vocals, which stylistically aligns with the long and tender genius of the vocal luminary Jean Carn. Its collective ambition is also evident in the beautiful reference “Ballad for Bobby Hutchinson,” a track that immediately brings the listener to a core consciousness created by Hutchison’s characteristically dream-like vibraphone arrangements. For Moshe, the album’s theme of love is a recognition of living as a dialectic experience. The album creates an experience of relating to one another as we strive towards a vision of oneness — where Moshe’s sound becomes a collective study.

Strut present the first ever international reissue of one of the most sought-after albums from the Black Fire catalogue, Lon Moshe & Southern Freedom Arkestra’s life-affirming ‘Love Is Where The Spirit Lies’ from 1977.

“Lon was creating his own path in his music life at this time,” remembers Black Fire’s Plunky Branch. “We had met in San Francisco and he had become an original member of JuJu during the early ‘70s. He then wanted to pursue his own music, primarily in jazz; he was an avant-gardist and loved Tribe, Strata-East and Sun Ra.” For his Love Is Where The Spirit Lies album, Moshe drew from musicians within the Black Fire stable. Oneness Of Juju’s Jackie Eka-Ete sang and helped to write songs and members of Southern Energy Ensemble contributed, including their bandleader Marvin Daniels. “The band name, Southern Freedom Arkestra, was a proud declaration that this music was from the U.S. South,” continues Branch.

“The civil rights movement had been led from there and the most serious racial animosities resided there. Lon had grown up in Southern Illinois, South of Chicago, and said that the racial oppression was as bad there as in the South. He wanted to fight back through his music and through his own actions. He found a way to bring energy and aggressive to the sweet sound of the vibes. He played with a lot of dynamism and speed. The most celebrated piece on this album,

‘Doin’ The Carvin For Thabo’, is a tribute to his mentor, the drummer Michael Carvin (also known by same as ‘Thabo’) who had played for Motown, with Freddie Hubbard and many more.

This first international reissue of the album features new sleeve notes including interviews and commentary by Lon Moshe, Plunky Branch and band members with original illustrated artwork by Mary E. Greer. Audio was remastered from original tapes by The Carvery.