Ikef Rec.
The Pyramids : Lalibela (US,1973,re.2009)***°
The Pyramids, first consisting of saxophonist Idris Ackamoor, flautist Margo Simmons and bassist Kimathi Asante, were founded in 1971 at Ohio’s Antioch College. Idris Ackamoor had already played with Albert Ayler’s alto player Charles Tyler in LA and Clifford King in Chicago. He just had his own spiritual free jazz band (in a Pharoah Sanders & Strata East-ish style) called The Collective. The title of their first album referred to a place in Ethiopia with the famous Christian-Ethiopian church built into rock. Margo Simons was soon becoming Idris wife. They really dug into the afro-spirit of music, made a sort of now-music, of instant improvisation with some recognisable patterns of drives, by rhythm or bass or sometimes group vocals and with free improvisations by flute or sax. The group had some influence from Sun Ra, but Idris also mentions John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Charles Tyler, Clifford King (his teacher), the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and African Music, as well as Eric Dolphy. For me the music sounds like a translation of Afro-centred music into the format of jazz, as if giving the African people a new free spirit with respect to certain traditions or local talent. (The band also travelled to Ghana and Kenya for a while). In African tradition, to a degree there is no amateur music, communal spirit succeeds to keep the energy strong and musicality complex enough. Here, the urban side of that feeling still sounds a little bit more loose and less complex, still a free bird is there. Perhaps the band feels this as coming from the same spirit, thus it is spiritual in some other sense of experience.
Very much like a jam, rhythms are drums and loose percussion and shakers. A groovy mood percussion gets also harmonies of flute with sax. A melodic improvisation changes direction. A repetitive afro-melody receives a sax improvised on top. Afro-feelings are mixed with tendencies to jazz standard style, until the Hagstrom bass takes over loosely before the energy falls apart. The track is faded out on the end of the first side as if there was no real planning of an ending. Then the tracks calm down and speed up a few more times. Voices push the energy up again with jeejee's and an ultimate sax burst outs its energy a bit more weird. This is all less organised compared to Pharoah Sanders, more loose and jam-like, the Afro-centered source in a way is the same one, and tends to go back to those people (in Africa) as well.
