BGP returns to its jazz roots with a compilation that looks at the funky, Afro-centric and distinctly spiritual grooves coming out of North America in the latter part of the 60s and early 70s. Its musical landscape was dominated by the politics of the post civil-rights era, the two jazz totems of Miles and Coltrane, the success of soul and its little brother funk. The outcome was a mixture of rhythms from Africa, Detroit and Latin-America, imbued with a healthy dose of free thinking. As the jazz scene of the early 70s was shrinking, the music featured here was one attempt to get it out of its trough.
With sought-after records by Azar Lawrence, Gary Bartz and Jack DeJohnette, who learned their trade playing in the ground-breaking early 70's Miles Davis groups, and musicians who came out of the post-Coltrane school of jazz from McCoy Tyner to Norman Connors to Alice Coltrane and Joe Henderson, this is truly deep, spiritual, often political, music for the soul from a fertile period in African-American history.