From the Archive: The Trance of Seven Colors (Morocco)

Thirty years ago sax legend Pharoah Sanders went to Africa to make an album.

As our archive keeps growing, some of our older pieces might have gotten lost in the shuffle. Every now and then we'll dig in and find some highlights and revisit them. Here's one now.

Welcome to our first foray into the music of northern Africa. We usually focus on the southern regions of the continent, but wanted to call attention to this album.

After a long career as a distinguished jazz saxophonist, Pharaoh Sanders died, in 2022, at age 81. Much of his music made use of African influences, and in 1994, he traveled to Morocco to record an album with a troupe of players headed by traditional musician, Maleem Mahmoud Ghania.

In doing so, Sanders followed in the footsteps of many Western literary and other figures who explored Moroccan music and culture, including Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, and Brian Jones, of the Rolling Stones.

The album was produced by that renowned Man Of A Thousand Projects, Bill Laswell. Of the nine songs, seven are traditional, with arrangements by Ghania. On one song Ghania and Sanders share a credit. Sanders wrote "Peace In Essaouira (For Sonny Sharrock)," a quiet sax piece, that features a smattering of background music from the ensemble.

The songs here tend toward long run times but are nothing compared to one of the traditional Gnawa trance ceremonies, which can last through the night and well into morning. The guimbri, an instrument which sounds like a bass, is the dominant sound, with vocals and clattering eye-opening percussion filling in the rest of the space.

And there's Sanders. Who was one of the great free jazz sax players, a category which usually brings to mind skronking, screeching improvisation. But here he tends toward more quiet stuff, for the most part.