Artist	Song
Abdullah Ibrahim Trio	African River
Takadja	Fonikeya Marassi (Advice To Youth)
Miles Davis	E.S.P.
Peter Erskine, John Taylor, Palle Danielsson	Romeo & Juliet
Max Lasser's Ark	Evening Star
Mark Helios	Loop The Cool
Baden Powell	All The Things You Are
Steve Kuhn	Life's Backward Glance
Charles Mingus	Goodbye Porkpie Hat
Geri Allen	It's Good To Be Home Again
Billy Bang with Sun Ra	Only Time Will Tell
Randy Weston with Pharoah Sanders	Blue Moses

Comment:

The poetry of a people comes from the deep recesses of the unconscious, the irrational and the collective body of its ancestral memories. The same could be said for the poetry of jazz, built step by step on the shoulders of the first players to become the rich music it is today.

This mix starts and ends with two jazz musicians that have deep roots in African culture, which is often reflected in their choice of music to play. Abdullah Ibrahim (the former Dollar Brand) grew up in Capetown in the '40s, expatriated and then returned after his conversion to Islam. Randy Weston's childhood was spent in 1930's Brooklyn. His 1991 2-LP masterpiece "Spirits of Our Ancestors" featured guests such as Pharoah Sanders and Dizzy Gillespie. Much of the music came to him while touring Africa as part of a U.S. cultural delegation.

On the album's liner notes, Weston said: "People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive." I'm all for that, but I don't want to join my ancestral spirits just yet.

Quiz: For a copy of the mix tracked and with artwork, answer this: Which musician wrote the score for the fabulous film Chocolat?Quiz #2: Please answer only one quiz. How did violinist Billy Bang get his stage name?

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